Respect, and be respected
I have been fostering for around 17 years, along with my wife, Ferzana. In that time we have looked after around 20 children and young people of all ages, from a wide range of backgrounds.
We were motivated to foster after seeing the images of the war in the former Yugoslavia, which left lots of children without parents to look after them. We decided to see what we could do to help children in our local area, so we looked into fostering, and went through the process to become carers.
Being a Muslim is not a barrier to fostering
We had lots of support and encouragement from all our friends and family in the community when we decided to do it. Throughout our careers as carers they have continued to be really positive and supportive. We haven’t found that being Muslim has been a barrier to fostering in any way. We respect all the cultural differences of the children we look after regardless of their background, and in turn we get their respect too.
We have faced all the usual challenges you would expect as carers, the first big one being when trying to work with the birth family of a child we were looking after. At first they were very negative and hostile, but we kept persevering and eventually won them round. We ended up having a really good working relationship with them.
None of us are perfect
What people forget is that none of us are perfect, and that everyone has different circumstances that can affect things like their ability to parent. Through patience and taking the time to understand these circumstances, we can help children to get what they need in order to grow and thrive.
I would thoroughly recommend fostering to anyone, regardless of their faith or anything else which they may think will prevent them from being a good carer. We have found it to be really rewarding, and it is great to see the difference we can make to children and young people who are in need of help.
The Fostering Network brings together everyone who is involved in the lives of fostered children and young people to lead, inspire, motivate and support them to make foster care better. To support our work visit www.fostering.net/donate or to donate £10 text FOST37 £10 to 7007
