The Modern Day Foster Carer- Part 2- Therapeutic Approach

This isn’t necessarily a typical story…

‘When our young man moved in, he was on a 360 placement, which we didn’t really know anything about at the time, other than it involves a lot more support and it’s a therapeutic placement’.

Halima and Adam have support from fortnightly psychotherapist sessions within Nexus Fostering, which essentially help the child, however through the parenting from the foster parents. At some points, they also received external weekly psychotherapy sessions. ‘These helped build the broader family network, allowing sibling dynamics to grow in a positive way and become an extended family altogether, we were kind of trained in family building, which I think is incredible’.

‘Our experience has been incredibly positive for all of us, growing together with our young man, but there’s a lot of unusual to it. We’ve been fortunate enough to receive training and experience particular input from professionals beyond what I understand to be the normal case. Something we feel very passionately about is the therapeutic approach to parenting and how it’s possibly not delivered across the board to the level we would want it to be in. Our story is a very peculiar story as well because of what we have been given access to, because of the support from Nexus we’ve had’.

Halima and Adam have been through a journey and discuss how the therapeutic parenting approach driven by the training and their experience working with professionals has allowed them to essentially build their family and be the parents they want to be.

‘It has benefited the whole growth of who we are and how we live and what we do with a young man integrated into that and not as a kind of separate entity that’s bolted on’.

Halima and Adam have had their young man with them for just over three years and ‘still feel like we’re new carers, it feels like we are still learning and have a lot more that we still need to experience.’ Halima and Adam spoke about how their young man has been part of the family since day one. ‘He’s amazing with our younger children, our little girl waves him off to school in the morning, waves at the window and he will stop now to make sure she gets there to wave. Our birth son was 5 when our young man arrived and sees him as an older brother and shows him off at school. Our daughter can say his name and it’s one of the first words she said.’

Halima and Adam spoke about the family’s growth and how this came from the sympathy, empathy, and understanding they learned through therapeutic parenting and getting people to see what we love about whom he is and using that as the tool to be there for him and to grow with him.

‘We are all changing, he’s obviously grown, but we’ve also grown, our family has grown, now with a toddler, it’s constantly changing. So, the reciprocating relationship was the key to us building a family with him and understanding he’s reflecting us and we are reflecting him’.

See Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 & Part 6 of Halima and Adam's Story