'I cannot speak highly enough of the amazing young people we've fostered': Q&A with comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean

What made you want to become a foster carer?

My partner and I always envisaged having a family in the future but not a biological one, that just didn't feel like the right vibe for us. We were driving home one day when we heard an advert on the local radio saying that they needed foster carers. We’re lucky to live on a beautiful farm in Wales and it felt very churlish that we weren't sharing it with anyone. Fostering gave us a way to open our home up, and to have young people in our lives as well. 

It also gave us the training and the flexibility to be a better, more committed part of our community in terms of young people. Often people think that if you don't have your own biological children, especially for a woman, that you don't like kids. I absolutely love kids. I really care about kids to the point where I understand that me having them biologically is not the best thing for them. The best thing I can do is support the families in my community to just have better well-being and better security. 

How did you find the assessment and approval process?

We had no expectations, partly because we don't have our own biological children. We had no sort of ideas about how anything should be done, so we were just very blank canvases when we went in. I found it all fascinating; all the training, the Skills to Foster course, even the assessment with the social workers. It makes you really think about your upbringing, your background, and what you're able to bring to the table. I think some people might find that very difficult, but we found it quite nourishing and informative. My partner and I are both very similar in that we want all the information before we go into something and fostering gives you that - it gives you as much information as your brain can hold.  

Did you have any initial assumptions about who could be approved as a foster carer?

I think I assumed that you had to be married, that you had to have had your own biological children, that you had to be older but not too old. In my head there was this perfect image of foster carers who were in their 60s and very experienced and had their own family. I didn't know there were single people doing it, people of all ages, all kind of demographics, all genders, all expressions of everything. And so it was a much broader church, and a much broader church in terms of what you could commit to. My worry had been, “who is going to give me a kid when I'm a busy stand-up comedian” but actually, because we principally do respite care, it works really well around my work.  

How have you found being a respite carer?

I've really started to understand the value more and more of respite, for everybody, in that it can really help protect placements that are successful. Like anything else, if something is put under strain and people aren't given enough time to train or to grow or to have some time off - your job can become something that is no longer tenable. 

I feel like we get an uncharacteristically easy ride of it, especially when I talk to people who have long term placements or even short term, two years or whatever, and I feel we've got the cushiest ride. The longest we’ve had someone stay is two weeks, and people always say that’s the honeymoon period, everyone is on their best behaviour! 

Have you felt any benefits, of being a relatively young foster carer?

You might think that, ‘oh, they're sort of young, they'll be into the same thing’ but I’m 37 now, and when we started doing it, I was 34 - a 34-year-old does not know what a 17-year-old is interested in any more than a person in their 50s! I'm still horrifically outdated and old to them.  

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned on your fostering journey?

I think the most surprising thing is how integral, and how transformational, a brilliant supervising social worker can be. We had a lot of change in the early days, and we rarely saw the same one more than once - and that's also partly due to the fact that our availability is limited – but it just felt like we were often being offered blanket referrals at the same time as everyone else.  

We now have a supervising social worker who is absolutely astounding. When she comes to us, she's already like, ‘I know this is a good fit for you’ and if we say we feel like we need some training in a certain area, she'll just get it done. It now feels much more like we're in a team and that we're supported.  

I'm not under any illusion. We've had a very easy ride. I'm also aware that we've been doing it for only five minutes comparatively. I think in some instances there can be a culture of only talking about the hard bits - and there should be space for that - but also I think that we need to recognise when we're lucky enough to be supported and heard and have a really good team around us, and that is definitely my experience. I feel very lucky with that and I think there's a world in which we wouldn't still be doing it if we hadn't had such a brilliant social worker. 

What’s the best fostering advice you’ve been given?

It was from someone who had adopted their family, and she said one of the beautiful things about adoption is that if you have children biologically, from the moment that child is born people project family traits onto the child, like, ‘he's got his mum's eyes or his granddad's smile.’ And then when they behave in a certain way, they're like ‘Oh, she’s the image of you when she’s angry’ or ‘he’s got a temper like his dad’,and already we're layering on all these expectations and all these problematic behaviours or traumas from the past onto a child - they’re being told ‘that's what you are’ and  ‘that's what you’ll be like’.  

She explained that one of the great things when you see your adopted children is that you don’t have any of those preconceived notions – you’re meeting these children on their own terms as a person and getting to know them as opposed to telling them ‘this is what you are already.’  

That stayed with me and I think that, especially because we have so many different young people coming through our lives, for whom obviously we’ve read the referral to see if we can meet their needs, the thing I’ve remembered is it’s my job to forget as much as I can of that referral, so that you don't see that young person's past in front of them and when they come through that door, you’re meeting them on their terms and accepting where they’re at.   

What would improve outcomes for care experienced children and young people?

If I could wave a magic wand and I was Prime Minister, I’d make sure we invested absolutely loads more money into mental health care. We need to make sure parents, carers and young people get the help they need, when they need it, instead of once they’ve reached breaking point - by which time it's much harder to unpack these problems.  

I’d also love there to be less of a stigma around children and young people with care experience. I think people have an expectation about the kind of young people you might encounter and I think they’re all wrong. As usual with any kind of marginalised group they will take the most extreme examples to make a political point if that means they get to opt out of caring or supporting. 

I just cannot speak highly enough about the amazing young people we have got to share some of our lives with. They are funny and fun and so open, so insightful, so thoughtful. I don’t know if it’s a result of having to talk to lots of social workers, but they often have a greater depth of emotion and understanding of themselves than I would say 99% of the men I’ve dated. 

For dates and tickets for Kiri’s show Peacock, visit kiripritchardmclean.co.uk