Three weeks ago a social worker phoned Pamela* and asked her if she could foster two sisters, aged three and five, for a few days since an emergency care order had been issued.

Pamela, who was already fostering two toddlers, agreed, not knowing that three weeks later the sisters would still be with her as no alternative carer has been found.

“This just shows there is a lack of foster carers,” Pamela said. There are about 255 children in foster care and a further 120 waiting to be fostered.

Pamela added that she knew people who stopped fostering because it was financially crippling.

She now knows what they meant and has had to move house because she could no longer afford the rent.

To make matters worse, she is a victim of what she calls “the F-word”. She is a foreigner in Malta.

Being from the UK, and having moved to Malta about five years ago, her water and electricity bills are 35 per cent higher than that of Maltese people.

She feels the government needs to do more to help out foster carers financially – and she is not alone.

The Foster Care Association recently commissioned a study that showed that 80 per cent of foster carers said they needed more financial support from the government. At the moment, foster carers receive €70 a week in child-in-care benefits.


255

the number of children in foster care and a further 120 waiting to be fostered


“Unless the Government wakes up we’ll end up with the institutions getting bigger and bigger,” Pamela said.

Sitting in her living room, where three potties were lined up on one side, she said she was potty training three of the children. “I go through a packet of nappies a day,” she said.

Pamela has children of her own who are all grown up now. When she moved to Malta with her family she immediately signed up to become a foster carer and attended the course organised by Appoġġ Agency.

Soon after, she was given a baby boy to look after. He was born to a heroin addict and needed treatment.

“I could give him my 100 per cent attention and when he was about eight weeks old, and a smile covered his face, I thought: ‘Yes, we’ve done it. This is why I’m a foster carer’.”

A few weeks later she was asked to keep another baby from an abusive family.

“You couldn’t even turn on a light without her screaming. She was a year old before she actually gave in and would be held and tickled and cuddled. I thought I’d never see her smile, run and laugh,” she said as the girl, now two, giggled while sitting on her lap.

Now Pamela is concerned that the authorities will not find a foster carer willing to take the two sisters together. She would like to raise them and keep them together.

But although she has a regular and good income, she is starting to struggle.

“Why should the Maltese foster carers be subsidising foster care in Malta? People might say: ‘If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. If you don’t like it, go back to where you came from.’ I do like it. I love it. But financially it’s hard,” she said.

*Name and details have been changed to protect the identities of the children.

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