Today is World Foster Day! World Foster Day is held annually on 31 May and is an amazing global initiative that was started in 2018 and has increasingly gained momentum and traction over the past few years.
Today we want to highlight and thank all the families and individuals who have raised their hands to care for children who need a loving and safe home. Foster care can be challenging, but it is also extremely rewarding and fulfilling to see you, as a carer, make a life-changing difference in a child’s life and to see a child thrive, heal, trust, and reach their full potential.
We cannot make a difference for everyone in the world, but that doesn’t mean we should make a difference for no one. Some feel overwhelmed by the growing need of children who need a safe place or wonder whether they will be able to care for children or whether they are able to make a difference. Let us encourage you that every single child you care for, even if it ends up being one child, is one life you would have made a difference in forever, and for generations to follow.
We want to thank all the carers in our organisation, carers in the UK and carers around the world who have opened their hearts and homes and have dived into caring for children who need someone to care for them and be there for them unconditionally. If you know a foster carer, support them, hug them, love them and do something kind for them as a show of your support, they will greatly appreciate it.
For us supporting foster carers in all our various roles, it is always so amazing to hear the reasons why foster carers wanted to start fostering, how much the children have impacted them for the better and how motivated they are to keep going.
So, here is how you can get involved on World Foster Day:
- You can spread awareness on social media by drawing smiley faces on your middle three fingers (see in the picture), this represents a family and the advocation for family-based care, snapping a picture, and posting it to social media with the hashtag #worldfosterday.
- You can celebrate a foster family by:
- Making them a meal OR
- Sending them a note OR
- Running an errand for them OR
- Sending them an entertainment voucher OR
- Sending them a bunch of flowers
- Or anything else that you can think of that you know they would appreciate
Togetherness and mutual support are so important when it comes to caring for children, whether birth children, adopted children or children in foster care, and if you know a foster carer, you will put a huge smile on their face by doing something small to celebrate them.
Remember to draw a smiley face on each of your three middle fingers (see picture) and post to social media with the hashtag #worldfosterday to make some noise and shout some praise online for foster carers.
Source
https://worldfosterday.org/ World Foster Day website
By Marissa Venter – Senior Social Worker