Sons and Daughters Month

Posted on 17th October 2016 by Kelly From Red Cow Media

Every year during the month of October, fostering services around the UK hold events in recognition of children and young people that welcome fostered children into their homes.

There are a number of reasons we should appreciate all young people in foster families, as it being a foster sibling can have a big affect on their lives.

We are supporting Sons and Daughters Month alongside The Fostering Network,  in an effort to encourage our fostering families to show their pride in fostering!

If you want to get involved, you can print off this #ProudToFoster banner and hold it up for a photograph. You can share this photo on social media and use the hashtag #ProudToFoster to try and raise awareness of the wonderful work you do as a foster family.

When you become a foster parent, it can be easy, with all of the attention on the foster child, to lose a focus on your birth children. Do you want to let your birth children know how much you appreciate them? There are many ways you can make them feel important and loved. Try and encourage them to spend some one on one time with you, so that they still feel like a priority. You can also encourage them by letting them know the positive impacts they have had on the foster children you have welcomed into your home.

The sons and daughters of foster carers really do play a vital role in welcoming fostered children into their families and enabling successful fostering placements. The impact that foster placements could have on birth children is often one of the barriers that people face when thinking about becoming a foster carer.

Parents are often worried about how their children might cope sharing them with a stranger, or whether it could disrupt their child’s behaviour or school work.  The good news is that in reality many children really benefit from being part of a foster family. Seeing life from someone else’s perspective can be a very positive experience and can help a child grow and develop.

However, expectations on them can often be high and they so have certain challenges to overcome. Here at Lorimer, we send out special thank yous to the birth children in our foster families during Sons and Daughters month, to show our appreciation of the love and support these children give to their foster brothers and sisters.