I had been a secondary school teacher for about 17 years, and was feeling like it was time for something different. Our family life was shifting around that time, with my youngest starting school, so we decided to lean fully into this season of change and begin the process to become foster carers – something we had thought about and spoken about for a long time.

I knew a few people who were parent and child foster carers, and I really felt that my skills and our family dynamic could potentially offer a young parent the support they needed as they navigated caring for their own little one. I had worked with teenagers and young adults for a long time, but I had also raised my birth children and had found the newborn and baby stage fascinating, in particular learning how to bond with your child and build healthy attachments.

I first mentioned it when we had our first home visit with a social worker. She was a little taken aback. “Are you sure?” I remember her asking me, before quickly calling her manager.

“I’m with someone who is interested in parent and child fostering,” she said. “What do you think?”

“Ask her if she can take two families at a time,” her manager replied, showing just how great the need was for this type of care.

We filled in the forms, undertook the background checks, attended the training. Our social worker met with us most weeks during this time and would ask questions to find out more about us. The questions were deep and personal, but we didn’t mind. In fact, my husband said it felt a bit like therapy!

We were approved at panel, and within a week we had our first placement. It was a dad and his baby. We’ve heard that in most cases, it’s a young mother who comes to live with you, but our first two placements were both young fathers. That was about two and half years ago now, and we’ve had eight sets of parents and children come to stay with us since then.

Each and every time, it’s been a different experience. There have been times wherein the next chapter of baby’s life means moving on to an adoptive family or a special guardian, and experiencing that separation is always incredibly challenging. But we have also had families move home together. To support them in that move and as they set up a new home together is such a special thing.

One of our more recent placements was a mum who was around 30 years old – I think a lot of people (and I’m including myself before we began the process in that!) expect the parents to always be 18 or younger, but that hasn’t been the case for us. She had a little boy, a toddler. It was lots of fun having him in our home, and our birth children adored him.

She shared some thoughts with me that will stick with me forever. “I see now,” she kept telling me. She saw in our family what a healthy relationship between a husband and wife could look like. She saw how we spoke to one another, how we treated one another. We hadn’t been deliberately doing anything special – we had just been living our normal, sometimes chaotic life. And yet she told us, “You’ve made me realise that I’ve settled for the wrong things, and that I’m worth more.”

Parent and child fostering is certainly a unique type of foster care, and the need for carers varies around the country. In some areas, there’s a huge need for more people who can open their home in this way, but in others the need isn’t as big.

But for those whom it’s decided a good option for, it can be totally life-changing. These adults want to do right by their children; they want to stay together, they want to care for them, they want to be that stable, loving caregiver that all babies and children need to thrive. We’ve seen that in the parents who have come to stay in our home. You read their profiles and hear some of their information beforehand, but they’re not the sum of their experiences. They’re people; they’re parents who love their little one. And whatever happens after they move on from our home, as parent and child foster carers, it truly is a privilege to play a part in their story.