I’ve been a carer now for 17 years. My son Ben is now 26, which means at the time of approval he would’ve been 9 approaching 10 years old. I was a lot younger in my youthful years, and my partner Chris, well he’s always been old. My son has been part of the fostering family the entire time, other than a very brief stint where he attended Bristol University.

When we first started fostering, we did have a younger age preference. Personally, I didn’t want a foster child to be older than my own birth child while he was at home. So, when we started, we did have a younger age preference, but this preference for matching grew as my son grew older. This biggest concern at this stage of my fostering journey was the comfort of my own son.

When we started fostering, the first child we cared for was a 6 year old boy who really took to Ben. Ben thrived with helping him with his homework and playing Xbox games with him. I just felt that it was a really good match and worked for us. Unfortunately, this child was moved elsewhere, but they were actually brought back to us many years later. I think my son adapted really well as he is a caring soul anyway.

I did recently ask my son directly how he felt he’d adjusted when reflecting back on becoming a foster family for the first time. His response was that just because someone was in foster care with us, this didn’t actually make a difference for him. Some of his closest friends whilst growing up were brought up in the care system, plus coming from a large family where he had plenty of nieces & nephews already, he was used to having younger children around.

My son has always been one to help support and mentor our foster children. An example of this was how Ben helped with our foster children’s maths homework, which he did by inventing games for maths using laptops/tablets, as Ben is a maths genius. He also did the same in comprehensive school where during his GCSE’s he volunteered to help others with their maths during registration periods. The progress the foster child made was noticed through the school as he went up a couple of “sets” in his maths.

Another time he helped a foster child settle was when our foster child’s uncle came forward to family foster. Whilst forming attachments, myself, Ben, the foster child and the foster child’s uncle ended up doing a charity run for Sport Relief. I thought that this was a nice involvement to support introductions and do it through informal means, keeping it fun and casual. The run itself was lots of fun for everyone, and if anyone is curious yes I did finish the run.

A third example where I thought Ben was excellent with our foster children, was when we had a complex needs child, who Ben was excellent with. We had several video games related to music (such as Guitar Hero and singing related games). During playing Guitar Hero the foster child loved getting involved with tambourines, and she ended up knowing all the Beatles songs from the game – I was often the one with the microphone as I do like to sing along. It brings back fond memories and a smile on my face when thinking about this period.

With TACT, Ben has enjoyed the days out, and it was a shame there wasn’t more. Ben also had a lovely time going to Euro Disney back in 2015. I feel that my social worker Andrea, on support visits, did always make a point of seeing Ben, although he was a child who couldn’t get out of there quick enough. I always made sure that he knew he could come to us and he had the number for TACT if wanting to speak to them.

In our experience the challenge we have from coming from such a large family is mainly around titles of what we call everyone, i.e. Trina & Chris vs that of Mum & Dad. I know Ben has mentioned that he does have to think about what he calls us sometimes depending on the child we’re caring for and their needs, as we’re aware some children mimic the language used and they will start calling people Mum/Dad/Nan/Grandad the same as Ben normally would. Otherwise, I do feel that we take everything in our stride, nothing really phases us.

I would like to think that Ben’s fostering experiences have been positive, and that he has also got a lot out of this the same as we have. I did ask him directly this question – he mentioned that he doesn’t know any different, and that it just feels normal to our family.