Swansea is celebrating national Foster Care Fortnight

Swansea Council’s Lord Mayor has joined calls for more families across the city to consider opening up their home and family to support a parent and their child.

The civic leader is hoping this Foster Care Fortnight 2016 families of all shapes and sizes will come forward to see if they could foster and enrich their own lives while making a child and their parents life better too.

Today he celebrated Foster Care Fortnight with some carers from Swansea Council’s fostering service Foster Swansea, including Swansea couple Simon and Jan Wigley who are part of the Parent and Child fostering scheme aimed at providing vital support at a key time in a child’s life to enable families to thrive and stay together wherever possible.

Cllr John Newbury said: “Jan and her family are a wonderful and inspirational example of fostering families in Swansea.  Our city is grateful to every one of the more than 150 Foster Swansea carers who provide safe, happy, caring, homes to hundreds of youngsters just like them.

“Foster Swansea has more than 40 years history of providing high quality family placements for children and young people and we are quite rightly proud of what the service and its carers do.

“But we need to continue to recruit more carers to open their homes for youngsters in need and in some cases care for the parents along with their children.”

Jan and Simon, from Swansea West , have five children of their own but over the last 16 years have provided a foster home to around 40 mainly teenage children in need of a safe, loving place to stay.

For the Wigleys fostering has always been a family affair. Jan has always wanted to give other children the happy family life her own youngsters enjoyed.

Jan said: “What’s great about fostering is bringing someone into your family and giving them the security, love and support they need. The longer they are with us the more they learn it’s safe here, we’re here to help, they can trust us and we see them as family. It is lovely to see a child begin to blossom and thrive.

“We can share with them what being part of a close family like ours is like. We eat together, talk together and try to see them through any ups and downs that they may have. Walks on the beach are a chance to enjoy each others company and can be a good way of relaxing for some children. Our foster children have shared holidays abroad too.

“We are really enjoying being part of parent and child fostering because it is a great opportunity to make a difference to a child, usually right at the start of their life. This can have a massive impact on their future and that of their parents. Some parents just need a chance and the right kind of support to get it right!”

The UK will mark Foster Care Fortnight 2016 from May 16 with the theme Time to Foster, Time to Care.

If you want to know more about fostering head to: www.swansea.gov.uk/fosterswansea or call the team for a chat on 0300 555 0111.

Foster Swansea is also holding an open evening on May 23^rd at Swansea Civic Centre between 6pm and 8pm where staff and current Foster Swansea Foster Carers will be available to speak about fostering and answer all questions.