Moira
Moira and I have been foster parents for about 14 years now. In that time we have looked after about
30 kids(Moira does most of the work). Some of them have only been with us for a few weeks and others
have been with us for as long as 7 years. Before we started fostering, we used to take in young
French students for 1 week at a time and older ones for a month. At one point we had both foster
children and students at the same time but this became too much for us and we decided to concentrate
on fostering.
We have also added an extension to our house. This has given us 2 more bedrooms, a garage and the
kitchen has been transferred from the main house. At the time the idea was that we would have more
space for the children. However, shortly after completing the extension, Gareth was born so although
it did give us some extra space it was not as much as we had intended in the first place.
Moira's hobbies are knitting, reading and going to the cinema.
Moira comes from Prestonpans which is a small town a few
miles from Edinburgh. If you wish to see a few old pictures
showing what the place used to be like over a hundred years
ago please click here.
Both Moira and I have just finished reading a trilogy of books by Dave
Pelzer. The books are an autobiography of Dave's life as an abused kid, his
time in foster care and his struggle to come to terms with the problems he
encountered along the way. The Dave Pelzer website gives more detail and I
would highly recommend reading the books.
If you want to see more information on foster caring, please look at
the following URLs:
Foster Parent Homepage
Foster Parents CARE
Social Work Recruitment Campaign
The social work department have recently been trying to recruit more
foster parents in our area.
At the moment I think there are only about
3 families including ourselves in Penicuik who foster.
We were
therefore asked if we would mind fronting the campaign. After agreeing
to do so we were interviewed
and photograghed for a local paper.
Below is the picture which appeared in the paper. If you click on it,
you can see a much larger version where you can read the text.