Brother and sister Olivia and Harry and foster carer Paula's story

Paula: The passion that the children bring, the warmth, the love. There are so many rewarding moments in seeing these children develop and change over time.

Olivia: One large egg, vegetable oil and cold water.

Harry: How much water?

Olivia: 60 millimetres.

Harry: Is that millilitres?

Olivia: Yeah, I think

Olivia: I've lived here six years. I came here with my brother Harry.

Harry: Heat oven to eat.

Olivia: I'm the oldest. I'm probably the best, and Harry is annoying.

Harry: She's sometimes kind.

Interviewer: When she's not being kind, what is she?

Harry: Annoying.

Paula: Over those six years, they have flourished into being fantastic children, whereby they've got so much confidence, they have a voice. But I think for me, it's just giving those children opportunities to be children.

Oliva: Don't get any shell in.

Paula: I started being a foster carer in 2018 myself and my husband, I work in a primary school and helping and supporting vulnerable children, and I think we got together and just thought we could make a difference to some children's lives.

We contacted the local authority, had some meetings, got all of our assessments done and passed all of what we needed to do with regards to being a foster carer, and we've now been a long term foster carers for two children, Olivia and Harry.

Paula: Yeah, so we just fell in love with both of these children, I would hope that both of the children fell in love with us and felt that they really wanted to be part of our family.

Olivia: Paula is nice. Make me feel safe and like, nice, because, like, if she wasn't there, you would feel like, really sad. And now, yeah,

Harry: Paul's Nice. He's like, always funny and stuff.

Olivia: Also, if I have any worries, I can just go and tell them, It's just nice to have, like, a nice, warm house to go to every day.

Paula: I think within the fostering services, I think it's extremely important to keep siblings together. It's not only quite traumatic for children to be taken away from their family home and placed in a stranger's home, which inevitably, that's what we are as foster carers, but to have that sibling with them, to have that shared experience, I think, is extremely important.

And I think also as part of the Mockingbird, we would hope that some of the children, if they were maybe perhaps split from a larger group of their siblings, that they could still have that time together through the Mockingbird programme as well.

Harry: Oh, and this is my younger brother.

Olivia: This is...

Harry: I write to my youngest brothers, because I miss them and stuff, and I just want to see how they're doing and stuff. And this is mom, me, Olivia, and that's us.

Olivia: We see our Mam once a month, Dad six times a year, and then we see your brother and sister with Mam every two months, I think, and then we see them with Dad every two times as well.

Paula: It's very, very important for us within our family unit to be part and parcel of a family with mom and dad as well. We engage really, really well with them. We meet up regularly with them when they're having family time.

Harry: Do you know how we've got a picture of Mam, can we get a picture of Dad for the wall as well?

Paula: Absolutely, what we'll do is next time, when we've got family time, should we just ask whoever it is that supervises? And we'll just get a photograph of Dad with all of you, and then we'll get a picture frame with everyone in it. Yeah, we can absolutely make that happen.

Paula: Yes, and we've always said that Mam and Dad are part of our family very much, that we would think that they were part of their family as well, because it just needs to be extended. They are extremely important in Harry and Olivia's life, which means they're extremely important to mine and Paul's life.

Outside of the Mockingbird programme, there is still lots and lots of support from the local authorities. We have a supervising social worker that we meet up frequently with. It's normally once a month they come out, and they have visits with the children as well. The children have an Independent Reviewing Officer that is a professional social worker.

Inevitably, they're an advocate for the children, so they'll make sure that we're doing what we should be doing. They'll make sure the Social Worker is doing what they should be doing, and everybody is just working together for the children.

The fostering community is really, really good in South Tyneside, whereby they're putting lots of events on on an evening or on a weekend, because sometimes it's only on through the day which we would find it difficult to attend. We have lots of events throughout the summer period. So we might do sports days, teddy bear's picnics and the majority of times, these are in the holidays, so we do attend with the children.

Paula: Within our fostering journey, there's been lots and lots of standout moments, from the moment they wake up, they come down the stairs for hugs, the kisses that they give us. And I think for us, we know that actually that emotional warmth that we are showing the children and that they are showing us makes it that we've made the right decision for these children. The experiences that we are offering them day to day is absolutely life changing for both them, but also for me and my husband, Paul.

Olivia: We can cut into several pieces, 1,2,3, yeah, and there's two little extra pieces for me, and Harry and then we can cut you one.

Paula: If you're thinking about fostering then please do it, because every day is different.

Harry: You can change somebody's life.

Olivia: It's an amazing experience.