Gillian's Story

Gillian has been a foster carer for Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council for 4 years. When considering fostering, Gillian already had 30 years experience of supporting her in-laws who have been fostering for 40 years, so after she was able to take redundancy from her job in the NHS, fostering seemed to be the natural next step for her.

“We had a child who hadn’t been weaned at 18 months and reports said he had never been seen to smile - within a few days with us we were able to take photos of him with a smile on his face, nibbling on bits of toast.”

Gillian chose to foster with Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council as she has an adopted son and so she was already familiar with some of the social workers. When she decided to foster she says the team were “Enthusiastic, supportive and efficient with the time it took to get to panel.”

Gillian and her husband have fostered 11 children and babies in total, initially they fostered two boys. Gillian says “this was hectic to begin with but I used the transferable skills I had learnt in my job and worked with the therapeutic team to ensure the boys settled and began to have lots of fun.” When the first two boys left, Gillian was happy that they were confident, with a great future ahead of them in their new forever home with loving parents, as a solid family unit.

Fostering has proved really rewarding for Gillian, she says that enabling children to reach physical and emotional milestones is a great achievement.

“We had a child who hadn’t been weaned at 18 months and reports said he had never been seen to smile - within a few days with us we were able to take photos of him with a smile on his face, nibbling on bits of toast”

When the children have to move on it is inevitably hard but Gillian says that she enjoys watching the children flourish and watching a new family emerge into a secure and loving unit is one of her favourite parts of fostering, knowing that with your help the children have been helped through a difficult time and are going on to have a positive future. 

Gillian feels that the fostering team at Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council have been really supportive “my worker is effective and has excellent communication skills, we can have frank conversations in a respectful manner and I feel we work well together.”