Teen - New narritive in foster care

Can we foster a new narrative around young people: Part 2

We recently blogged about fostering young people and the importance of dispelling myths and changing the narrative around young people.  We believe that part of changing the narrative is to resist the tendency that many have to problematize young people and instead to take a solution-focused approach.

At Chrysalis Care, we have spent the last 12 months taking a ‘deep-dive’ study into some of the factors that can help us to work better with young people and not only support our foster carers better but also encourage more people across all London Boroughs and surrounding areas, to come forward to provide the nurture that children still very much need, even when they are teenagers.

In our last blog, we mentioned Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and how they can leave young people feeling that it’s difficult to trust adults, perhaps even finding it difficult to trust themselves! We urged you to consider that even without much adversity in our lives, we may still struggle to form relationships and that perhaps if we can tune into that, we can understand and empathise with a young person who may seem like they are “hard to reach”.

At Chrysalis Care, we do not subscribe to the notion that young people are hard to reach but that the care that we provide needs to be ‘reachable’ and this formed the basis of our exploration into ‘what works’.  Although there are many contributory factors, the absolute resounding ingredient in the required solution is ‘placement stability’.

Now, placement stability is something that Chrysalis Care excels in, with our placement stability figures being double that of the DfE reported National average and Ofsted reporting that, Children and young people experience stable and consistent foster care at this agency. Many have been in placement for over five years and some for over ten years. They have the opportunity to build trusted and secure relationships with their foster carers. This helps build excellent relationships and provides children and young people with stability and consistency of care.”

However, we are not complacent, even after almost 24 years and undoubtedly being fostering pioneers.  Thus, our investigation explored what we need to do to ensure placement stability for young people, so that they can be given every opportunity to experience the benefits of fostering, of feeling accepted, a sense of belonging and the foundation they need to mature into adulthood on the right foot.

Foster carer resilience is a major aspect of placement stability, which is why we focus so much on learning and development, supervision and support.  None of our foster carers are alone in their fostering endeavour and we are always there to support them when needed.  In fact, the founding members set this as a priority in 1997, having experienced 15 years as foster carers themselves – specializing in fostering teenagers – and knowing the impact of not always receiving support from the team.

So, if you are wondering if you have ‘what it takes to foster, consider that fostering with Chrysalis Care is an empowering process, whereby you will be supported to develop the skills to provide the stability and consistency that all children need, no matter their age.  Want to change the narrative of fostering young people? Contact us today..


 

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