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After that, I persuaded my husband to stretch our family to just one more. We contacted an organisation nearby and met with the officers there to find out more about fostering. However, what they told us is not what we expect to hear or not what could imagine about offering foster care.
They told us those young people who are in need of foster care have often experienced emotional upheaval. Therefore foster carer’s need to be patient, perceptive, flexible, resourceful and able to set firm boundaries in order to help young people placed in their care.
We are overall qualified couple to offer foster care, we really want personal rewards by setting up a good example for having a positive impact on a young person’s life.
| Fostering teenagers involves quite different skills to that of fostering younger children. Due to their age, teenagers are often more firmly established in their ways of behaving, and are consequently less adaptable than young children. They are also approaching a time in their lives when they are learning to develop their independence and therefore require more support and less direct supervision.The couple was also told to expect that the teenager’s biological parents will come over to knock at their door to look for their own children at anytime as they wish even though there are guidelines, but no one know how would their natural family react to someone who keep their children from them. As foster carers, they have to keep in mind that the majority of young people have formed strong bonds with their natural family. It is important to refrain from criticising their natural family. |
We only thought of rewarding a few years later after we have saved and brought up or helped a teenager, but it actually can be challenging to provide a stable and secure environment for a young person to grow and develop physically and emotionally.
We should not remove the possibility of influence they might have from their biological parents and peer groups in their past since they were born. We cannot know enough how many sub-personalities have affected their perception of life.
From our point of view we only think of providing young people with a safe and nurturing environment in order to meet their individual needs. We want to be their mentors and friends to guide them through from adolescents to adulthood.
Instead of persuading us to become foster parents, we were told not to because we are not prepared to code with the possible difficulties or challenges of fostering teenagers. They told us there are many reasons why young people are not able to live with their own parents. This may include family breakdown, parent’s drug and alcohol problems, abuse and neglect, physical and mental illness and breakdown in relationships between teenagers and their parents who may be having difficulty coping with the young person’s behaviour.
Fostering teenagers involves quite different skills to that of fostering younger children. Due to their age, teenagers are often more firmly established in their ways of behaving, and are consequently less adaptable than young children. They are also approaching a time in their lives when they are learning to develop their independence and therefore require more support and less direct supervision.
We may expect their biological parents come over to knock at our door to look for their children from our home at anytime as they wish even though there are guidelines, but we never how would their natural family react to someone who keep their children from them. As foster carers, we have to keep in mind that the majority of young people have formed strong bonds with their natural family. It is important to refrain from criticising their natural family.
One more important point we have ever thought about is we need to attend training for a few months before we would be allowed to become foster carers and take the foster child home.
Approved foster carers can expect to receive personal rewards for having a positive impact on a young people’s life and develop a close relationship with the young people which may last throughout their life. If it is something you value to contribute to the society, you may go ahead for fostering a teenager.
