Vanessa and Alan’s Story: This is Fostering
For Foster Care Fortnight, our Foster Carers have been sharing their stories with us, showing us a sneak peak in to their lives and what it’s like to be a family that fosters. Below is Vanessa and Alan’s story. They tell us all about their experiences and what led them to open up their hearts and homes to young people in care.
Vanessa and Alan’s Story
“We have been Foster Carers with Lorimer Fostering Services for 8 years. We had both been involved with working with children with our individual hobbies.
Alan was involved with the Air Training Core and was a squadron commander, taking cadets to many camps and supporting them in their individual training programmes.
I ran a Guide Unit, and was District and Division Commissioner for Girl Guiding locally. I support my guides in their guiding programmes, taking them on activity holidays and outdoor camps along with fun trips out & district competitions.
I also worked at Southport college for 28 years working along side students of all ages and abilities.
Our Fostering Journey
Once our own children were older and had their own lives and pathways mapped out, we decided as Fostering was something we had always been interested in, we’d find out more – so here we are!
We have supported a number of young people and given them an insight into what is deemed a normal family life. The children have been able to take on out of school activities e.g. swimming lessons, horse riding, dance, guides, Scouts and taekwondo to gain new experiences and make friends out of school.
We have taken the children abroad and the excitement of going on holiday, travelling on an aeroplane, staying in an apartment with a swimming pool and experiencing other cultures has been fantastic for them.
Our looked after children are our children within our family setting and treated like all family members, given the same experiences our children had. To watch these children grow and develop into young adults, having had a childhood whilst living with us is fantastic and hopefully helped them to keep on the right path through their lives.
Life in Lockdown
Life in lockdown has thrown new challenges to us in the form of ‘homeschooling’ – this has been challenging at times, we are not mathematicians or scientists but have kept the children to a school routine and to a degree followed the school timetable. Routine is very important as a Foster Carer, so Monday to Friday is school. We have rewarded hard work with our own in-set day (no school) where we did other activities.
Our own in-set day comprised of making our own salt dough plaques, making gingerbread and baking gingerbread men with a challenge to ice and decorate with your own football kit! I also created “The Milk Room” for lunch as the children enjoy visiting here for milkshakes and pancakes. It’s shut at the moment so I created my own.
We have also been doing Scout badges – chefs badge, model making, and currently working on DIY badge. We have camped out in the back garden, toasted marshmallows and made smores.
Is fostering easy? No, it’s not at times, it’s very challenging – but it is also very rewarding.”
Fostering with Lorimer
A big thank you to Vanessa and Alan for sharing their story with us!
We would like to encourage anyone who is considering fostering to get in touch with us. You really could make all the difference in a young persons life! If you would like to see some more information, you can head over to this webpage here: https://www.lorimerfostering.com/lorimer-foster-carer-fortnight/
If you would like to get in touch, you can call, text or WhatsApp Rachael on 07938 575 738; or send an email to foster@lorimerfostering.com. If you would prefer us to call you, please submit your details using the form below; and we’ll get back to you soon!
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