Francie's story - caring for teens and UASC fostering

Read Francie's video transcript

Francie: And I thought what have I got to offer to these teenagers? And I thought, stability, you're helping them see the world in a different way. 

Fostered young person: Is hard to understand because, you know, it's taken me hours.

Francie: Yes, yeah, it does, yeah. It's quite complicated. 

Fostered young person: It's different. Your your food is a minute.

Francie: Yeah, it's quick, yeah, just a minute. 

Fostered young person: Yeah, quick, very quick.

Francie: It's been completely different because she came from a different, completely different environment, and she couldn't speak any English, and every so often she would get me to get Google Translate, and would have a laugh. 

As a foster carer, you've got to be adaptable, because you're working with the child who maybe has things going on. Things that they react to and they are frightened of, and they've got to help identify, help them to identify it, and go from there. So you're always learning, always learning.

Francie: Do you think us buying the rice cooker was good? 

Fostered young person: Yeah, yeah.

Francie: I thought it was great. 

Fostered young person: And it's quick, yeah.

Francie: It was just fun. It was really fun, slightly frustrating in that I couldn't work out the food she liked. That was, that was a problem. 

Fostered young person: Do you know the cake you will you cook me the other day? This one is it lemon?

Francie: Yeah.

Fostered young person: I like this one. 

Francie: But eventually we worked out that she wanted to make her own food. We worked it out by trial and error, as you do, it's good fun.
We managed to make contact with a family that speaks her native language, and that took the pressure off her a little bit. She was able to visit them, and would see them at the mosque and stuff like that. So that helped gain her confidence. 

And I took her to Tesco and she was blown away by all the clothes. Just walked around. She was stunned. I took her to Flamingo Land. Oh, she loved it. And we went to Flamingo Land again in the summer with the mosque, because she's Muslim, and she saw a performing sea lion, and she was blown away by it. She got Google Translate out, 'this is amazing'. You know, such good fun. 

There's a lot of single people do fostering. Lots of them. You can do it. You know, don't think just because you're single, you can't, you really can. 

What they do is, when you first apply, you have to fill a great big form out, and it's talking about your past, your childhood, your experiences as a child. They ask you very personal questions, and you have to really look at your life. So you tell them the story of your life, basically, and then they go through it and try and identify things that may cause issues. If you're happy to bare your soul a little bit, it gives you a great insight into yourself. You've got to know yourself before you can pass stuff on. 

We have a social worker for the child, and then there's one for yourself, and they're just amazing. They're really helpful and kind and interested. And the way the fostering service runs, you learn to ask for help. They make sure you have a good support network. And that's great. That's really good, because you like fixing in your mind, what would you do if so and so happened, you know. 

I think it's very important that people see that it's not terrifying. It's scary, but it's not terrifying. That's the main thing. It's doable, and don't be put off by thinking they're after aparticular sort of person to do it. We're all different, and the children we look after are all different. So your past experiences are going to be valuable. Whatever you've done in the past, whatever you think it's all useful, so go for it.