FOSTERING WITH CARE
SENATOR SHARON KEOGAN TALKS TO KEN PHELAN ABOUT BALANCING THE DEMANDS OF WORK AND FOSTERING CHILDREN
TUSLA’S National Fostering Week is Ireland’s biggest foster care awareness raising campaign and aims to highlight the contribution that foster carers make to the lives of children every day. In Ireland, there are 5,957 children in care. Of these, 5,450 children are cared for by 4,124 foster families. There were 383 children in foster care and 293 foster carers in counties Louth and Meath at the end of June 2020. COVID-19 has impacted on Tusla fostering services by significantly slowing down the assessment, training and communication processes’ involved in the recruitment of new foster carers.
Grainne Sullivan, Tusla Area Manager for Louth and Meath said: ‘ Tusla foster carers are invisible heroes in towns and villages across Ireland. They make daily sacrifices to enable the children in their care to grow, flourish, and reach the best of their potential.
Senator Sharon Keogan explains how she became involved as a foster carer: ‘I’ve been a foster carer since 2010, I think is when I started.
‘I just had ‘empty house syndrome’ - the kids were all gone to college and university and I just thought to myself, ‘what am I going to do?’
I didn’t like the idea of having nobody in the home so I decided to foster.
‘It was probably not the right reasons for doing it, but I love a busy house, I love a family life so I just decided to take the plunge into fostering to see how I’d like it.
‘I knew there’d be challenges but that’s how I started.’
She says: ‘ My first placement was a boy, that was a short-term placement, then I ended up with two boys...one of them was with me until he was about 18, and the other one was with me until he was 21.’
‘ The process obviously takes some time because they want to make sure they have the right kind of individual, and they also want to match families with children as well.
‘Obviously all the checks and balances have to be made, you can foster whether you’re single, you can foster if you’re married, it doesn’t make a difference, it can be any family make-up whatsoever.’
Sharon explains there are of course, certain formalities involved when fostering a child with Tusla.
The agency will interview family members, determine the family’s background and history, and of course which age-bracket the foster carer would like to foster.
She says: ‘Some people like to foster babies, and some people would like to foster teenagers. Very few like to take teenagers, but I basically fell into that bracket because I love teenagers, I love the banter with teenagers, and very few people take teenagers because they come with a lot of issues.
‘So they would be the ones the social workers would find most difficult to place.
‘Every family member needs to be interviewed, they need to be interviewed by the social worker.
‘You don’t know what type of child you’re going to get, you could get a child that’s of a different origin than Irish, so it’s to make sure that you’re open-minded and happy to promote good well-being irrespective of colour or gender. So really, that’s basically what they do.’
Sharon points out that fostering can be a lengthy process, particularly now given additional delays posed by COVID-19.
Despite being ‘ quite busy’ in her work schedule, she was able to gain her first placement ‘in about a year.’
Fostering, of course, is not without its challenges, as Sharon points out: ‘ There’s many challenges with fostering.
‘ The same challenges that maybe you’d face with your own teenagers as well, but you have to remember these children are coming from a different background, they may not have the proper supports at home, and that’s why they’re in care.
‘It could be anything from drug addiction, alcohol addiction, self-harming, there’s so many different reasons why children go into care.
‘It could be abuse, it could be mental abuse, sexual abuse, it can be abandonment, there’s a lot of reasons why children need to come into care.
‘Sometimes it can happen very quickly as well (that children come into care), where the gardai would have to come along and take the children into care immediately, so having families there to support those kids at a very traumatic time is really important.’
Sharon says its very important to note that foster parents can have the arrangement suit their own particular lifestyle.
Potential foster carers therefore can choose from short-term to long-term care, or respite care.
Crucially, she says, the role often involves stepping in at crisis point and caring for a child when their parent or parents aren’t in a position to care for them: ‘No-one knows what’s going to happen in life, there’s no smooth road in life; you never know when someone’s going to fall through the cracks and it’s important if a parent does fall through the crack that there are other parents there that can support them in that time.
‘ That’s what fostering is all about, is to be there to pick up that child for that parent and mind that child until that parent gets back on the right track. That’s what fostering is all about.’
Ongoing support to foster parents is offered by Tusla, Sharon says, with ‘as much support as you want or as little support as you want’.
Sharon has only ever worked with Tusla, and while there are other private agencies available, she has found Tusla to be very supportive in her time caring for foster children.
Asked what she has gained from the experience of being a foster parent, Sharon says: ‘It’s probably one of the best things that I’ve ever done in my life. When you get a child who comes to you who has major issues and you’re able to turn that child around and they’re able to go on and lead a very active, full life, and graduate from college or university and go on and get a job, you know that you have made that life better as a result of you taking that child into your care.
‘I have to say it’s life-changing, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done, and I’ve done a lot of things in my life.
You can foster whether you’re single, you can foster if you’re married, it doesn’t make a difference, it can be any family make-up whatsoever.
Members of the public who would like to find out more about fostering can call freephone 1800 226 771 or email tusla.fostering@tusla.ie