‘Listen to what the foster children actually want’

Kelly* lets off a beaming smile as her foster parents take a photo of her and her friend, wearing princess-like white dresses, on the day of their First Holy Communion.

Parents are realising it’s better for the children to be fostered from when they are babies

Until a few weeks before, she was not sure she would be able to attend the ceremony because she was not baptised yet, said Joe*, the foster carer whom Kelly calls “special daddy”.

Her biological mother had delayed the paperwork that allowed Kelly’s foster carers to baptise her.

“Children need to be given much more weight and listened to more,” said Joe, holding the photo of Kelly on the day she received the sacrament.

He was echoing a concern raised in a recent report by the National Foster Care Association, which said that the fostering law needed to be more child-centred.

Joe and his wife Marion* think the authorities need to listen to the voice of the child, rather than rely on the paperwork handled by adults.

They have been fostering Kelly, who is now seven, since she was one.

They sent her to a Church school where she was taught religion and prepared for her First Holy Communion, which she really wanted to do. But first she had to get baptised.

The birth mother eventually signed the document of consent with the intervention of a social worker.

The association’s report also mentioned instances when foster carers could not take a child abroad on holiday without the parent’s consent.

John Rolé, who heads the foster care team at the government’s support agency Appoġġ, said many carers felt it is time to tweak the fostering law so that it gave more importance to what children wanted.

“In practice, children are listened to but there needs to be something in the law that gives their voice more weight,” he said.

There were 255 children in foster care and a further 120 waiting to be fostered, Mr Rolé said. A third of foster carers are relatives.

Although the number of carers has increased over the years, so has the demand.

“There was a change of mentality… We have more parents who cannot look after their children asking that they are fostered rather than just placed in a home.

“Parents are realising that it’s better for the children to be fostered from when they are babies,” he said.

The Foster Care Association recently commissioned a study that asked 153 approved foster carers about their needs and the problems they encountered.

Eighty per cent said they needed more support from the government through financial benefits and the services of specialists, such as psychologists and counsellors, for the children.

At the moment, foster carers receive €70 a week in child-in-care benefits.

“Kelly is an­other member of the family. When we budget we have to cope with what we have…

“Of course, more financial support would help,” Joe said, insisting that he and his wife, who have two children of their own, are not fostering for the money.

“We didn’t even know about the benefit when we started attending the fostering course,” Marion said.

* Names have been changed to protect the persons’ identity.