Page 44 - SEN106 SEN Magazine May-June 2020

Karina Auer offers a glimpse into the world of parents fostering children with SEN Changing lives one step at a time E very day, over 65,000 children in the UK are living with almost 55,000 foster families and every 20 minutes another child comes into care. In the next 12 months, a further 8,600 foster carers are needed to ensure that every child in foster care can be matched with a family that meets their needs. A wider pool of foster carers is required right across the UK, to guarantee that children can live with a family that do not only have the skills and experience to care for them but are also a good “match”, in terms of their of location, culture, lifestyle, language, and interests. This is something fostering services up and down the country strive towards all year. Currently, there is a specific requirement for foster carers who can look after teenagers and sibling groups, and also a need for more people coming forward to foster children with a disability. Discovering new worlds Stuart Lewis and his wife Lauren are two such carers and have been fostering for almost four years. But when they started out as short break carers, they couldn’t imagine fostering children with additional needs. “We had just never considered it. We naively only thought of wheelchair users, which wouldn’t work in our narrow townhouse”, says Stuart. Back then, he and his wife Lauren looked after children for one or two weekends a It was amazing to see how quickly we all connected with her 44 SEN 106 senmagazine.co.uk Fostering