Trina was helping out at a school, when one of the teachers recommended fostering to her. She decided to look into it. She’s now been a TACT foster carer for 17 years.

Many years ago I was helping out in the local school, and one of the teachers was a TACT foster carer and she kept saying to me ‘you could do this – the way you are with children’. So it was actually one of the school teachers that got me into this.

So I gave TACT a call, hoping that they were going to take me seriously – and I’m still here 17 years later.

You can foster as a family

When I did look into [fostering] further, we only had my son Ben at home at the time – the other three had left. Ben was 9 when I first started to look into it, and by the time TACT had come out and done all their investigations, and I’d done the Skills to Foster course – we actually became foster carers when our own son was 10.

Ben’s always grown up around other foster children because his best friends in school were twins and they were both fostered. So he understood the fostering side of looking after children. He actually just thrived with the six year old little boy. They both had the same interests – it just worked really well.  I don’t think Ben ever had his face put out of joint because this isn’t my adventure, this is our family adventure.

TACT always do a yearly annual summer trip and things like that, then they do the Christmas parties and discos. One year we actually did Disneyland, Paris – so my own son actually came along and joined in on that as well.

Everyone touches my heart

Everyone touches my heart in their own special way. We had a little boy at the age of two. We were told that he was unadoptable. With a lot of therapeutic work, a lot of play and giving him 100% time and effort he got adopted 18 months later. I still get messages and I still see how he’s doing. He sends me Christmas cards and Mother’s Day cards, so to me that is an absolute success story. He’s actually been adopted now for six years, so all through those six years I’ve had all contact with him

I just love what I do and seeing that little difference – you don’t have to see a huge difference you know, just tiny little steps. I just think it’s amazing. I can tell you I’ve got the best job in the world, and I work for the best people as well.