Search is on for foster carers ‘with heart’ to help meet demand
Darlington Borough Council’s Fostering and Supported Lodgings Team has joined forces with Heart radio DJ and influencer Pandora, to raise awareness of the need for more local foster carers and supported lodgings providers to help provide stable homes for children and teenagers in the area.
The campaign features video messages from Pandora, who herself grew up in care from the age of nine following the death of her mother. Pandora answers frequently asked questions around fostering and also highlights the difference between fostering and supported lodgings, which provides support to teenagers over the age of 16 who are making the transition to more independent living.
As well as increasing awareness of the need for fostering in Darlington and the offer provided by the council, the campaign aims to encourage people living in the town who may have considered fostering in the past, to take that next step in the process with the council.
The council currently supports more than 200 Darlington children in foster care and supported lodgings, both through funding placements via private fostering agencies and the council’s own in-house Foster Carers and Supported Lodgings provider scheme. The campaign aims to recruit more carers for its in-house service, to enable it to offer more placements for local children and teenagers directly.
In the North East, around 13 per cent of foster carers leave or retire each year, and so ongoing recruitment of foster carers is essential to replace those who leave, and to meet the needs of increasing numbers of looked after children.
Foster care, providing the best start for children who are unable to live with their own families, can include long term, short term and respite care, providing other foster carers and parents of disabled children time to ‘recharge their batteries’ as well as parent and child placements.
Speaking to would-be foster carers in Darlington Pandora said: “Anyone can be a foster carer. It doesn’t matter what age you are, what ethnicity you are, what gender you are. It doesn’t matter whether you are in a couple, married or single, if you have a massive heart and you want to change someone’s life and help them to get the future that they deserve, this could be you.”
Councillor Jon Clarke, Darlington Borough Council’s cabinet member for children and young people said: “We’re talking about children’s wellbeing at the end of the day, giving a child a settled home and an environment to feel safe in.
“In Darlington our foster carers are crucial. We have a wide variety of people working as foster carers across the town, drawn from a variety of backgrounds. If you are kind, patient and looking for a rewarding career, and have the heart to give what it takes to support a child or teenager with a better start in life, the council’s fostering and supported lodgings team would love to hear from you.”
Nadene has been providing foster care to children from Darlington for more than 13 years. She said: “Having someone like Pandora to promote the need for foster carers in Darlington is vital, especially when she has been through the care system herself and can relate to the need for foster carers.
“To be honest we didn't know anything about fostering when we decided to look into it and the only way we knew how to get more information was by contacting the council. We felt that we had given our own children a happy and fulfilling childhood and really wanted to give this same opportunity to as many children as we could.
“You get allocated your own family supervising social worker who visits each month to catch up on how things are going. They are also there to support you as a family. We also get to access to lots of training specific to the work we do.
“We enjoy fostering so much and it has certainly been a learning curve, even after 13 years we are still learning. To those considering fostering, I would say, go for it, give Darlington Borough Council a ring and have a very informal chat. I can guarantee you will have nothing to lose but lots to gain.”
To watch the videos and for more information about becoming a foster carer or offering supported lodgings, including the types of foster care and payments available, please visit: www.darlington.gov.uk/fostering.