In October each year, we celebrate Sons & Daughters Month.  Sons & Daughters Month was established by The Fostering Network, a charity that champions fostering and helps instigate positive change within the sector.  The function of the campaign is to acknowledge, thank and reward the amazing contribution made by the ‘birth children’ of foster carers within the fostering household.

Many carers begin their fostering journey with their own children, and a part of the foster carer assessment is to check that those children are ‘on board’ with fostering.  It is vital that children are happy to accept another child into their space, into their lives – and to be able to share their parent’s time.  The bottom line is, without their input, acceptance and understanding, their parents would not be able to ‘make a difference’ to children’s lives.  But the fact that they also play with them, talk to them, bond with them, laugh with them and listen to them makes their contribution to fostering vital.

It could be that foster children have never had a brother or sister of their own to talk to, or may never have played a board game before.  They may have never written a story, or had a story read to them.  Whatever the involvement, we remain truly grateful and humbled by the part that birth children play in foster children’s lives.

The Fostering Network have launched a competition aimed at the children of foster carers.  You can read more about that here. We have our own competition live on our internal intranet, on the subject of a child’s role within the fostering household.  To enter, children can produce some art, a poem or a piece of creative writing.

So this is a big ‘thank you’ to these amazing children, who not only make fostering possible for their parents, but contribute in their own way – in order to help change other children’s lives.