Fostering is not an activity for the faint of heart. If you are fostering, you are someone who cares very much about children and about making their lives better. But that same passion that drives you to be an exceptional support carer is the thing that will slowly, almost imperceptibly, drain you. This is not because you don’t love fostering. It is because no matter how much love you have to give, it is a small price to pay for the extent to which fostering can ask you to give.
Burnout is the gradual exhaustion of our emotional resources. It is a perfectly normal response to an extraordinary situation, and it is not necessarily a sign that you are a bad support carer or that you are not coping. Burnout is a sign that the system is failing to provide what it should. The agencies that offer a safeguard against burnout do not have to be perfect, but they do have to be good, and they do have to be good in the places where it really counts. For Foster Care Cardiff, contact https://saferfostering.org.uk/foster-care-wales/cardiff/
What does it mean to be good in the places where it really counts? It means the following: Having a supervising social worker who knows you by name and picks up the phone when you ring. It means having out-of-hours support that works when you need it. It means training that evolves as you become more experienced. It means being able to talk about what is really going on in your home and to make real changes. But most of all, it means that your agency treats you with the same respect that you offer the children in your care.
