She asked about our fostering agency and when I told her that we were called “To the Moon and Back Foster Care” she remarked on how our name said it all, about our focus on why love mattered. 8 years ago when we started, we were already of the opinion that care experienced children, deserved and needed to feel loved, in fact their healing from the neglect and abuse they had experienced depended on it.
The science bit
Stanley 2020 said “by experiencing attuned care, children learn to internalise trust in themselves and in the outer world, they gain a sense of themselves as worthy of love (as loveable) and learn what it is to love”
Care experienced children interviewed as part of the Scottish care review said they valued relationships with people who:
were always there for them;
- loved, accepted and respected them for who they were;
- were ambitious for them and helped them succeed;
- stuck with them through thick and thin;
- were willing to go the extra mile;
- treated them fairly and included them, as part of their family or setting;
- were part of their life, beyond childhood and into adulthood (Care Inquiry, 2013a).
(Young person, Dickson, 2009; Young person, Coram Voice, 2015)
‘It was good to have a hug, and good for them to say, ‘I love you, we’re proud of you’ … It was good to be told that you were loved, cause obviously being in foster care, at times, it’s quite lonely … It was good to feel the love in different ways’
Some young people in this study recorded that they had not always had love and care in their lives. This had inevitably impacted on them. It had affected self-confidence and caused sadness for them. According to (Dickson, 2009) this lack of love and affection had a significant impact on children’s emotional wellbeing, in particular their self-esteem.
It appeared to Dickson “that some carers and workers were more comfortable talking about ‘love’ than others and how they perceived it fitted with their own identity and conception of their role in relation to looked after children”. We find ourselves having discussions with people, looking to foster, about what is “allowed” in fostering. For example, “are we allowed to hug fostered children?” often born out of fear or risk aversion.
Enabling foster carers to understand what is of importance to children and fundamental to the quality of their care experiences and childhood is a huge part of our development and support role. As one young person said ‘It’s a basic human need to feel loved, wanted, accepted, warmth . . . And if those are missing there are going to be problems’ (Young person, Dickson, 2009).
‘I reckon you need love and support, that’d be the main thing, but there’s a million ways that you can show it . . . I think that’s probably about the only thing you actually need. It’s the only thing that a real family can possibly give you’. (Young person, Dickson, 2009)
In addition to what young people tell us about how important love is to them, there is also an ethical professional argument to be made about the relevance of love for relational practice. Leadbeater (2020) presents the most effective solutions for supporting people combine love with power. “It’s not a sentimental kind of love but about being ‘generous and kind; forgiving and understanding. But it is also demanding and ambitious. It does not seek a reward but it does set high expectations”. I think this is very valid in fostering. Love is not just about nurturing, it is a tough love, where we set expectations and challenge a young person to have aspirations for their adult life, enabling young people to take charge of their lives. Love is warm and kind but critical too, encouraging self-discipline and taking responsibility. For us all, at To the Moon and Back Foster Care love is empowering young people to feel worthy of care, trust and belonging.
For success it’s vital we take the time to really get to know someone and build the trusting relationship, so that individuals can feel safe when feeling at their most vulnerable.
Conclusion
One of our foster carers advised someone thinking about fostering, to be ready for feeling a powerful love for the children they will care for. It’s interesting that he chose the term “powerful love” given the references that Leadbetter has made about the combination of power and love to enable a fostered child to succeed. There is definitely love at the centre of any foster carer or member of our social work team who finds themselves advocating for the child in their care.
In discussions with Dr Lisa Cherry for her book “Conversations That Make a Difference for Children and Young People” , she shared with us her experience at The Care Experience Conference in 2019, where all the people who took part had been raised in care and talked about the absence of love in their care experience. From our experience, we agree that many children living in the care system have not felt loved and often feel instead like a commodity passed around from family to family like an unwanted present.
We can see that over the years, that potentially we have, as a profession, become more risk averse and have in some ways disconnected our personal involved selves from our professional self to ensure that we maintain professional boundaries and prioritise safe care, potentially at the risk of children not feeling that they are loved. If we provide nurture, love and support unconditionally, in return we will more likely get something resembling love in return. We were able to share with Dr Cherry, in chapter 4 of her book, our experience of successfully supporting a foster carer to demonstrate her support and love for a young person who experienced night terrors.
Dr Martin Luther King said of his challenges, such work should be long, because it takes time, broad because it reaches out, deep because it is all about what matters in life and tall because it aims for higher goals. I think this is synonymous with what we are trying to achieve for our foster carers and the children we support each day. Its important that foster carers feel safe, cared for and loved by us, so that they can go on to enable the children and young people to feel safe, cared for and loved too.
A relational practice where everyone felt safe and cared for, is something we aspired to create from the very beginning, 8 years ago and why we came to our name. We wanted to demonstrate that we were willing to go to the moon and back because at the centre of our philosophy was the professional love, we felt could make a difference to the children we would care for.
