Deciding to foster
When we got married, we had already talked about fostering and adoption. It was something we both felt drawn towards, but it always belonged to the category of "one day". At the time, we had two young sons, Samuel, aged six, and Bradley, aged four. We were active members of our church, busy with family life, and assumed fostering was something for the distant future. Then one day I (James) found myself asking a simple question: When is "one day"? We kept saying, "We'll do it in the future," but we had never actually thought about when that future might be. So, out of curiosity more than anything else, I started researching fostering. I wanted to understand what it really involved, beyond my own idealistic assumptions. I looked at different local authorities and fostering providers before booking a place at an information evening with our local council. I also contacted a neighbouring borough—the one where I worked as a teacher and where our church was ...