As someone who has gone through the fostering system, in this blog I wanted to talk about how I have been able to use this experience to expand and build in my own personal skills for my future life. When being in the fostering system, I was struggling very badly on what I wanted to do in the future as all I was thinking was bad thoughts like’ oh I’m in foster care, I’m not going to have a future’, ‘what’s the point of doing stuff, I’m not going to be able to succeed in life’, ‘ there’s no point making an effort, I’m just a failure’.
The fact of being in foster care, really made me feel like I was not going to have a future, as the common stigmatism of being in care within my friendship group and within my peers is that if you are in care, you will not really have a future. The typical talk of someone who is in care is very bad and is very high on the thoughts of people who bully within the area of where I lived at the time.
After a while of being in foster care, I realised that I needed to focus on building up my skills and personal skills otherwise, I would find it especially hard to find employment in the long run and down the line. Even though I was still in college, and I was undertaking my extended diploma in art and design, and retaking my English at GCSE level, I wanted to build upon my public speaking and group work within the field of work.
During the last few months of being in my foster placement, I received a letter from an external organisation who got the local authority bid to run what is known as #youthvoice programme within the local authority. Within this the organisation wanted to hire some care experienced people to become young facilitators where we would gain experience and skills for working life, but also get paid for working as well. When receiving this, I was happy to apply as I wanted to get as much skills and experience as I possibly could, but when I found out that I got one of the positions within the organisation, I was very happy.
In this experience, I was very lucky as I was able to build up my own professional and personal skills by working with young people but also learning how to work better as part of a team in the form of a working environment. This was one of the skills that I felt I was struggling with, as not only did I feel I was struggling with this, I also felt that it was important for me to learn this as at this specific time I was applying to go to university.
By being in this post, it allowed me to focus directly on building up my skills and also build up my confidence of being in the working environment again, since being in this role, I have been able to expand my skills further into future roles that I have had from working in research as a young advisor to working as a creative in a consultant role and as a postgraduate student.
So, if I could give care experienced people advice from my experiences of being in care and expanding my personal skills, I would say never for one moment think that just cause you are in care does not mean that you are not able to learn and get the future that you want, because from my own experience I would say I am living proof that living in care can also give you better chances then you might of got otherwise.
Always believe that you can achieve what you want too because no matter what being in care will never stop you from getting to where you want to be…..
By Anonymous Care Experienced blogger.
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