Caring and helping children and young people

Fostering is a powerful way to lift up the lives of children and young people who have faced tremendous obstacles, and show them that there is hope for the future.

Good parenting and communication skills

While being a loving parent it is also important to be consistent and follow through on rules and expectations. These skills benefit towards stabilising the future of the children looked after.

People want to have a positive impact on a child and our community.

Fostering goes beyond helping an individual child as it helps to fight the problems of homelessness, substance abuse, mental health and poverty. Foster parents can also be role models to birth parents by setting better examples of parenting the children.

Nurturing environment helping towards healthy development

The basic needs for a foster child are to feel safe in a warm and nurturing environment that enable a child to advance in forming attachments and expressing affection.  By this they learn to communicate their needs in an appropriate way and displays a healthy sense of self-esteem, form connections with others, and develop future goals.

Feeling the need to give back and wanting to share experiences

People who have had their own challenges in life such as dealing with a family member’s addiction, loosing parents or experiencing abuse who have overcome these situations and wanting to use that knowledge to help others.  Other people may never have faced these difficulties and feel a sense of gratitude.

Own children are grown up

Many people foster because their own children have grown up and live independently. They feel that they can use their parenting skills in order to give a happy home to children who haven’t had it easy in their lives.

Enjoy challenges.

Fostering can be challenging as every child is different and has their own unique needs and challenges. This may involve working along with many different people, from social workers, therapists, doctors, and school personnel.