Transvox - Fostering and Adoption for trans+ people and the wider Queer community

[00:00:00] Hey and welcome back to Transvox and no Jenny today I'm afraid but I'm joined by two other people who are sitting in front of me looking with Splendid and different parts of the country.

[00:00:18] I have a D constant time which is a fantastic name and thank you all the animals. So, I D how are you? Hi, yeah I'm D. I use Lleilin pronouns and I do really good.

[00:00:33] I am a fostering recruitment officer from Southampton City Council and hopefully here to do a little bit of chatting about what that means and supporting people who are kind of understanding the process

[00:00:43] of being assessed for foster care a bit more today. Great and Carlos, say hi. Hi, I'm Folly Arnold and I am the service lead for the fostering service in Southampton and so I manage the foster

[00:00:57] care is and fostering team who look after all of our former butchered units I've had. Fantastic, now when when did your first started chatting? I was really quite, it hadn't hadn't crossed my imagination because I'm a little bit older than that that fostering

[00:01:14] adoption would be suitable relevant possible practical for trans people. Never mind the wider queer communities so when we first chatting about it it's sort of really open my eyes and so firstly let's talk a little bit about fostering adoption generally and then let's talk a little bit about

[00:01:33] this world and what the specific challenges or pickfalls might be. So I mean what is the difference between a foster parent and an adoptive parent for example and

[00:01:43] why might you want to do it? I cannot say that one day and so obviously so fostering and is when we assess and have care is that work for the council and who offer care and homes to some of

[00:02:03] our vulnerable look after children and they support us in caring for those children so and so I've had to ensure that the council hold parental responsibility for those children whereas if you were to adopt a child and the parental responsibility for those children would

[00:02:25] kind of transfer two-dose adoption so they would then become that child's parents if you like and so that's kind of the difference I suppose between kind of fostering and adoption and so we do have an adoption service in South Hunting and I don't manage that service as such

[00:02:44] and so my kind of expertise is around a long fostering asset. Okay that's interesting so why would anybody want to foster or adopt at all? I can say a little bit about this car if you want

[00:03:01] so I think most of the people that I speak to who are looking at fostering adoption and particularly being a queer person myself and in the queer community it comes from a place of love

[00:03:13] I think people really wanting to give back to their community and give back to children who have maybe not had the best start in life and there's a lot I think that's the first thing

[00:03:23] that everyone kind of talks about about really wanting to give children a life that is good and safe and gives them the space in order to heal and to grow and to potentially go back

[00:03:35] to their bare families it's that's what's suitable and appropriate for them at the time. I think most people have this kind of innate want to give good into the world and this is one of

[00:03:46] those ways that they can do that. That's interesting and as there are an advantage to being a foster parent or an adoptive parent or do you do one first and then the other is

[00:03:57] is there a sort of a process that it's useful? I think it's quite different really in terms of the roles I think becoming an adoptive is you are taking on kind of that child in a permanent

[00:04:13] basis if you look at the common fact of parents and so quite often people that are adopting our people that haven't necessarily been able to have their own families and are kind of wanting

[00:04:30] to create that environment and where is in fostering kind of the placements I would say. Potentially I'm a little bit more temporary so it could be that you're looking after a child for a short period of time to allow some work to happen with the child's bare family

[00:04:46] in for the child to go home to that family or we might be looking at assessing other people within the child's bare family for them to go to or it might be that that child ends up remaining

[00:04:58] care for kind of the longer period of time and so it's kind of the difference between I guess short-term and permanent really in terms of the difference between fostering and adoption roles. I'm sorry we do have, oh sorry, I was just going to add on to that that

[00:05:15] sometimes we do have foster care is who then go on to adopt their children. I actually conducted an exit interview with someone recently who has adopted three of the children that she fostered in her 36 years and it's absolutely wonderful to see those and there's so many ways

[00:05:31] that these families can kind of come together or you know the way that they kind of develop and kind of evolve throughout the time of the young person's life can be in so much

[00:05:43] so many different ways. That's nice and funny and for giving me for this but I sort of made the massive assumption that you know it's a sort of heteronormative sort of process you have to

[00:05:54] have the some of them the binary and the other traditional nuclear sort of approach to this but are you telling me that's not necessarily the case for me more? No, um, Carly did you want

[00:06:06] to say anything about that or I can jump in about the assessment. Yeah I think it's just I think for us and you know I think a lot of the kind of most important attributes that we look for in

[00:06:18] carers aren't really related to their gender or their sexuality and I think that that's the biggest thing for us is actually it's kind of their understanding their you know one and desire to look

[00:06:33] after children to offer support and you know their understanding of their own own self and identity and how that might impact on them as being you know offering that care but it's you know it's

[00:06:46] not linked to as a gender and sexuality there's so many other aspects that we would want to consider as part of kind of those assessments and what we look for. I think also in an interesting

[00:06:57] way kind of linking onto that point about self-actualisation and self identity. There's a really interesting strength they think that the transparency have in that we have often taken a very, very long process and a lot of deep self reflection about our sense of self identity and we're often

[00:07:14] you know it's certain places where actually we've kind of been done that and really kind of develop skills and strengths in having to do a lot of that work already that other people may

[00:07:26] not have ever encountered before and it could be a really big strength for supporting young people and care who also need kind of support and development of their own sense of self-incents of identity and confidence in their lives. So I think that's a really interesting interplay

[00:07:41] that trans people have a unique perspective on. Right that's fascinating so she don't have to be white Christian, male female fully able. No absolutely not so what we tend to find as well is that historically I think people have kind of had

[00:08:01] that expectation of fostering an adoption and I think often historically there has also been anecdotal evidence that as agencies and as local authorities we you know using the idea that you know having a family that might not fit the traditional norm could be detrimental to a

[00:08:20] young person so for example having gay parents could be seen as a difficult part to then you know be bullied about or be teased about and I think there's anecdotal evidence to show that historically

[00:08:32] that's probably been used as a reason to not approve certain people for fostering an adoption but we've come so far in the last few years even just within the last few decades to kind of

[00:08:42] really understand actually there are a lot of strengths to this and a lot of the young people that come into our service are so unique and they've all got different needs, they've all got different cultural backgrounds, they've all got different levels of additional needs and having foster care

[00:08:56] is that kind of have that multitude of experience and variation in their identity and their sense of self is really really key to be able to give these young people homes where they're understood and the patients is there to encourage them to be their full sense of self.

[00:09:13] That's fascinating because I suppose you need a complete diverse range of careers to work with a diverse patient, our client group and I don't know what that's correct term is there and so do you do match queer people with queer children or is it just

[00:09:28] pep, you're just looking for people who have the capacity and the facilities to love and to bring people up well is so what are the criteria that you're sort of looking for?

[00:09:39] So in terms of matching we don't tend so as we kind of get to the approval through the approval process if you like and careers go to what we call our foster in panel and that's where

[00:09:51] we kind of approve them as careers and consider kind of what would be their match so it might be one child to children and specific age ranges but we wouldn't really kind of specify within that

[00:10:07] that you know if it was a queer family that they have to be matched with a queer child and I don't think that that would be effective. The needs of the children is as detailed as

[00:10:21] so diverse and the skills that careers bring are so different as well that actually it would be based on kind of the needs of the child and the skill of the career are as opposed to their gender

[00:10:33] or their sexual anything. Yeah that makes them much sense because yes that would make that heck of a lot of sense but the thing I didn't understand also is that there are different types of foster

[00:10:43] care so I mean I'd heard of the term respite care but I wonder if you could take us through sort of three or four types of because actually that again is part of the choice of the

[00:10:54] process is that? Yeah absolutely so there's a number of kind of like as you say types of care that people can be approved for so we have respite care which is where we have a child that may

[00:11:08] be already placed in a foster family but that foster family kind of needs a little bit of a break or they've got I don't know a family wedding to go to and so we would identify a

[00:11:24] respite care to care for that child for those short periods of time so it's quite often say one weekend a month or you know a week in the school holidays you know so it's really flexible

[00:11:36] without in terms of respite and so people can still kind of work full time and then off a care at kind of weekends and school holidays and we have short-term care which is anything from kind

[00:11:50] of one month to two years is what we refer to as kind of short-term care placements and we then have long-term care placements which is kind of for as long as that child is needed to be in foster

[00:12:06] and we also have care as it will prove to kind of just offer emergency so that's where we've got you know really difficult situations we might have a child that's kind of come into into the

[00:12:19] system that you know that you want to clock in the morning following an incident and we need somebody that's available kind of there and then that evening just to offer that child as safe bed

[00:12:30] space to you know eat sleep and allow us to do whatever work isn't needs doing and then they kind of get moved on the following day and we also offer kind of some specialist placements so

[00:12:43] we have parent and child foster placements so that's where foster care is care for say a baby but mom is in the placement alongside and so we might have a mom that is kind of struggling

[00:12:58] to meet the needs of a baby so they move into a placement together and the foster care can then demonstrate to mom actually you know this is how you make a bottle this is how you bath baby

[00:13:09] and kind of work alongside mom to build their skills to enable them to kind of move on and and for that mom to be able to then or dad or whoever to and be able to look after the child on

[00:13:24] yeah because I'm guessing and forgive me because there's massive assumption about it to make but I'm assuming that skills have moved on over the last 30, 40 years since I was a

[00:13:34] ball done at world so you know is this I mean are you just throwing it in the deep end or is there some sort of supporter how do you learn yourself how to be able to support a parent or a child

[00:13:47] and how does that work yeah so as part of the kind of assessment and recruitment process we offer what we call our skills to foster training courses and so it's number four kind of two days and two evenings and and that's whilst people go through the assessment process

[00:14:09] and and that goes through lots of different information about kind of the roles of a foster care and the types of kind of presentations or behaviours that you might see when caring for a child

[00:14:21] and kind of the practical aspects about you know recording finances you know all of those bits and pieces and lots of information is kind of pulled out and it's blood through the assessment as

[00:14:35] while in terms of what skills and the applicants may have and then kind of following that kind of approval process and we offer quite an extensive training and programme to care is and that

[00:14:50] covers kind of everything you could ever imagine really and there's certain training that is mandatory for care is to complete so they have to complete kind of like pediatric first aid safe-barding safe-care re-information so there's certain things that they have to do and then there's lots of

[00:15:11] different courses that people can do to kind of develop their skills or specialisms if there's certain things that they're particularly interested in knowing more about and and that's something

[00:15:21] that we run so we have a training officer within our service and they put all of that training for our for our care is because I'm guessing you'd agree with social emotional support so you'd be

[00:15:33] because I'm guessing you're dealing with children who were coming in from slightly catering backgrounds or living situations not that they're issue but you have to as much as you have to

[00:15:43] air have the empathy but being at the skills to be able to do with that sort of things. Yeah so within that training package we well see we have the wonderful community of foster

[00:15:52] cares that we have that are really really supportive of each other they're very very close knit and we offer like you know coffee mornings they're a bit more kind of like friendly social events we also offer more therapeutic services so there is a therapeutic group that runs every

[00:16:08] Tuesday that people kind of come along to and talk with their therapeutic practitioners around sort of like particular behaviors or coping mechanisms that their children are experiencing so they can work alongside those but we also offer training around pace parenting which is a therapeutic

[00:16:25] type of parenting kind of stands I think it's playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy and we know from kind of research and ongoing and it don't work at the end around that this kind of parenting works really well with young people who have experienced trauma

[00:16:41] because it kind of gives them the space to be able to kind of work through that emotional deregulation so we offer training on that and we also have a clinical psychologist on staff who can work more closely with foster care is like debriefing around you know difficult challenging

[00:16:58] experiences or perhaps when placements are kind of wobbly so there's lots and lots of emotional support within the team oh and we also have family engagement workers that go out and do to rect work with foster care is around sort of you know managing behaviors and also developing

[00:17:15] routines and things with children that can really help them get settled in their fostering placements because I'm guessing there's a complexity here if a foster parent or an adopted parent has their own children because that's in it how you manage that must be challenging so

[00:17:29] so effectively these wraparones structure that you've got is basically just sit down with someone say what about this more about that like a sort of supervision type approach hmm yeah so all of

[00:17:39] our foster care is evaluated a super vital social worker that's sitting in fostering team and so they do the kind of direct one to one supervision with the foster care is and that happens on kind

[00:17:54] of a minimum of the six six week basis but it can happen kind of more often if we need it to and within that part of the expectation is actually the the supervision ones offered as a

[00:18:06] household if you like so it's to include any birth to children or kind of anyone else that lives in that home to make sure that kind of everybody's needs at every end and explore the

[00:18:17] undisturged within that yeah that's excellent so I'm guessing there might be complexities if you're queer or trans in particular in terms of the process I wonder if you can turn me through what

[00:18:29] those complexities might be and how they are dealt with yeah so there are some complexities in with regards particularly to confidentiality and if we're sharing under the GRA 2004 and obviously there's quite specific limitations or what information can be shared under that but with regards

[00:18:49] to a fostering assessment sometimes that information needs to be shared from a assessing social worker to their manager for example to supervise how that assessment is going and kind of some

[00:19:00] of the complexities that might come under that but what we tend to do in those scenarios is to have it as a really open and collaborative conversation about ensuring that someone who is being

[00:19:10] assessed and knows where this information is going and why it's being shared in the way that it's being shared with regards to sort of complexities around the actual assessment process I think a lot

[00:19:22] of it kind of comes down to us ensuring that we're kind of approaching it in a really anti-oppressive way because there will be elements of discussion around pretransition for example what transition means to that person and how that is potentially impacting certain things that they may experience

[00:19:42] in their fostering journey but it is about kind of really assessing the parental capacity of someone as opposed to sort of you know the impacts of their different identities or things like that and for some people they may feel that their identity and their journey to their identity

[00:19:58] is much more impactful on their you know experience or parental methods than someone else and I think again it comes down to that really open and collaborative assessment process they're enable someone to really be reflective on what that might means for them and actually for us to

[00:20:14] then kind of assess what that means to them as well but it's certainly kind of focusing on the parental capacity more than anything else and how something affects someone I think again they're really interesting aspect of like being an LGBTQ person who is interested in fostering an adoption

[00:20:31] is actually there's a lot of kind of you know things to explore that with regards to how someone has developed within an oppressive world and within kind of the context of experience potentially a lot of oppression and a lot of backlash to some things that you've experienced so

[00:20:50] I think again there's that open and collaborative thing that needs to happen with the assessor and the person being assessed to really explore what that means for them but again there's

[00:20:58] nothing in there to say that you know just because you've experienced this and now you can never be a fostering a foster care or an adoptor actually you probably have a lot of strengths and resilience is

[00:21:08] that are really key to being a fostering a doctor that have come from those experiences that you've had and I guess a lot of it is again having that conversation I think also kind of like from our perspective

[00:21:22] with regards to sort of discrimination that someone's experienced is kind of understanding that again and how they've managed to kind of process themselves through that so I had a point around

[00:21:36] with regards to reference thing as well so when you are assessors of foster care where we do ask for generally three references per person so if you're in a couple that six references and two of those were generally be family members and four of them would be friends

[00:21:53] what we understand in the queer community is that sometimes we don't always have a wide support network because of oppression and discrimination that we face so we may not always have family who are

[00:22:06] around so but what we do as a service is actually we kind of reflect on that with a person and kind of look at other avenues and other opportunities to gain similar referencing information in a different

[00:22:16] way so again it's looking at that anti oppressive practice and ensuring that as many barriers that could be in place because of someone's identity are worked through as much as possible. That's absolutely fascinating and you've used this through phrase four or five times in the sense

[00:22:33] of the thing which is parental capacity so what could you talk talking through a little bit about what that means because actually what you're saying is that doesn't matter if you are anything as long as you have this parental capacity so pay time to be something about that.

[00:22:48] There's something that we explore quite deeply obviously within the assessment so it's talking about kind of the way that you repair and hit so remembering kind of your experiences as a child and also looking at kind of any experience that people have had in terms of not

[00:23:10] necessarily caring for their own children but you know have they been involved in other children's lives what kind of role if they taken within that and a lot of it is around you know even if that you've had potentially a negative experience as a child yourself it's about

[00:23:28] the learning and the inside that people have in terms of actually this is what I've experienced this is what I've taken from it and actually this is how I feel it would impact me in being able to

[00:23:39] look after a child and so that's kind of the real huge I guess part of the assessment that we spend a lot of time on and kind of uncovering with people because of things that ask that

[00:23:53] that's really the important bit is understanding kind of your experiences and actually how those experiences are likely to impact your ability and you know your way of caring for somebody else. So so I take it from that actually life skills wisdom resilience or sorts of things learning,

[00:24:14] continuous learning, role modeling all those things are important and another is a minimum age of 21 to be a foster career but is there a maximum age I mean it will well because it sounds like

[00:24:26] without getting too into the grandparents sort of confusion of age such like but but is there an upper limit because it sounds like you know wisdom could be quite healthy here.

[00:24:36] Yeah no absolutely there is there is no upper limit and to foster and we do have to obviously bear in mind and kind of the longevity of placement so you know you know it is somebody that is

[00:24:48] kind of later in life and then looking to care for I don't have a three year old kind of throughout their minority we would have to kind of take that into consideration but we've got foster

[00:25:00] careers who are in their 70s and and are you know absolutely unbelievable careers for us and think as as D said we've just done the next interview with one of our I think she's 78

[00:25:16] year 78 she's just managed fostering with us after 35 years and but I think at the moment the majority of our foster care is arranged between about 55 and 65 that is kind of the the the age range currently majority of our care is there. Yeah and I'm guessing what happened with

[00:25:38] you you're creating and people are coming over and finding people's houses is done a lot of good for this because it's probably open the caring pool up in the way because people have had an experience

[00:25:47] of this in a strange way um um last question sort from me in a way but just on the practical side is there any financial support for this I was just going to cost me a huge amount of money to do

[00:26:00] this like having to change my home extend houses invent work out what PS3 is off whenever the iteration is not three anymore. And yeah absolutely we offer and financial support for all of our foster careers and so there's kind of a number of different payment payments schemes

[00:26:22] and the kind of we run with so each foster career will get what we call kind of a maintenance fee for the child. So that is and the amount is dependent on the age of the child and and that is

[00:26:38] what we would expect the foster careers to use for the children to kind of buy food clothing you know pocket money savings all of that sort and those things and then we also offer what we call

[00:26:52] um level fees so depending on kind of skill and experience of foster careers and then we have kind of an incremental scale and the careers can kind of work towards in terms of and additional things within the serve so dependent on kind of the complexity of the children

[00:27:14] that they're caring for or kind of their involvement with and supporting us with kind of recruiting newer foster careers or budging up with careers. So there's lots of kind of different different avenues within it but and know this absolutely and financial support that is provided.

[00:27:32] Well I mean we'll put links into places to find out more football information but there is that a specific thing or a place at your point people too to access resources or find out more

[00:27:43] information? Yes so there's a couple places. People can either call on our number which is 0800 5191818 and you're more than likely to get through to me or my colleague Jo on that number

[00:27:57] people can also email in to fostering at safampton.gov.uk or we also have an inquiry form on our website which will just be on www.safampton.gov.uk for such fostering and you can put in your

[00:28:14] information on there and then I will get in contact via text or email or phone depending on what you prefer me to do really and gender be able to pick up phones for phone calls between 95

[00:28:25] but I'm around in the evenings as well for conversations with that czfp we were working. So obviously you're based in safampton and what we have listen is all of the place in fact including our very famous listener in Taiwan. So obviously people won't be able to do with

[00:28:45] you direct but can they go to a look at fentra as their national institution that trans people and queer people can go to is there a wider source of access as well? So there's a very good organization that we partner with called new family social

[00:28:58] that works specifically with LGBTQ fosters and adopters. They have a lot of information on their website otherwise you can always get in touch with your own local authority who will be able to point you in the direction of their fostering service is all local authorities or most local

[00:29:15] authorities will have their own fostering agency as well so they'll be able to work with you and going you assessed. Wow that sounds brilliant all right then so any final thoughts

[00:29:25] Carly anything that you wish to have said that you haven't said so far I'm going to ask you the same question as that in that D but there I'll put the Carly straight on the spot first.

[00:29:36] And now I don't think so I think we just absolutely would encourage anybody that's even you know just got a timey as kind of thought about all could it be for me please do

[00:29:48] give us a call or your local authority or call and you know even if it doesn't go anywhere you know it absolutely love to have conversations with people and I think you know moving forward we absolutely need to be increasing the diversity of our fostering communities and that's

[00:30:07] something that we are just absolutely striving to achieve. Brilliant and well same question to you do. Yeah I think again, echoing on what Carly said we're really keen to improve the diversity

[00:30:18] of our fostering cohort and to be able to give the children a young people in our service and more various range of like people who are able to support them which is just in increasing

[00:30:29] foster care is in general but also tapping into a lot of those wonderful skills and resilience that people have out there and I think some people think that you need to be absolutely perfect

[00:30:38] to be a foster career and that is not the case whatsoever you know these children need loving patient homes at the end of the day and you don't need to be perfect to do that and certainly

[00:30:48] even if you don't have a spare bedroom please do get in contact with us because there's other ways you can get involved with helping children and care and I'm more than happy to kind of sign

[00:30:56] post and help support you to figure out what's best for you to be able to do that so yeah it doesn't even need to be specifically about fostering please do get in touch for information about many

[00:31:06] other opportunities absolutely fantastic well look thank you so much for spending time with me today I think it's been absolutely I open it I'm actually thinking well that's quite exciting why not really it's time maybe this time I could do it right

[00:31:26] thank you so much for spending time for us today thank you so much having us thank you thank you take care thanks for listening to this episode of Transvox it's been a joy to have you with us

[00:31:44] if you want to make contact with us you can contact us at Jillian at Transvox.co.uk and if you'd like to support the work we do please go to Patreon and go to page Transvox and all of our money goes to our

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