How do I even start the process of applying to be a foster carer? 🤔

By *Trish, a Tribe-referred foster care applicant, soon-to-be-carer.

I worked in the area of child protection for a long time and in the last few years I’ve wondered about becoming a carer. Study and busy work meant it was easy to leave it in the back of mind – only occasionally popping up. During Covid, I finished my studies, changed jobs and working from home and being flexible with work arrangements seemed to become the norm. I was starting to run out of reasons to not look into fostering more seriously.

I started to randomly look at foster care info on the internet and then of course Facebook noticed what I was doing and suddenly a post from a group called The Tribe Project popped up. Because I’ve worked in the area, I was a bit suspicious because I had never heard of them before and I’m a bit wary of random groups working in this space. Their pictures and graphics looked impressive and pretty professional though, so I was intrigued when I realized it was started in Queensland by an ex-child in care and a child protection social worker, and I wanted to know who they were and where they fitted.

My first impression was that there were a really wide range of different types of people in their ads. So diverse that I did wonder to start with if they were recruiting specifically from the LGBTQI+ community. But no – they were just trying to make sure that their posts were welcoming to all potential carers!

Like most people who are deeply involved in the child protection system, I can pick quickly when the language used or the concepts aren’t quite right and show that an organisation or author doesn’t really understand it. My BS radar is pretty finely tuned. Looking through the Tribe website, I could tell pretty quickly that they understood the system. From what I read, they were providing a realistic and balanced picture of foster care – the hard and tricky stuff as well as a picture of the amazing difference that foster carers can make to the lives of kids in foster care. It’s easy for people to want to ‘rescue’ kids that have been hurt, but I could see that Tribe wanted people to see it’s much more complex than that. I know from my experience that even parents who do harmful things mostly love their kids and their kids mostly love them.

Like most people, I get sucked into a good Facebook quiz so that drew me in – after I decided that they weren’t trying to sell me anything or weren’t trying to get me to join a cult 😊. The quiz was so easy and encouraging and literally took a couple of minutes. The questions weren’t too personal so I felt okay about filling it out. I then received an email pretty quickly confirming that that there was no immediately obvious reason why I couldn’t be a carer.

I was encouraged to complete another more detailed survey which asked more detailed questions. After sending it off and got another email pretty quickly letting me know which fostering agency was in my area and I was best suited to, given what kind of fostering I was looking to do. I thought emergency care and short term care made most sense to me in the beginning.

The communication from The Tribe Project was so reassuring – that even though my application had been passed over to an agency to do the next stages, the Tribe would still be available to me; supporting and tracking my process in case I needed any more info or wasn’t sure about the next step.

I received an email really quickly from the foster and kinship care agency in the next day or so and we set up a time for them to come and visit me at home. Two workers came over late one afternoon so I could do the home visit after work.

From that chat, I made the decision to formally apply to foster and then spent two Saturdays a month later at training, completely the mandatory training required to become a general carer. They were jam-packed days of learning – our brains were full and we were emotionally spent at the end of each day. Although I’ve worked in this area for a long time, I learnt so much about the practicalities of caring for children and young people who have experienced trauma. The trainer was brilliant; they kept us all engaged for the two whole days and gave us lots of practical insights and strategies.

After the training there are some worksheets and reflections to complete. Of course, I procrastinated, had a few IT issues losing my worksheets, but then, I managed to get past that stage and am now awaiting the start of the formal assessment process.

It’s been going for a couple of months since I first completed the quiz with the Tribe. The process and more info at each stage from Tribe through regular emails and updates, has given me time and space to continue to think through what fostering would mean for me and my life. I’m single so am very used to doing things when I want to and what I want to do.

Getting prepared to share my space and my life with little people continues to be something I’m thinking through and planning for, from the logistics – do I have the right quilt covers and sheets and even food? - to the emotional preparation and thinking about what I need to talk to my family and friends about when I become a carer and have a little person join my ‘tribe’.

Each step seemed small and not too overwhelming and allowed me to step back or take a pause if I needed more time to think it through. I’m looking forward now with some trepidation and a little bit of excitement to the next stage of the detailed assessment interviews. And I know Tribe will be there to help give advice and support, every step of the way.

*name changed for confidentiality purposes