Published on:
22
August 2012
Imagine being a child whose family suddenly falls apart - your parents are unable to care for you anymore and perhaps you don't understand why.
How much worse would it be if you also lost contact with your friends and family? How would you cope if you had to start a new school and couldn't go to the clubs and activities you used to?
Wouldn't it be better if you could stay nearby? Then you could still see your family as much as possible, still go to your familiar school and maintain routines with friends and hobbies. That's what Clackmannanshire Council wants for the children in its care: to keep them close to home in secure placements, supporting them to return to their families when appropriate.
But to do that, we desperately need more local foster carers. Could you offer a child a secure home during a difficult time in their lives?
Menstrie couple, Gordon and Eileen Law are an excellent example of the kind, caring and dedication required for fostering, having fostered more than 200 children in the past 26 years.
They encapsulate everything required to be a foster carer, and for more than a quarter of a century have offered a home to children in their formative years within Clackmannanshire, and still remain in contact with a great many of them.
Eileen said: "It is so worthwhile to see the changes in the children from when they arrive at first. You see their confidence build and their self-esteem increase as well as how they become much more independent and being able to look after themselves. Gordon and myself would like to think they leave better persons than when they arrived.
"One of the first girls we fostered had never even seen a beach or the sea or even a zoo, so we were able to take her to them all and allow her to experience them."
Gordon and Eileen, now both 70, have decided to step down from foster caring, but are throwing their full support behind the campaign to encourage more people in Clackmannanshire to take up fostering.
Eileen added: "It is very difficult to get foster carers these days and we really do need a lot more in the county. It is something which can bring you so much satisfaction and fun."
Gordon and Eileen, who have five of a family, three children of their own and two adopted, originate from Taunton in Somerset, but moved to Clackmannanshire in 1970, first to Devonside and then Alloa, before setting up home in Menstrie in 1981. Five years later they became foster carers, and have remained so ever since.
Eileen said: "We have had two, three, sometimes four children in our care at a time. I remember 25 years ago we had nine children with us in the house at one time over a weekend.
"Foster caring can sometimes bring a bit of sorrow, but this is rare. For the most part it brings joy."
Between 1986 and 1996 the couple fostered 96 children and since then the number of children who have passed through their care has exceeded 200. And many of them remain in close contact, even to this day.
Quite recently one of their former foster children, whom they looked after for six years, returned to visit her. Now grown up, she brought along her six-year-old daughter to meet the Law's.
Other former foster children now live as far away as Orkney and Devon, but still remain in contact with the Menstrie couple, such is the love and affection they have for the couple who helped them through a difficult part of their early years.
But such is the shortage of foster carers in Clackmannanshire that a desperate appeal is going out to follow in the footsteps of the Law family and at the same time get the chance to help the community and experience the joy and happiness of assisting young children by offering them a home and pointing them in the right direction towards adulthood.
If you have the care and attention to give to vulnerable children and would like to find out more call 01259 450000, e-mail childcare@clacks.gov.uk or look at ClacksWeb for more information. You could make all the difference to a child's future.