Meet Shirley- Shirley has been a Barnsley foster carer since 2016. Shirley recently spoke to us about the magical experience of helping a 4 year old foster child to come out of his shell. Here is Shirley in her own words:
“He’d found it hard to settle in numerous previous placements.. I was told of lots of things that he didn’t like, one being noise, so I set about doing fun but constructive stuff to see how he reacted and how I could help him manage this.”
“I dug out a load of paperwork from my old job – lots of pieces of paper stapled together. I asked him if he wanted to help me with something and showed him how to safely remove all the staples with a little gadget, which he thoroughly enjoyed. I then asked him if he had ever used a shredder before. He hadn’t, so I explained what it does and laughed while telling him: ‘it sounds like a crazy bee mate, you’ll see!’ This got his interest.”
“We shredded the first piece together, with my hands on his and he loved it! After a load of praise and laughing about him being a natural shredder, he’d forgotten about the noise and was just mimicking a loud bee when he did it. He didn’t mind the noise of it at all so this became a regular thing he liked to do on visits.”
“I also introduced him to my children and my eight grandchildren, and he was soon part of their little gang too.”
“One day, driving him home, he said: ‘Shirls, if I lived with you, I could see you every day couldn’t I?’ I said: ‘Yes you could, why would you like that mate?’, he said ‘Yes’ so I reassured him by saying ‘Do you know what mate? I’d like that too!’ BINGO! and the rest is history. He became a long-term [foster match] with me, before going back to live with his mum.”
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