Nadine & Paul's feature in The Village Directory

It was great to see this pop through postboxes this week across Kent! 

Romney Marsh foster carers Nadine & Paul, who are one of the families in our community, have been featured in the April-May issue of The Village Directory, hoping to encourage more potential families to come forward to help the growing number of children coming into care who have disabilities to remain in family environments, as opposed to residential care.

We're recruiting for more amazing families across Kent and the South East, so if you or someone you know think that fostering could be a fantastic new path for you, please get in touch! 📞👋

Kent Foster Carers Encourage More to Come Forward

Foster carers Paul and Nadine live on the Romney Marsh and provide a loving family home to two children with additional needs. Here Paul tells the story of how they got into fostering and shares some advice for anyone considering fostering as a vocation and alternative career.

“We wish we had known earlier in our lives that fostering was going to have such a positive impact and be so rewarding. I had been working for a transport company for 20 years and Nadine had been a childminder then worked in a nursery. We had raised two children of our own and felt we had many of the necessary skills and experiences to become foster carers.

When we decided it was time for a career change, we knew that we wanted to care for children with disabilities. We had friends who fostered and saw how rewarding it was. We could see that they were making a positive difference to the children's lives. After a lot of homework and speaking to other foster carers, we started our journey with a specialist fostering agency. I would always recommend that you speak to other foster carers first as they can tell you what it’s really like.

The two children we care for have additional needs but first and foremost they are children. They live with us on a long-term basis and although they have different challenges to me, at the heart of it, no matter what the condition is, they are children who need the security of a family. They need the confidence that someone's going to be there for them, no matter what.

Fostering has enriched our family. Our adult son and daughter now both work in schools because of their experience being part of a family that fosters. When we all sit down for Sunday lunch it's noisy and busy, but it's one big family and that really does enrich our lives.

We have a better quality of life as foster carers. My commute is now to the kitchen! The things we do with the children like going to the beach, going on train rides – all the things I liked doing when I was a child – I get to do now, under the pretext that I’m working!  

We chose to foster with Fostering Together because they have the experts to give us the support we need. We are part of a community of likeminded people who care for children with disabilities. That’s really important to us; not just for the friendships, but for the opportunities to learn and to share advice with others, especially anyone new to fostering.

Somebody once said, ‘if you love what you do, you'll never work again’. We feel a little bit guilty sometimes because we’re actually having a great time. We get more satisfaction out of it than any other career we could have chosen.“