Cathy Glass – Best Selling Author on True Life Fostering Experiences
Fostering is a very rewarding career, but it also comes with many challenges. With over 62,000 children currently in the care system in the UK, more foster carers are urgently needed. But many people shy away from fostering because they do not know enough about it or need more advice and support.
If you have been thinking about becoming a foster carer or are indeed currently a foster carer then there are many books available that are based on true accounts of fostering. If you enjoy reading as a hobby these books are fantastic ways to get into the mind of a foster carer and broaden your knowledge on the subject. For existing carers it can provide tried and tested sound advice from experience.
Cathy Glass – Author and Current Foster Carer
Cathy Glass is a British author, who has also been a foster carer for 28 years and has looked after over 150 children from all backgrounds. Due to this experience she is often asked to look after children with more complex needs or challenging behaviours.
Cathy says fostering is the “inspiration for much of her writing” and she uses her experiences to help and advise others. Her stories show a true reflection of fostering and highlight the suffering, courage and achievements of the young people in care.
Cathy says the main target audience for her books is the ordinary reader, reading for pleasure. However, her books are also used by teachers, parents, trainers, foster carers, social workers, child psychologists and other people working with children. Cathy targets a lot of her books according to what people want advice on. She wrote ‘Happy Kids, Happy Adults and Happy Mealtimes’ because she had so many requests asking for advice on these topics.
Cathy’s books all have a special place in her heart, like the children she has fostered. In each book, Cathy shares her memories of the children she has fostered, “each child’s story is different and affects us in a different way”. Cathy uses each fostering experience to write her books. In her book ‘I Miss Mummy’, for example Cathy writes about a little girl called Alice who couldn’t understand why she was in foster care. In ‘Happy Kids’ Cathy writes about a child she fostered who had particularly challenging behaviour and the strategies she has developed to help other foster carers like herself support children with challenging behaviour.
Cathy first started writing her first fostering memoirs in 2007 and since then has published 20 books and sold over 2.9 million copies world-wide. Writing was at first a hobby, but when her first book, about a child she had fostered, became a number one seller, her career as an author took off.
Cathy got into fostering through an independent fostering agency and says she has “never looked back…fostering doesn’t suit all families but if you go ahead and foster you will find the rewards of seeing a child improve and be happy are never ending”.
Find out more about Cathy’s experiences as a foster carer and order her books online: http://www.cathyglass.co.uk/fact_fostering.html
If you wish to find out more about becoming a foster carer then please submit your details on the form at the top right of this page or alternatively contact us on (freephone) 0800 038 7799.
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