Debbie and Gary

“They’ve all got the potential; they just need someone to believe in them and to believe in themselves.” Essex couple, Debbie and Gary, urge residents to become foster carers

Debbie and I have been together for 32 years now and married for 28 years. We made the move to fostering when our youngest daughter was thinking about going away to university as we just weren’t ready to stop being parents.

Debbie’s background was working with early years children, so we initially started caring for children of that age, but we then moved onto supporting teenagers.

We have now been fostering for seven years and have fostered around 30 children in that time providing respite care, a home for children in emergencies and on a short-term and long-term basis

Our social worker told us that all children are on a journey, and you may only be a small part of that, but you can still make a big difference.

James has been with us the longest, he came to us at 12 years old and is now going into his 2^nd year at university studying Finance and Management. We are so proud of him!

It took a lot of work from us, the school and from James himself to get him to where he is today. His school attendance was at 40% when he arrived because he was often asked to stay at home to look after his siblings. His behaviour could be disruptive too. It took a lot of small steps but we supported him to succeed and he passed his GCSEs, then went onto do A-Levels.

We always knew he had it in him. He just needed to believe in himself.

When James came to us there were a lot of barriers we needed to break down. When we took him out for an ice cream as a treat, he had to know exactly why he was getting the ice cream. He didn’t believe it was just because we wanted to treat him as he had never had that before.

We also found that James would closely follow me around and be more receptive to me as a male, but the training helped us to understand this barrier was created due to past relationships. The time and patience Debbie invested in James meant that a solid relationship was soon established with us both.

We had a lot of evenings where we just sat with a hot chocolate and a couple of biscuits; we just listened and talked with him. It may seem small, but a lot of young people that come to us have never had someone listen to them, never had someone pay them attention and care about them, so it means the world to them.

When we had our challenges, our supervising social worker was absolutely brilliant. She gave us the support, guidance, and reassurance that we were doing everything right. We were also able to call on other more experienced foster carers who could listen and give us advice. Both our social worker and the fostering community helped us massively.

Being foster carers does take resilience; you must be prepared to put in the time, be firm when you must, and have an open mind. When a foster child walks into your home, they can often come with a lot of past traumas, you can’t expect to heal them straight away. It takes time to see them develop as a person.

However, watching a young person grow and develop, seeing them progress from how they were the day they came to you, is so rewarding. There can be challenges along the way but seeing those small differences over the years shows you that you are making a difference. You take the good with the bad, like you would with your own children.

We don’t see fostering as a job, but more of a vocation. It’s something we want to do. It changed our lives and the lives of our family for the better.

We genuinely care about our foster children and see them as part of our family. The satisfaction you get seeing your foster children do well makes you so proud. They’ve all got potential; they just need someone to believe in them and they need to believe in themselves.