A Big Heart And Spare Room Is Not A Care Plan, with Gareth K Thomas

Foster care is often sold with comforting slogans, but trauma-informed care demands something far more honest. Gareth K. Thomas, a former foster parent turned foster care consultant, argues that recruitment messaging like “a big heart and a spare room” actively harms placement stability because it attracts good people who are unprepared for developmental trauma, neglect, and complex behaviour. Therapeutic parenting is not a vibe or a soft option; it is skilled, relational work that needs training, reflective space, and a strong professional and personal support network. When systems frame struggling foster parents as the problem, they create blame, shame, and early exits, worsening the real crisis: retention.

A central takeaway is that healing is relational. Trauma is often formed in relationship, so recovery is also built through relationship, at home, in everyday life. Gareth describes the power of integrating carers into a child’s therapeutic journey rather than treating therapy as something “done to” a child in a clinic. The idea maps to co-regulation: when an adult’s nervous system is supported and steady, the child borrows that calm and begins to feel safe. This shifts practice from compliance and consequences to curiosity, predictability, and repair. It also reframes “support” as an essential intervention, not a reward for coping.

The conversation also challenges simplistic ideas about the child’s voice. Tick-a-box questions can produce neat quotes that miss what traumatised children cannot safely say. Children may shut down, people-please, or answer in ways that end uncomfortable conversations. A trauma-informed approach listens for the meaning beneath the words, holds multiple feelings at once, and stays curious, especially around high-impact triggers like sudden changes to family contact. When professionals share a genuine understanding of trauma, meetings become less adversarial and more aligned around the child’s lived experience, reducing misinterpretation of foster parents’ advocacy as resistance.

Finally, the practical picture of “what good looks like” is specific and operational: trained child support workers who provide consistent short breaks, empathic listeners who offer scheduled phone support, supervising social workers who honour time and relationship, and therapeutic teams who keep everyone focused on children. This is how fostering becomes sustainable, how compassion fatigue is managed, and how carers keep enough bandwidth to notice the “magic micro moments” that signal what a child is really communicating. If we want better outcomes in out-of-home care, we stop selling fostering as easy, start building scaffolding around carers, and treat relationship as the primary pathway to safety and change.

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https://www.buzzsprout.com/2459807/episodes/19483460

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Transcript:

Welcome to the Secure Start podcast brought to you by the Secure Start Aura apps supporting trauma-informed care and practice at home and in school. There quite often seems to be this idea that if a foster parent raises their hand and says I’m struggling that they are sort of sent on training but sent on training that almost views them as the problem that it’s like you’re not doing your job well enough, you’re struggling, you can’t cope and that’s the you know if you’re going on training and it sees you as the problem then it’s never really going to work whereas what I would say about the approach certainly that I have with the training that I deliver certainly on lots of the fantastic training that I’ve had access to is that the parent is seen as the solution not the problem. We have a major issue around how we recruit foster parents I believe.

There is still you know a hint of kind of I mean sometimes I literally see adverts that say this but sometimes it’s a bit more subtle this idea that all you need is a big heart and a spare room and that equips you to be a foster parent and it’s everything that you’ll need and you know of course what you hope there is that you recruit people who are really nice for all the right reasons and that also they have the space for the for the childhood to live so you know I know it comes from a good place but it’s really misguided because that is not enough. You need a great professional network of you know people around you, you need a you know an emotional support network of friends and family or a mix of one or the other or you know whatever it is, you need a huge amount of knowledge, you need ways to take care of yourself because this you know beyond standard parenting and so what we’re doing by saying you know spare room big heart is we are recruiting people who are totally unprepared. They’ve been lied to I mean I really kind of want to make that very clear and that’s not how that’s not how we achieve success you know I mean if I apply for a job and they say great news you don’t need any qualifications and I turn up on day one and I’m you know carrying out surgery then it’s probably not going to go very well you know I’ve been set up to fail this has by far been the hardest thing I’ve ever done if I got asked a hundred times if I wanted to do it again I would say yes every single time that’s the way that we recruit the right people because we want people who are up for a challenge we want people that have that tenacity that don’t really give up that will advocate for their kids that will fight tooth and nail for them those are the people we want and if you kind of if you want a an easy ride then fostering isn’t for you we can’t have kids going to newly approved foster parents day after day week after week with no chance of staying there long term because it was never going to work in with the best will in the world quite often what we see from the the rhetoric is that there is a recruitment crisis in fostering I always make the point that there is a retention crisis.

Welcome to the Secure Start podcast I’m Colby Pearce and joining me for this episode is an inspirational former foster parent and foster care consultant. Before I begin this episode I’d just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands I come to you from the Kaurna people of the Adelaide plains and acknowledge the continuing connection the living Kaurna people feel to land, waters, culture and community. I’d also like to pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

My guest this episode is Gareth K Thomas. Gareth is a former foster parent and child trauma specialist. He’s a trainer, speaker and soon to be published author.

He works as a trauma-informed consultant through his organisation Clarified and is in the process of launching Trauma Space which will be a course collection and community for those parenting and working with children who’ve experienced trauma. I do hope you enjoy our conversation. Well Gareth, welcome to the Secure Start podcast.

Thank you for having me Colby, thank you. And I can’t help but notice that you’re wearing light clothing and yeah it’s more like we should be you should be in Australia and I should be in the UK where you are I guess. Yeah we’ve switched I think.

Yeah yeah you’ve got it’s it’s really quite chilly for us as a you know it’s 10 degrees it’s yeah yeah no quite the opposite here we’re we’re sort of 30 and upwards at the moment this week. Yeah yeah and it’s a look I feel for you because I’m notwithstanding that I come from a very hot climate here in Australia in fact where I am where it’s the hot it’s not the hottest place but it’s definitely the driest place in Australia the driest part of Australia and and it does get very hot it gets up into the mid to high 40s but I would I would prefer that heat that dry really hot heat a bit like going into a sauna without people chucking the water on the on the stones I would prefer that to the yeah the stuffiness of the heat that you get there in the UK. Yeah yeah I think it’s just as well how unprepared we are for it it’s you know a lot of our schools aren’t air-conditioned you drive to the supermarket there’s no you know undercover parking or anything like that so yeah it’s just yeah we don’t cope well with the extremes in weather which you know we we get every so often and obviously it seems to be coming more the case now.

Yeah yeah so look I became aware of you I just let people know that through your activity on LinkedIn where you’re quite active in terms of talking about the experience of being a foster carer and and the experience of children in out-of-home care and I was delighted that you said yes you’re quite a veteran of a podcast but I was delighted that you said yes and agreed to come on to this podcast. Yeah no absolutely yeah it’s a pleasure I mean yeah I you know the reason I write on LinkedIn the reason I go on podcast is that I feel like I was given this knowledge to be able to raise my three children and it’s my duty to to share that with other people so you know any any way that I can achieve that you know I’ve been that person that’s driving in the car thinking I don’t know what to do I’m all out of ideas I’m really alone and listening to a podcast and have someone think wow they’re you know they understand they they know what it’s like you know yes yes people often think oh you have to talk about the good stuff you have to you know really drum up the positives but and you do but but you first have to acknowledge that you know some of the dark stuff some of the really hard stuff I think yeah absolutely I agree yeah and I think that’s that’s tricky because um yeah it does seem to be a little bit either or sometimes I think you know I mean social media is great at amplifying that uh sort of divide but yeah you either seem to be in the camp where everything with fostering is fine and you know we just need to recruit more people and then all of our problems will be resolved and then you also have a camp where it’s like it’s totally broken everything’s falling apart nobody should enter the foster care system because it’s a total disaster and as with most you know situations that there is a a mix to be had and a balance to be had between the two yeah yeah so how did you get involved in fostering and and yeah tell us a little bit about what you’ve been doing uh more latterly as well yeah yeah so I um feel like I’ve lived two very different lives I uh before fostering I was a co-founder of a travel tech company um and I ran that business for 10 years loved it um but kind of got to the point where I was only working on the business and not doing anything else so um heard a story about volunteering thought yeah I can do that started volunteering with children from the very first session loved it and in particular I noticed that I was drawn to children that found you know things a bit more tricky and the adults found it tricky to respond to them and I I found it quite easy I thought no actually they just need someone to talk to them to listen to them to build a bit of a you know rapport with them um and yeah so I kind of realized there’s something in this I actually then um several years down the line applied for adoption and was approved as a an adopter um was about to be matched with two children or in the process of matching and it all fell through something changed for the kids and uh you know it was kind of uh yeah very difficult uh time so it took a few months away have a rethink and at that point I understood the the care system better and thought actually you know I I probably more suited to fostering and that seems to suit my my skill set a bit better and what what I was hoping to offer um so yeah became an approved foster carer um with the work that I do we we call ourselves foster parents um sort of a slight uh difference um and then yeah so with that um three children arrived and so overnight I became you know went from being a single parent to a parent to to three children and really I think the the kind of the bit that links to to the work that I’m doing now is that you know I I loved those kids as soon as they arrived as soon as they walked in through the door I felt that kind of you know need to to to care for them and and it only grew stronger with with every day that passed and now here we are just over nine years later um but within a few months I I you know really began to realize that I didn’t know what I was doing you know I was parenting in the way that I was parented which worked very well for me um and I could see that it worked well for other families with lots of love lots of nurture um and sometimes it really felt like I was getting it wrong and I didn’t know why so I went out on this mission to find out what what’s going on here how does trauma affect a child how does neglect um affect children in their in their early life and and how do we respond to that later down the line in a way that really helps them to you know start on that journey of recovery from from that early life trauma um and I just yeah absorbed everything went read every book went to every conference I could find did every online event and you know anything and everything um and really kind of gathered it all together um and yeah sort of really feel like now at this point in time I’m holding all of that knowledge my children are growing up they’re a bit older now um we still you know I still parent therapeutically um you know it’s because it works it’s not something that I’m just gonna ditch or you know we never reach the point where we’re done but I really want to share that with other people I know that there are other people out there that are in that same situation I was nearly a decade ago um and it’s them that I speak to yeah yeah it really comes through I have to say the care that you have and towards your children and the care that you have in the work that you the that you do in terms of advocating around the needs of children so um yeah that that to me that really comes through in how you communicate on LinkedIn which is where I have the have had that that exposure to you I’m just wondering yeah you you said that you you um you kind of threw yourself into the literature and the conferences and and so on I wonder what what did you find to be was there anything that particularly stood out that you found was of most benefit to you in your um your growth as a as a foster parent yeah so I would say that um one of the most beneficial things and it’s a you know a bit of a postcode lottery we’re really lucky where we are that there is um access to a developmental trauma service and specifically for children that are in the care system and their families and they use a lot of DDP um you know sort of approaches um and yeah just absolutely utterly brilliant and I I really you know it’s um it’s based in Cardiff where we are called Enfys which is Welsh for uh rainbow um run by a clinical psychologist called Dr Libby Aaron um you know people if you’re working at a governmental level um to get that to get her on yeah yeah definitely oh yeah absolutely have Libby on yeah just a real font of knowledge but also you know I think there’s quite often a sense that um you know children come into care you know there’s an acceptance that they have this early life trauma and that and that therapy clinical therapeutic intervention is something that we do to children and it’s like well actually there there is a very different approach if we accept that trauma is relational and that now this child is in a secure relationship that is building and lots of rupture and lots of repair and all of those things that we know about why don’t we involve that that adult in the child’s therapeutic journey and make that you know integrated and so my journey with with Enfys was that I went there for a consultation was offered some training kind of did a block of training went home and changed the way that I was parenting saw that that worked then kind of went back again back and forth um as and when needed as you know if life got busy then could put it on hold and then we could go back and then when it was suitable for each of my three children they could go for some sort of therapeutic intervention that was themed entirely around them now that I think to a lot of people if you aren’t familiar with how these systems work that kind of perhaps seems a little bit obvious or you know of course it would work that way but that’s really unusual that it works so well um and it really it saved us. I think the thing that stands out is that you is that the accessibility issue was kind of was good for you a lot of a lot of people who care for children in this space their experiences it’s quite there are barriers to accessing what I’m imagining was the kind of trauma-informed service that you that you had access to so I mean I mean it’s awesome that you had that.

Yeah I mean I think as well that a big issue there is that there quite often seems to be this idea that if a foster parent raises their hand and says I’m struggling that they are sort of sent on training but sent on training that almost views them as the problem that it’s like you’re not doing your job well enough you’re struggling you can’t cope and and that’s the you know if you’re going on training and it sees you as the problem then it’s never really going to work whereas what I would say about the approach certainly that I have with with the training that I deliver certainly on on lots of the fantastic training that I’ve had access to is that the parent is seen as the solution not the problem and actually if we provide that scaffold in that support so that the parent can do what only the parent can do you know then then we stand a chance of success then. What does that look like that difference between the parent is part of the problem perhaps versus the parent is the the solution is the intervention as such? Yeah yeah well it’s it’s on my mind at the moment because tonight I’m delivering some training on compassion fatigue which is something that we’ve we’ve worked quite a lot on and yeah I think there’s there’s really this sort of sense that you know if we want to help children we need to help the adults you know if we think about I mentioned before that someone that I know Johnny Miller who runs Nervous System Mastery fantastic course not nothing to do with necessarily childhood trauma or developmental trauma but but you know working with adults to understand their nervous systems really lovely guy British guy lives in in America and I can remember being on on a course with him before and he offered lots of really fantastic different ways to you know help calm and regulate your nervous system and he went through all these different options some of them I’d not heard of before some of them have still stuck with me and I thought yeah that’s really you know it’s really interesting want to know more lots linked to kind of polyvagal theory and emerging concepts as well and then someone asked a question and they said what’s the one thing you know what’s the thing that stands out and very very quickly Johnny answered and said co-regulation you know that that’s it it’s co-regulation you know if you only had to pick one like co-regulation will do 98 percent of the work that you’re looking for so in my mind if we have that focus that if that adult that parent is okay and I’m talking about you know kind of having you know widen in their window to use some of Deb Dana’s you know sort of terminology that they are feeling supported not just being supported but they feel supported as well they feel that they’ve got people in their corner people that trust them that believe in them that have faith in them that can recognize when they’re not doing okay and they just need a little bit of extra help as we would for a friend or a colleague then we can achieve really good things for for foster parents and of course the children that are in their care far too often the approach is very shaming very blaming and so a foster parent as I say raises their hand and says I’m struggling and instead of being met with that kindness empathy curiosity all those things that we advocate for with children they are met with blame and shame and it can be wrapped up in a very nice way it can be a polite email it can be a conversation from a professional that is actually a little bit condescending that that kind of makes that foster parent feel yeah you know I thought I was on my own and I’m clearly right so that that you know that is a shift I don’t think I don’t think there’s one thing that would sort of illustrate that but it’s every single conversation every single email every interaction the way that you you know come around and you know build relationships if you’re a supervising social worker the way that you honor a foster parent’s time I mean you know far too often I’m not sure about for for you guys over there but far too often we we kind of have this situation where I’ve heard of stories where foster parents are told that meetings are being held at their house and they aren’t invited it’s a professional’s meeting but there’s no venues available so the meeting is going to be held in their in their home I mean you know that’s an extreme example but it gives a sense of how disrespectful that is and it’s not relational no very early in my career and I’ve had a long career one of the things in in this space one of the things that really bothered me was the treatment of foster carers or foster parents and I likened it in my mind I thought of it as the like and like them being treated as the as the hired help yeah the children are the focus the foster carers are the hired help to provide an accommodation service look after them but major decisions that affect the children are made within by the statutory agency or the statutory authorities and and it I think it was incredibly disrespectful the way in the the way in which the system kind of interacted with and saw the place of foster carers in the in the work in the hearing you say I think is that the difference that you’re advocating and and that you found most helpful was is one where foster carers are seen as the primary treatment agent in a sense you know you like the healing happens in the relationship between foster carer foster parent sorry I’m a bit of a dinosaur I try but yeah but the healing happens in the home and rather than perhaps the the the the professional view that the healing happens in the therapy session you know that that one hour a week or a fortnight between the trained therapist and and the child or children and that and the foster carer is there to be or to be instructed in in a way yeah yeah absolutely I mean I think the the phrase that or the quote that comes to mind for me quite often from Bruce Perry is about something along the lines of you know a thousand tiny doses of therapeutic intervention every day provide a therapeutic bath that one hour a week of therapy cannot now I think what’s really important to say is that one of the sort of frameworks that I work from is that having sat in on a lot of meetings not just for my children but for other children and families that I support as well I have been you know not as often as I would like but I have been in meetings where if we imagine that I’m sat at the table the foster parent is sat at the table as well maybe the child is in the room and you have education you have you know social work supervising social worker child social worker maybe a clinical psychologist or a therapist lots of people we’ve got lots of people in the room if we can get most of those people or at least as many as possible to understand trauma then actually there are very you know there are much fewer arguments there are much fewer kind of difference of opinions there’s less um bussing around and doing things that don’t quite make sense because everyone’s kind of aligned there might be a disagreement about how we do something or how often we do it or you know the the semantics of it that’s fine that’s actually that’s kind of that’s collaborative work and you know that that works quite well what doesn’t work is that you only have a foster parent in the room and they are the only person that understands trauma and they have may have learned that from their child they may not know about it from official training or you know you know reading up on it or whatever they they’ve learned it through their child and to give kind of like a real life example that comes up quite often is that a foster parent might hear that contact arrangements for a child are suddenly being changed and that parent knowing that child really well living with them day in day out will know that this isn’t going to work that it isn’t going to work for family it’s not going to work for the child it’s going to undo all of the hard work that’s been done in education over the six months or however long and you know it’s just going to set everyone back further and cause you know utter chaos in the process and it doesn’t need to be done that way the problem is is that what is sometimes heard from that foster parent then is i don’t want to do this this is going to make my life difficult and so i’m you know i’m going to kick up a fuss and i’m going to say no you know if we understand the child if we understand trauma and how that presents and how it’s affected by things like sudden change in particular around contact with birth family and other people from their earlier life you know we we stand a better chance of of responding in a way that’s that’s appropriate and understanding each other i think that that’s a real core core element unfortunately you know in the last decade when i started out nobody including myself seemed to know very much about trauma i’m sure there were clinical psychologists then there were you know people writing about this stuff but in a quite an academic way um you know you wouldn’t find books on trauma on on bookshop you know on the shelves in bookshops um as best sellers or you know new releases or anything today when i walk into the bookshop i see about six or seven books that i’ve never heard of before that are you know really good and really interesting and my bookshelves are overflowing now today so we all know about trauma but there still aren’t many people that understand what it actually is um and i think in some ways that’s more dangerous because plenty of people are happy to put a sign above their door saying we’re trauma informed uh plenty of people if you go to a meeting you know you kind of sat there thinking oh they’ve got the right words they they’re saying the right things but it’s harder than to unpick do they really understand the meaning beneath that i think you you raise a really important point around the importance of alignment or congruence is another guest um jim anglin he talks a lot about his work is very much focused on congruence but alignment other people talk about primary task or which is your purpose you know what is the purpose what what is our collective purpose here in this meeting what what is our our focus and um i often think that i have a bit of a saying that that my observation would be that too many times when you get a group of adults in the room for for a meeting such as you describe the first perspective that is lost is the child’s as or because this is hard work and and people um often in in circumstances where it’s hard work they bring their own needs to the table um and the child’s needs can be lost in that um the child’s needs the child’s voice the child’s experience so i wonder you you talk about it in terms of having an understanding of trauma but what i’m hearing you say is it is that understanding of trauma enriches one’s understanding of the children so the children where there exists the children’s needs become perhaps clearer more front and center in the conversation yeah and and they’re not they’re not obvious this is the problem so child’s voice is kind of um you know i i do a lot of work around um you know ensuring that a child that child’s voice is heard for individual families but also you know systemic change um working with the health board at the moment here in wales um and of course we want that child’s voice but too often it’s put down as a um check box exercise uh where you know someone goes out to speak to a child might be in school it might be you know in the home um and there’s a space at the bottom to say you know what what’s the child’s voice what what are they saying um you know are they happy where they live uh do they want anything to change these kinds of things um and what the child says you know the words that they say are written down and put on a piece of paper um that is not trauma informed we know for certain that children with trauma will quite often look to shut down conversations that they find very uncomfortable so if i’m if i’m being asked questions that make me feel really you know beyond uncomfortable make me feel unsafe a really good strategy is to say um okay let me think about what i think you want me to say um if i say that then the conversation’s over and you can you can go and i’ll be all right um so i think that’s a major factor as well but also um you know this idea that that you know many of our children are holding multiple feelings at the same time so again going back to the contact arrangements example um you know it may be very true that a child wants to see their parent what might be missing from that is that they want them to be the parent that they never were they want them to be reliable they want them to be trustworthy or maybe they want to see them to know that they’re safe and that they’re well and that they’re still alive and you know these other things and that that requires relationships that requires a little bit of digging and it requires a curiosity of going beyond the words that are said absolutely i i think what if i put together the the bits that that you’re talking about it requires more than just a simple um response to the words that the children used and and beyond that it actually requires a deep and sophisticated understanding of childhood trauma and the impact that it has on children and also on us as the people who who kind of are part of endeavors i think to look after them but particularly what i’m hearing you say is that if we all committed to having a a better understanding of the experience of children who who have had developmental or relational trauma then there would be less misunderstanding there would be less misalignment we would all be able to sing from the same hymn sheet so to speak we would we would we would know what what is the direction um and i think probably part of that to bring the other thing in it is that we would be and this is something that i’ve been quite interested in of late that that this um when i say of late i’ve been writing about it a bit of like i’ve you know the interest and understanding goes back further but that it’s those moment by moment incremental experiences um that that are probably most significant in terms of of achieving um recovery and a bit and better outcomes for our children in need of of healing from from relational and developmental trauma yeah i i call them magic micro moments so they’re they’re kind of things that if someone was was sat in the room um even you know some skill they they may not observe that and i’m saying may because i’ve worked with enough brilliant therapists and clinical psychologists to know there are some who are absolutely brilliant at seeing the the things that are almost unseeable and i’m thinking here as well about you know maybe sometimes when therapy sessions are recorded and then like slow down afterwards and identified you know bits that were missed and all of those subtle changes i actually think that that kind of um that ability to slow down and tune in to body language subtle movements is a real skill it’s it’s easier to do it takes huge skill but it’s easier to do in a clinical setting it’s almost impossible to do when you’re also cooking tea and you’re also doing the laundry and everything else but i think there’s there’s an element of that where we we kind of i’ll speak you know as myself as a foster parent former foster parent um because my children are with me on special guardianship orders now but um i kind of in order to keep going every day i have to protect myself somewhat if i if i let it all flood in all of my kids history everything that they’re showing to me every day even now at this stage then it will overwhelm me and no one’s having their tea cooked and no one’s getting any clean laundry or any of those other things but actually to to kind of open yourself to that to have that again curiosity is there is the word that always comes to mind for me it’s kind of like what what am i seeing here and i i i often talk about the the um sort of moment of you know um i mean it used to be when all of my kids had gone to bed and the house was a little bit quiet and i was you know winding down before i went to sleep now my boys are old enough that they go to bed after me but but in in that in that moment where i’m kind of you know just thinking about the day i’m almost like replaying a few bits not to beat myself up not to um think here’s everything that you got wrong today but just to use that curiosity and think yeah do you know what actually they they mentioned that twice now this week i’m wondering i’m wondering if there’s something in that are they are they kind of like trying to you know wave a little flag for me and say you know something you need to know about i want you to ask me about this um and i think yeah that that approach harder to do day to day but really really important i want to bring together a couple of things that you’ve said there um well what you’ve just said now and something that you were saying a little bit earlier but uh firstly i think what you’re describing is um having the opportunity to to actually reflect to stop and think about what you’re doing what you know what what the children are trying perhaps to communicate with you and that’s hard it’s it’s a hard thing to do and it’s not just foster parents who find that hard it is people who statutory workers people who work in this space find it really hard and have a lack of opportunities to just stop and play it back slowly perhaps but reflect um on what what’s really going on here um what’s going on for you what’s happening for me what’s the the interaction of those things and that’s really very and that’s why there’s a lot of attention to reflective supervision and reflective spaces at the moment um because those those are those opportunities to think about what we’re doing are really really important otherwise we just kind of keep barreling through almost on autopilot um and perhaps perhaps not not um achieving to the the level that we would like to achieve in terms of our endeavors in this space um but what connected with that is you said something a little bit earlier about your children and and and in part in you just now and i wondered i wondered because i i learned a lot about being a clinical psychologist working with parents by parenting my own children um sometimes it’s a little bit controversial you don’t have to have been a parent to know about it but gee it helps it really helps and i i wonder what you learned from your children yeah definitely yeah i mean i agree with that point because i see that made sometimes almost sort of the subtle suggestion that you you need to be a parent um and also i think um sometimes i see we’re very lucky the the two i work across two agencies one that covers england and one that’s in wales um a lot of our staff team are you know former foster parents um some are adoptive parents that you know there’s that real um that we’ve got you know a head of um of therapeutic services is a former looked after um child themselves um and yeah i think sometimes there can be this sense that if you’ve not been there you don’t know what feels like one of the um sort of conversations that sticks in my mind is just sat around with a with a group a mix of foster parents i think kinship carers uh maybe adopters as well and and social work staff and a social worker sat there i think they’ve been you know in the job for 10 20 years and said i don’t know what it feels like to be a foster parent and every you can feel the energy like settle in the room where they’re like okay great once once that’s understood then we can move forward but if i think back over the many social workers that we’ve had over the years far too many um you know there’s there’s no there’s no correlation between you know this person had kids and therefore they were great some of the ones who had kids were great some weren’t so great and equally some you know yeah there’s no there’s no correlation for that for that for me um but in terms of learning yeah i mean i had no interest in in developmental trauma i’d never heard of it before my kids arrived which is shocking when you think you know i was a pre-approved adopter and an approved foster parent um but i really yeah i i kind of i i’d always been interested in behavior my my sort of role with the travel company was a lot around marketing which is basically you know human psychology human behavior um and i’ve always been interested in things like behavior design and it’s only really to be honest several years after the kids arrived that i started to realize that there’s a bit of a link there the psychological links but um yeah you know the whole reason why i’ve done any of this was for my kids you know i as i said at the start you know i i loved them when they arrived i’ve only you know loved them more with every day that’s passed um and i wanted to meet their needs i made a promise to them that i would i would be there for them and i would do what was right and you know um that required me up in my knowledge you know up in my game i i had to do that so everything i’ve done every course i’ve been on every training i deliver um you know every book i’ve read it’s all been for them yeah yeah lovely um i want to just kind of switch tack a little bit and and talk about fostering i guess a bit more generally because um i understand you have you work as a consultant these days um yeah yeah i i do i do far too many jobs um i so one of the main things that i do day to day is that i work across those two fostering agencies uh that i mentioned so i’m part of the therapeutic team there um so i’m not i’m not a qualified social worker i’m not a qualified therapist or psychologist or any of those things i am in the process of finishing a psychology degree but that that’s kind of um you know sort of uh by you know an aside at the moment um so i do a lot of work there with uh families and and staff you know just really trying to share that understanding um to to build that knowledge delivering training you know running support groups all of that kind of stuff um i also do some consultancy work across things like health boards um and i’ve done a little bit of work with welsh government as well um so yeah kind of at that higher sort of systemic level um which is uh fun i don’t think i could do it full time because it kind of takes you away from the work on the ground which is you know um it gives you that sense of purpose i think you’re you’re quite far removed at the at the systemic level um and yeah then i do a few other bits and pieces as well but but all all around that same theme yeah and you mentioned the social before who the uh who said look i’m i’m not a foster parent i don’t i want i wonder what you say to say to someone whether they acknowledge that lack of direct experience or not what do you say to them about fostering what what what is involved what it entails how do you how do you educate them about the experience well i mean i think as well just just um before i go on to that point that there’s because there’s an element there about empathy isn’t that there’s kind of i think sometimes people confuse empathy with i know what you’re feeling well that’s not really empathy because the idea that two people could feel exactly the same thing so instead really what i always say is that i can see that you’re feeling something you know really overwhelming and i’m trying my best to feel it with you i’m i’m kind of you know drawing on my own life and and kind of what i know about you and just trying to put myself in in you know maybe 10 percent of what you’re yeah exactly and i think again that’s that’s the thing if if i was going to be allocated a new social worker today for my children i would want them to be filled with empathy i i don’t really care what their early life experience is that much because you know it can be whatever and if they’ve got that empathy they can they can try to feel what we feel and where we are um so then yeah going back to your your original point sorry remind me that the point was around kind of how we what would you yeah what would you say when if someone said well i don’t i’ve not been a i’m a social worker or i’m a professional or i’m even considering fostering you know i’m considering becoming what what do you say to them that you think what do you think needs to be said to them about um the role of being a foster parent yeah so we we have um we have a major issue around how we recruit foster parents i i believe um there is still you know a hint of kind of i mean sometimes i’d literally see adverts that that say this but um sometimes it’s it’s a bit more subtle this idea that all you need is a big heart and a spare room um and that that equips you to be a foster parent and it’s everything that you’ll need um and you know of course what you hope there is that you um recruit people who are really nice and in it for all the right reasons and also they have the space for the for the child to live um so you know i know it comes from a good place but it’s really misguided because that is not enough i mean that is the you know it’s not even the bare minimum really um you you need a great professional network of you know people around you you need a you know an emotional support network of friends and family um or a mix of one or the other or you know whatever it is um you need a huge amount of knowledge you need um ways to take care of yourself because this is you know beyond standard parenting um you know of course all parents need a break of course all parents need their you know their own interests or you know something that that recharges them and allows them to keep going that is massively amplified when you’re parenting children that come from a trauma and neglect background um and so what we’re doing by by saying you know spare room big heart is we are recruiting people who are totally unprepared they’ve been lied to i mean i really kind of want to make that very clear and that’s not how that’s not how we achieve success you know i mean if i if i apply for a job and they say great news you don’t need any qualifications and i turn up on day one and i’m you know carrying out surgery then it’s probably not going to go very well you know i’ve been set up to fail it’s going to be a total it’s a very good analogy yeah yeah so i think um i think the first thing that we can do is be honest with people um and again this this goes back to that balance that we were talking about at the start of kind of it’s not all doom and gloom but it’s not all you know roses and and walks in the park either um if we’re really honest with people and i i say to you know this has been by far the hardest thing that i’ve ever done and i’ve done hard things before co-founded a travel company at the age of 21 i’d run a couple of businesses before that as well i’m you know i’m not against a bit of hard work this has by far been the hardest thing i’ve ever done if i got asked a hundred times if i wanted to do it again i would say yes every single time and so that kind of tells you something and i think that’s the way that we recruit the right because we want people who are up for a challenge we want people that have that tenacity that that don’t really give up that will advocate for their kids that will fight tooth and nail for them those are the people we want and if you kind of if you want a cushy life and an easy ride then fostering isn’t for you it’s not um so that i think that’s the difference we can be honest and find the right people you almost need yeah the the slogans need to be need to start with are you up for a challenge do you want yeah can you see yourself fighting for for a brighter future for for children in need yeah can’t do you do you have um can you can you see yourself being able to draw on support from friends and family are you open to are you open to um learning you know are you are you yeah because that they’re some of the things probably you know at least some of the really important things that that foster care parents need to know about the role i i agree with you when you as soon as you said that they’re being lied to i was like yes we they’re sold a dummy right you know i’ve i’ve been very very deeply concerned about that for a for a very long time that they’re just yeah they’re just not told foster well you’re one the foster parents are just not told the truth about because we because we’re frightened we don’t want to scare them such as our need that we don’t want to scare anyone away yeah and we want to be let’s be really honest about what happens when we lie to people i mean of course you know let’s think for a moment about those adults that are you know recruited in at huge cost they are given training at you know there’s a question there of whether that training is enough or it’s appropriate or it’s helpful or it’s honest or any of these things but it’s expensive to recruit people and get them to the point where they pass a panel and are approved for those people they’ve probably made significant life changes to bring themselves to that point a child is now going to come into their home and potentially for the next however long into the future their life is going to be turned upside down and they’re going to be unprepared and they’re not going to be able to manage and they are going to potentially then leave the fostering system and never come back and tell all of their friends don’t come you know don’t don’t do it it’s not worth it it’s you know it’s appalling um that is really really damaging i mean i’m thinking to distance myself from the pain of it i’m thinking from a business perspective there it’s really bad business you know kind of wearing that that sort of uh business background hat it’s really bad business to recruit people and then lose them very quickly but the bit that really you know tips the balance for me is that in amongst that is a child or children who have been sent to this home of a newly approved person and i was newly approved once like i i you know that that was me um but that person’s unprepared they’ve been lied to they’ve not been given the truth you know we see that again with with children’s files where you know elements of of that child’s past are omitted where it’s kind of you know let’s paint a rosier picture again i would just be very honest with people get that match to work make sure it stands every chance of being successful because we can’t have kids going to newly approved foster parents day after day week after week with no chance of staying there long term because it was never going to work in with the best will in the world so we really need to change that and i think the other thing i quite often say around this is that quite often what we see from the the rhetoric is that there is a recruitment crisis in fostering i always make the point that there is a retention crisis if we can get it right where we look after foster parents where we you know genuinely help them meet their needs so that they can meet the children’s needs then of course you’re going to you know people age out of fostering you know we as as agencies we see a lot of long-term success where children such as mine because i used to foster with the agencies that i now work with where they leave the care system on special guardianship orders or adoption orders or whatever it is because you know that that’s long term we’re not for profit so we’re able to support with those decisions because they’re in the children’s best interest which isn’t always the way that it works but it does it does for us so we need to recruit you know we need to bring people in but we can do it honestly and we can set them up for success you know there’s no reason why it can’t work that way yeah so beyond that beyond being honest with them attracting the right people who at least have some sense that you know we’re not where this is going to be a challenging role and hopefully they’re reflecting that they feel like they’re up for it they’re up for a challenge then what what do you think needs to happen to let’s say we we didn’t lie to them because i i mean it’s this is very blunt language we’re using but how awful is it for a child to be played or children to be placed with new carers who who their reaction at some point and perhaps very early on in that placement is this is nothing like we were told it was going to be this is we were we were deceived we were hoodwinked we were we were lied to here there’s there’s multiple casualties there isn’t there there’s the there’s the those foster parents themselves but the children it’s you know like it can’t be more serious than we are set we are setting children up here to be casualties of not properly representing and preparing people for that for the role of foster carer so we we need to do that i wonder i’d like i’d like to hear a little bit more about what what you how you think they should be prepared and then what what what foster carers need ongoing yeah so i mean you’re right about the language and i wouldn’t normally use language like lied to but i think it’s because of that that child that’s at the center that it’s kind of you know i i want to be really clear with people you know that we can’t do this we we can’t fail kids you know over and over and over um and so that’s that’s why i use that language i think you know when we’re talking about um you know you’re newly approved child arrives what’s the one thing i wish i knew what’s the one thing i you know i wish i understood its relationships definitely definitely definitely i mean you think of a therapeutic approach it’s all about making sure that relationship stays intact um dr libby erin that i mentioned earlier said something to me many years ago as i was kind of i think i was like leaving a session i’d probably been there complaining about you know kind of oh you know one of the kids does this and i don’t know how to respond to that and um she said to me as i was leaving the room um you know you need to remember that they are always thinking are we okay is this relationship between us okay is it solid here and that is something really when i look at everything that i deliver every training every training that i write that i that i you know when i speak to people it’s having that sense of that that strength of that relationship between parent and child that that is at the core of everything now i think that’s true for all families where in most families it’s a given it’s something that child is born with and it only gets stronger over time that that child most children if they’ve not experienced you know separation um you know attachment difficulties um you know early life trauma whatever it is they’ve kind of just got that inbuilt sense that this relationship is strong i could do anything and my mom or my dad or whoever it is will still be there for me will still keep turning up will still show up for me um i don’t want to disappoint them but i know if i did the most awful thing on the planet you know and we see that don’t we with with you know parents that still visit children who are in prison for committing awful crimes you know there’s that that strength of of that bond um for children that have had that that you know that initial bond that primary bond broken severed um and you know potentially before that um you know i’m thinking about when they came into care but before that that bond was was really probably quite unhealthy as well um the the child is desperate for that bond to work they know that attachment is needed for their survival but either that uh bond is not reliable it’s not predictable um it’s really unsafe it’s actually you know actively causing them harm whatever it is they bring all of that with them into the care system it doesn’t just get left behind sarah nash um who i’m very lucky to work with and i should say as well sarah nation sarah dylan um are both coming to australia later this year so i mean if anyone is is interested in anything that i’m talking about here you absolutely need to go and follow their pages they’re on facebook um linkedin um follow along with what they’re doing i think the dates are going to be announced they’re on a tour of australia so they’ll be in multiple locations sarah went last year but she’s uh going back we’re taking sarah dylan with her this time that their their combined knowledge is incredible and sarah nash um you know former social worker adopter of five children who are all adults now has this analogy of an airplane that if the if the plane is flying through the sky and the children are born on the plane and um you see the person you know is there’s nobody in control of their aircraft you know no one’s at the at the controls and then it’s nose diving and you know near misses and the you know cockpit door is swinging open and then the food trolley comes around but there’s no food on the trolley and then the you know um gas masks the you know the oxygen masks pop down from the ceiling and then the you know all of this chaos and then one day the plane lands and a lovely social worker steps on board and says come with me kids you’re going on a new plane so they get onto another plane and the plane takes off it’s not enough to just look at those kids and say you don’t need to be worried now this is this is a different plane you know you know that was an that was an old plane this is a new one and it’s everything here is fine so i mean that for me really is like actually the way we would approach this now is think maybe it’s safer to leave the cockpit door open so that the kid can see that the adult is in control maybe you know we expect them to try and wrestle the controls off us sometimes but we can reassure them and say i can see that you’re worried that you know things aren’t under control come come here have a look see that everything’s fine it’s not enough to say don’t worry there will be food later let’s put a sign up on the wall saying breakfast is at 9am lunches at 12 and this is what’s for tea monday tuesday and it’s going to be the same thing every week so i think you know that’s a big part of it but but ultimately as i say going back to the start relationships that’s the one thing i wish i understood i i think i kind of knew it by default but i doubted myself when i look back all of the decisions that i made for my children were about protecting the relationship that i had with them so if that meant i needed to fall out with school i would do it in a heartbeat if it’s a choice between you know um you know kind of sticking with what schools say or sticking with my kid i choose the kid every time um if um you know it’s a new social worker that says you know we need to do things differently then okay we might do things a bit differently but the relationship is still prioritized and protected that that’s what these children have missed so everything comes back to that relationship it’s prioritizing protecting um loads of loads of rupture i talk about rupture repair a lot it’s kind of one of those things that i think really resonates with people because with um a lot of the therapeutic approach you can kind of feel well i’m not doing that very well or i don’t do actually for most parents you see rupture all the time it’s just something that happens yeah coming in with repair coming in early being reliable making sure that it’s out of lead these are the things that protect that relationship and help it grow over time yeah i’m also thinking about you know the services that that exist around you as a foster parent and i’m you know what what do you think foster parents need from them from the from those those services yeah so i mean what i would say and i’ll say we for this because i i sort of i always try to be honest with people and say i’m a former foster parent because i’m now a special guardian but uh you know i definitely think of myself as as a foster parent so my my kids are still here you know i still i still feed them every day so it kind of still feels like that um so yeah what i would say is that um you know we need a lot of support we need a huge amount of support and that’s not that’s not because we’re bad at it that’s not because we’re not up to the job it’s because it’s really really tough um and we are dealing with lots of you know interacting systems that quite often don’t talk to each other very well um and so what we need is we need this this you know big solid network of support and i’ll give you some real sort of specific examples of that that we do across safer in wales and true in england um so we have child support workers so these are people who are employed where their primary goal is to build solid relationships with children so again it comes back to that relational stuff um so they may be involved in providing um so we don’t use the term respite we call them short breaks much more you know sort of child friendly language and more appropriate that it’s just you know it’s a break for the kid it’s a break for the adults and and normally you know it’s something enjoyable um so they might turn up on a saturday take the child out you know they might go bowling they might do you know whatever it is it’s the same person each time pretty much it’s someone that they know really well that they build that relationship with over time our child support workers are highly qualified they do all of our training they understand trauma they know what they’re looking for they can be that consistent approach if there’s a change uh for the child um you know moving from primary to secondary or you know any of these kind of situations um so so we’ve got those child support workers they will also help um quite often with taking children to contact arrangements so that that home environment so again it’s this is where the detail is important because that can be seen as oh well the foster parent doesn’t want to do the travel you know it doesn’t want to spend the money on fuel or whatever i can tell you i know our foster parents really well they would do anything for their children so in fact what’s going on here is about saying the best thing i can do as a foster parent is keep home as a safe environment they go you know maybe mom doesn’t turn up to to the contact arrangements maybe it doesn’t go well the child can come home walk in through the door and i’m safe again there there is this boundary drawn between so you know again trauma informed in practice what it looks like on the ground we also have empathic listeners so these are people that have lived it have been there before some of them still are some of them you know perhaps um you know towards the end of their fostering journey and they’re at the end of the phone they’re normally arranged to do phone perhaps once a week and their job is to listen of course they can provide some feedback and you know comments or whatever if it’s helpful if it’s asked for but sometimes when i’m in the thick of it when i’ve just had another email from school and i know that there’s another change of social worker coming i just need to offload to process everything that’s all jumbled up in my head to spend an hour doing that and i always say about this thing of i know that when i’m stressed i will just talk i know it’s really rude i know i’m not giving the other person chance to speak but i’m like my head is about to blow so i’m just going to keep going well this is a way of doing that where it’s like yeah that’s the purpose of this you’re allowed to do that here and then what i always think about is like we arrange that you know two o’clock they finish up at about three half three that child then walks through that door and the parent looks at them and connects with them and gives them a hug and you know says you know those problems haven’t gone away but i’ve shifted them a little bit i’ve got them out of my system so i’m also thinking then about supervising social workers so all of our social workers within the agencies are highly therapeutic they again do all of our training lots of lived experience as well we have regular supervision we have regular team meetings and it’s you know an air of curiosity i mean obviously we wouldn’t be able to share those those calls because they’re so confidential but i wish that we could at times because you really get a sense of how it operates how it works we also then have a therapeutic team which i’m part of so there’s myself there’s jane mitchell there’s jen wilkins and it’s all overseen by by sarah dillon who i mentioned is is coming to australia and our purpose is just to make sure that we are working in a therapeutic way for parents and professionals and ultimately i always say you know we don’t work for parents or professionals we work for the kids we work for the children and that’s kind of how we approach things so that that’s kind of that’s how it works day to day we do um this morning actually we’ve got a virtual catch-up so we run uh two of those every month one in the day one in the evening uh welcome for anyone to to join but we also run local in-person groups where people can turn up sometimes there’s a you know bit of training conversation but it’s quite um it’s quite collaborative i think most people are shocked by that where i don’t go with a powerpoint presentation normally i will go and say i’ve been thinking about this lately what are people’s thoughts and we kind of go around the room and people say yeah but for my child this doesn’t work and someone else will put their hand up and say oh you know we we had that problem three years ago and this is what we did oh yeah okay great we’ll try so we we you know everyone’s equal there you know there’s people with far more fostering experience than than i have um and also i think you know we talked earlier about lived experience but no two lived experiences are the same just because i’ve raised three children doesn’t mean you know i i definitely work with families who are raising one child that requires a lot more support a lot more intervention a lot more round the clock work than my three children have for one child so it’s kind of you know um taking that balance into account as well but yeah hopefully that gives you some sense of there’s a lot going on but it requires a lot the question this is a question without notice i think but very much uh based on on what you’re saying i’m i’m wondering how it feels to be able to be there and and just be that sounding board that um to to to be there for a carer a foster parent but be there for them with those phone calls almost be that lifeline for them i wonder and as someone who has been there has been been a foster parent how do how do you how does that feel to then be able to perform that that support role yeah i mean it’s the best job in the world like it really is i mean i you know it’s it’s interesting doing work where you just wish there were more hours in the day or more days in the week like i when i get to friday you know yeah definitely i’m sometimes exhausted and then my kids have kind of got uh you know decided to destroy my plans for a quiet weekend or whatever it is but um yeah it feels it feels incredible to do that work that you know constantly every day that what you’re doing matters you know i think we have this strong belief across our agencies but i would also say it’s it feels like a duty it feels like um you know for me with my background there are other things that i could do that would probably be easier and give me an easier life but i have a duty to do this because other people did it for me and that’s why we’re still here today that’s why we’re still together as a family it’s why my children can go on to have like healthy happy relationships with birth family with friends with you know relatives or whoever um because those people help me so it’s my job to pay that back yes look um what’s going through my mind and this comes this comes back to something that we talked about very early in the conversation was um respect respect and value for that is accorded to foster parents and respect for their their knowledge and expertise and creating or facilitating an opportunity for them to as you say give back to be to be able to be there with to support other foster parents and that’s in stark contrast to some of the you know some of the things that we’ve talked about today and i um sometimes when we talk about when we’re in a consultant role and my own supervisor talked to me recently we had this conversation recently that sometimes as a consultant you almost need to be an insultant you know you need to there are things that just need to be said yeah and or there’s you know you may you may put your foot in it because you’re just not aware of all the the sensitivities but you you there are things that need to be said and um um i can’t remember the the the full name of the person that he was referring to that uh as coming that idea coming from it but de Vries was the surname i can’t remember the rest of it but the the consultant as an insultant i think sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade don’t you yeah definitely yeah yeah yeah and i think you know as i said it was my my observation very early in my career and i’m talking 30 odd years ago now that that i just i just saw foster parents being treated like the hired help and you know the main game here was what statutory authorities were doing and organizing on behalf of the children and perhaps what the therapist was doing and and i don’t say that to upset anyone and we certainly don’t want to upset people now but but you know these are these are some of the things that need to be said i think and what i’m hearing really come through very strongly is is respect respect and valuing of foster parents that will get you a long way including retention keeping people in the system yeah i the only thing i would say is that i think respect sometimes can be um kind of interpreted as um you know making sure that foster parents know that they’re valued making sure that they you know know they’re gonna doing a good job so perhaps um you know and it’s not to say that these things aren’t important but you know award ceremonies um you know uh vouchers um and and kind of you know this this language that refers to foster parents as sort of heroes or you know saviors or something like that like that’s not me that’s not the people that i work with when we’re not um you know we’re not mother theresa you know we’re not kind of you know people that have been given this divine inspiration to go and do good in the world we recognize that we have a skill set that actually works really well with children that really need it and we’ve applied ourselves to that and of course we work incredibly hard but i don’t want a parade in my name or any of those things what i want is to be understood and to be seen and actually what what kind of what you’ve made me think about is how a therapeutic approach a trauma-informed approach um whether it’s for children or whether it’s for um you know parents and professionals is quite often misunderstood as a softer approach and actually what we’re doing again i’m going to mention relationships i know i say say the word a lot but if we have those strong relationships we can actually get away with quite a lot and by that i mean um you know so as a professional if i need to go out and speak to a foster parent about something that’s happened that kind of you know as you say you need there’s things there that need to be said if i’ve got that strong relationship with them if we’re pretty stable it may take a little bit of a knock but but we’ve got that capacity to do that and again with with children you know a therapeutic approach is not ever about a child you know you’ve just watched the child um you know give their their sibling a hit across the head and you think okay well you know that shouldn’t have happened but i’ll i’ll step back and i’ll you know kind of gentle and i’ll make them a you know thing of hot chocolate or you know no that that is never a approach it’s always about addressing the things that need to be said but it’s about doing it in a way that’s constructive that actually brings change um far too often what i see with foster parents is that um something has gone wrong and you know maybe maybe the foster parent is you know partly to blame maybe something has you know they’ve made a mistake or whatever and a heavy hand is brought in to shame them and drag them over the coals like who is that helping because i can tell you for certain it’s not going to help the child and this isn’t about you know we of course we need to keep anyone that works with children especially those that are incredibly vulnerable needs to be held accountable needs to be you know um sort of you know working at the absolute best level that they possibly can but again this is a way of achieving that and and going in and shaming and blaming is the opposite and actually it tears families apart um and it’s a mess in the process i often think the challenge that i would put to people whenever they’re embarking on any decision making or any endeavor in this space is that you fit the first question i think you need to consider is what will be the child’s experience of this yeah relate i agree i don’t i mean award ceremonies and things are nice as well in my view as well yeah yeah as well i think when i talk about respect i it’s it’s about a way of being with and being together with and and you you’ve mentioned relationships a lot and i think these are relationships that where there is an equal footing where they you know they that foster parents feel like they are part of the team they feel like it they’re treated like it because the reality is there’s no team without without them in a sense they are they’re vital to the team and i i i think i loved hearing what you were just saying before about i think they you know about putting them on the phones you know being you like the social worker who said i i i’m not a foster parent so i you know i can only imagine i can only imagine what it’s like i haven’t been there and and done that that experience but perform that role but it is such so much so respectful i think of foster parents to put them on the phone so you know what at the end of the day you are you you are such an important part of our system here that that and and you know so much about being a foster parent that what we would love for you to do is is give up a bit of your time to be on the phones and speak to foster parents who are going through a bit of a challenging time and i i just think that there is a respectfulness there in that dynamic it’s really yeah but it’s also quite free and i think because i think as a foster parent you you sometimes you know when you often doubt yourself you you have this internal monologue that says you know i can’t do this it’s too hard it’s too much you know i mean what what happens typically in a fostering household within a week would be more than what happened in most households in a year um you know i could say that for for certain um so actually knowing that all of this you know if you’re newly approved you you might be taken aback by that and think oh god this is you know this is an hour of support here and you know then i’m doing two hours of training then i’m doing this um but you’re going into it thinking that that is the approach that we need to take so when you need that you don’t feel bad you don’t feel like you’re doing something wrong you’re like oh yeah actually now now i see why all of this is is actually needed yeah and you know um because it it is challenge the role is challenging and and sometimes like the self-efficacy i think is a really important concept here that that feeling of of being of being on top of it of you know doing the right thing of uh you know fulfilling our mission our purpose for the children what i’ve noticed in when i’ve supported kinship carers and foster carers is that when you’re doing it in a group it’s it can sometimes be really hard to reflect on and um be able to generate a good understanding and solutions for the problem for some of the challenges in your own home but it’s comparatively easier um to to to help some of the other people around the table do you know what i mean like it’s hard for me to see the wood from the trees but when it’s someone else describing what’s going on you know it’s it’s much it’s obvious to me and i and that’s a really good way of of building self-efficacy is is giving foster carers foster parents kinship carers the opportunity to feel to feel knowledgeable to feel yeah that they’ve got something important to give yeah it’s such a good point and i think um yeah so i mean it’s worth saying that you know of course i i give support to um families and and you know um children as well but uh actually we still receive support as well and it’s exactly that sort of situation i mean i’ve i’ve said before that you know when i would go to school meetings for my children when they were younger um i felt like i didn’t have full access to my brain because i’m so emotionally invested and then i’m hearing someone you know what feels to me like they’re attacking my child of course they aren’t what they’re trying to do is is figure out how you know how we find a way but i’m i’m becoming defensive i’m starting to go into this sort of stress response state um and and yeah i kind of might you know part of my brain or all of my prefrontal cortex is like going offline um sitting in on meetings and advocating for other families where of course i’m invested and i you know i want them to do well but where i have full access to my brain it is like a superpower it’s like oh wow this is really you know this is really great yeah yeah love it yeah um i wanted to ask you what advice you’d give to josh mccallister the children’s minister we’ve probably covered a lot of it uh but um actually what what advice would you give to josh mccallister i know the care system is very very much part of um his focus as it should be as but he’s very active and out there at the moment yeah i think that’s good you know i regularly see photos and you know videos and things of him out and about meeting with people um you know that that’s got to be good you know that that’s got to be a good thing um i hope that he meets with more people uh i mean as far as i’m aware in england and wales we have the highest stability rates for children across you know the the two countries um you know you would expect that someone might pop around and and see how we’re achieving that so our doors are are very much open we would love to to be able to to share some of what works for us we’re not protective over kind of you know this is the way we do things and nobody else can copy us like we want we want everyone to work in this way and and you know help us figure out other ways of working that are really great and um you know that that we would we would really welcome that um i would i would you know not knowing too much about the political side i would say you know can we please go easy on on the reviews like it always feels like every year there’s another review and we’re going to gather you know information and gather you know feedback and and then we’re going to you know sort of see how we interpret that i think you know that’s helpful but it’s not helpful to just just do that um and yeah i mean i think you know it goes back to the point i i’m seeing again this um sort of language of you know a recruitment crisis we need to recruit x thousand more um you know foster carers uh you know in in the sort of you know near future um i i would really you know and i think what really frustrates me is there is um this sense of um you know most people just aren’t aware that they could foster they’re not aware because of their sexuality or that they’re single or that they live in rented accommodation or that they work part-time um or you know any of these things and actually like i speak to people about fostering all the time day in day out across england and wales not many people say to me oh god i just never really realized that i could foster or i just never like i i realized that 10 years ago as a single man living in rented accommodation that i could foster like it didn’t really cross my mind that that would have been a major you know sort of stumbling block and it’s it’s a phone call or it’s a look online and and you know the answer to that so i think you know i’d like a bit more honesty i think i’d like you know everything that we’ve talked about today you know if we’re really honest if we if we put our cards on the table and say these are the things that really aren’t working that we we know how to change and we are in the process of changing them and we’re not quite there but we’re working that direction that’s a much better start to bring more people into fostering but it also helps us keep the brilliant ones that we’ve got we’re losing far too many great people from fostering and children’s lives are torn apart in the process it doesn’t need to happen it’s almost like we need a retention campaign as much as much as a recruitment campaign well that would that would solve the recruitment crisis then as well if you know if that is the case so if we’re retaining people and it’s working well what you then have is people saying oh i’ve been fostering for the last five years you know it’s tricky but i absolutely love it we’re really well supported um you know you you should definitely think about it that that recruitment issue i’m not saying you know you don’t need some you know um you know posters on the tube or you know a tv ads or whatever but we have a lot of that at the moment i mean you know driving around wales pretty much every roundabout is you know what you know are you aware you could foster you know sign up for fostering we are we are drowning people everyone knows now that they can foster everyone knows that that is an option we’ve got that achieved um now what we need to do is is be honest with them and sell them on the reality and as i say you know i i’ve talked a lot about the things that don’t work today but i’ve also talked about what works really well i have seen children’s lives transformed you know utterly utterly transformed this is possible we we can achieve it it doesn’t need to be quite as hard work as it is right now we can we can make it easier if we all understand where children are at and where they’re coming from um then that makes everyone’s lives easier but you know it’s absolutely possible to do that today um i don’t see any good reason why we’re not yeah yeah awesome what’s the future hold for four-year gareth yeah so um yeah i’m as i mentioned i’m kind of doing lots of lots of different things i’m going to finish my psychology degree in the next year so i’m really looking forward to that that was kind of a way of i went in on the deep end in terms of uh you know i quickly had to learn what happens when child development doesn’t go to plan so i thought well it might be worth going back and seeing how it should work and you know what that looks like and understanding some of the theories and you know lots of work and attachment that that kind of helped help some of the higher level understanding that i had really sink in so that’s been great so i need to yeah i need to get that finished next year um and i’m also i’m building something called trauma space um so you can sign up for for updates at the moment it’s at traumaspace.com um i’m not entirely sure what i’m going to do with that but i know that i would love to go to every school every local authority every fostering agency adoption agency kinship support service everyone and everywhere um but i just don’t have the time to do it i’m i’m one person and i can’t i can’t travel that much i’ve still got my children at home um so i’m kind of trying to do something that allows some virtual stuff to happen and some things maybe some like self-paced courses that people can you know if they know they need help with x y or z that they can go online do the course you know i could be here in the uk asleep in my bed and you’re still getting access to some of the knowledge that i hold um and potentially bringing in other people to to support with that as well so yeah just just kind of chipping away at that in the background yeah yeah oh and i should mention we’ve got our book as well because yes we’ve got um so sarah nash um and and a few others over the years have written lots of books on on therapeutic parenting um you know absolutely best sellers i’m really lucky that i get to go out on the road um to different you know events and conferences and stuff and speak at different things i quite often have um some of the books with me and i get people constantly come up to the table and say this is the book that changed our lives this is the reason why we stay together as a family you know that that’s kind of really powerful so um i was asked um earlier this year if i would uh co-author um the a to z of therapeutic parenting teens and tweens so specifically on on teenagers and and you know kind of around around that age um so i mean it’s like probably the fastest yes i’ve ever ever given given to a project um so it’s sarah nash sarah dylan serpena and myself we’re all we’re all writing uh this guide i feel like i’ve really gone above and beyond with my research on this because i had currently have three teenagers living in the house so that shows you by my commitment to the to the book um but yeah we’re in the process of writing it we’re hoping it will be uh available soon but you can find out more at a-z-book.com awesome well good luck i wish you well in those endeavors um and especially the yeah the trauma space uh one i think i’d like to talk to you a bit more about that i i am newly dabbling in in some of these technologies around uh myself around apps and things and uh yeah it’s quite quite remarkable what we can achieve with technologies that exist these days yeah definitely and that’s i think that’s my approach is almost kind of well let’s see what we could build let’s see what we could yeah what we could do for people yeah well gareth thank you for coming on the secure start podcast thank you for having me brilliant yeah thank you

Gareth’s Bio:

Gareth K Thomas is a former foster parent and child trauma specialist. He’s a trainer, speaker and (soon-to-be-published author). He works as a trauma-informed consultant through his organisation, Clarified, and is in the process of launching Trauma Space, which will be a course collection and community for those parenting and working with children who’ve experienced trauma.

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Disclaimer: Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce. Finally, all references to case examples are anonymised to the extent that the actual case could not be identified, or are fictional but based on real-life examples for illustrative purposes.