Little Bears in Care aims to encourage people to become foster carers

Dee Constantine

I grew up on the Isle of Wight, moving to Southampton when I was 20, starting a job at Subway and excited to find a way to make a difference to the world. I have now been living in Southampton for 13 years. When I first moved to the city I studied to complete my BSc Hons Psychology degree, working full time at a call centre and volunteering at Breakout Youth, a wonderful charity still going strong in Southampton that supports LGBTQ+ young people.

Now, I’m a Recruitment Officer with the Fostering Team at Southampton City Council, working with all our wonderful foster carers, as well volunteering with the Youth Justice Service as a Referral Order Panel Member.

Fostering is where a child or young person between the ages of 0–18, who is unable to stay with their birth family, lives with a foster carer in a family home. This is often temporary but is sometimes a long-term arrangement. Fostering provides time, space and support to enable children and young people to go back to their birth families where it is safe and suitable to do so.

Our new campaign, ‘Little Bears in Care’, runs between 12-25 May. Designed to raise awareness of the experiences of our looked-after children and young people, the campaign aims to encourage people to become foster carers for Southampton City Council.

We have 17 wonderful locations involved who are ‘fostering’ our bears for two weeks. Each bear represents a young person or child who has experienced care, sharing their stories and the powerful impact of the relationships they built through care. Each bear also has either a knitted scarf or fabric accessory lovingly made by our foster carers.

Children and young people in foster care can often have very emotional stories and want their voices heard without interruption or judgement. This campaign allows them to be heard, highlighting the impact foster carers have on the lives of the children and young people they work with.

When reading the stories of our bears, you will notice that it’s often the littlest things that make the biggest impact, like being able to talk about their worries, choose their own bedding, buy their own books, or going to a restaurant for the first time. Those small, everyday moments help children and young people to feel safe, valued and loved, providing lasting change. They may seem ordinary but for a child in care, they can be life changing.

We wanted the campaign to span as much of Southampton as possible, to represent children and young people from all communities who have experienced care. There is no one type of person or family that may experience care and it is important to us that we recruit foster carers from all communities, so that we can provide support where it’s needed.

Nationally, fostering recruitment has been a challenge. This is linked to several aspects such as the pandemic, cost of living crisis, biological children staying at home longer, spare rooms being used as home office spaces and changing family situations. This means siblings are more likely to be separated, or children are placed further away from their families, friends and communities.

Quite often people think they must be ‘perfect’ to be a foster carer, which just isn’t true. We ask that foster carers have a spare bedroom and are over 21 years of age. We provide support and training to enable people to become the best foster carers they can be, regardless of relationship status, employment, class, gender, sexuality, culture, ethnicity or religion. You can also foster whether you have had your own birth children or not, provided you have some childcare experience, formal or informal.

Being a foster carer can be deeply rewarding although it also comes with challenges, but help is always available from our highly experienced team of fostering staff and foster carers, alongside access to a wide range of specialist support services and training.

If you have been thinking about it but haven’t quite taken the leap, please do get in touch. So many foster carers I speak to wish they had done it sooner. You can check out our website, Fostering, for more information, email us on fostering@southampton.gov.uk or call 0300 1312797 to chat with us about your interest.

A list of Little Bears in Care locations can be found here: Fostering teddy bear trail location list.