UASC

When fostering a child who is of a different faith to you, the learning curve is steep and broad. There are all sorts of requirements that will need careful thought and consideration.

The second part of a blog descibing how alien a new foster family in a new country can be and how that feeling can be overcome with love, teamwork and perseverence.

I’ve often thought that, for our foster son, coming to live with us must have been like being plucked from his bed and finding himself firmly ensconced on the moon. This is not because we are particularly strange per se but because of all the foreignness we came wrapped in.

Foster carers inhabit a strange world. It is one where black and white don’t exist in isolation but bleed into one another.

Our regular blogger Lucy Stevens wrote this poem after being inspired by one of her fostering service's foster carers who she says is doing amazing work

The day, when it arrives is cold and wet, unremarkable in many ways for January. But this day is remarkable because it’s the day that’s been looming over us for six months. It’s the day of our foster son’s substantive interview at the Home Office.

I am Yacouba Traore. I am from the Ivory Coast and I have lived in the UK for about six years. I arrived alone in England as a 16-year-old asylum seeker following the murder of my parents who were political activists in my country. I was alone, unable to communicate in English, nowhere to live, no money, no job, no friends, and no family. I was isolated and frightened. My life could not have been more different to the one I had left behind.