Kilkenny couple share their story and raise awareness around fostering

A Kilkennywoman has spoken about how fostering has become the journey of a lifetime for her.

“Children have so many challenges when they come to you, but it’s rewarding to watch them mature,” said foster carer Mary Mulligan. “To see them not do the things they might so easily have done if they weren’t in care… that’s a big win,” she said.

“It’s a difficult path that they walk, and you are there for them to lean on. Walk with them; make sure that whatever is in front of them is in front of you too.”

Mary (56) and her husband Adam started fostering back in 2000 when they took a pair of siblings for respite care. Mary’s hankering to be a foster carer stretches further back than that, to the age of 17, when a distant relation of Mary’s became a foster carer and inspired her to do the same someday.

The couple have fostered nine children - three of them for over 15 years - as well as a child who came to her and husband Adam, at six months and who is still with them aged 24.

The couple have experience of fostering children with complex needs on a long-term basis while being supported by multidisciplinary teams and other experts dealing with developmental and behavioural difficulties.

In fact, Mary and Adam are in the process of adopting one of the children who has been in their care since he arrived in their home at the age of two.

“It was so emotional for us that he wanted to be in a family with us,” she says.

Fostering then is not without its rewards, but there are challenges too, and learning to work together as a couple has been key to Mary and Adam’s endurance over the years.

“We wouldn’t always agree on how to handle a challenging situation. You have to find a way of talking the matter through – agree to disagree. You will be challenged, but being able to stick together through that challenge is what matters,” says Mary.

“Fostering is very rewarding, but I don’t want to give the impression that it’s all wonderful and not without challenges; to do that would be setting people up for difficult experience. It’s about finding a way forward; you have to be doggedly determined.”

One particularly challenging time for Mary was having to hand back a child she took in as an infant and had supported for four years.

“You put yourself out there emotionally, mentally, physically to look after someone else’s child and you go through that again when you have to give it back,” she said. “It’s hard; like a mourning period that you go through, and you think , ‘I can’t do that again’, but you can do it. Resilience develops over time within you; resilience you don’t even know you have until the next time.”

Rewards

But the rewards are there in watching a child you nurtured going from strength to strength, says Mary.

“Not every child in care will go to college. Fostering is about watching how they progress, and that progress might be slow, but it mounts up over the years.

“It’s about walking a road with them, and you don’t know how long it will be or what’s on it. That doesn’t mean they won’t reach their destination, they just might take a different route. You can’t measure success against college courses and grades; this type of success looks different.”

Mary says that she has been helped in her carer role by Tusla’s trauma training and support programme, which helps to recognise and understand the behaviours that children exhibit. That, combined with the strong support of link workers, social workers and social care workers has helped sustain foster carers in their bid to help raise vulnerable children.

“I have found that there are really good people in Tusla – exemplary examples of staff who believed in what you were trying to do; people who would hang in there when a child wouldn’t engage.”

Peer Support

Mary worked in social care, helping homeless people and those in elderly care, and she has used the skills gleaned in those roles alongside her fostering experience to take on a newly created role in Tusla as a peer support worker, advising foster carers in need of an experienced head on wise shoulders.

While aimed at supporting carers in their first year or two with the Agency, Mary says it will also benefit longer-term foster carters because support is crucial at a later stage, too, especially when a child enters their teen years.

“It’s very important that foster carers are supported in ways that allow them to instil resilience,” she said. “It’s my job to help foster cares find that resilience. You learn from other people who have been down that road; people who will keep you in that good state of mind.”

The pilot programme, which has been running for six months, has six peer support workers working in areas across the country.

“As a peer support worker my role is to listen, not to run in with a solution but to help them find a solution that suits them; help them to find their resilience,” said Mary.

“It’s all about hanging on in there. When you see them doing that there’s a great sense of achievement, and you know the resilience will build from that.”

Fostering is an extraordinarily generous act performed by ordinary people going that extra mile for young people at a time when they most need help.

“Foster parents are people like you and me,” said Jacqui Smith, Tusla’s National Lead for Fostering. “They are farmers and hairdressers, creche workers, schoolteachers, homemakers and shop assistants who open their homes to children at a time of incredible uncertainty.

“That gesture and commitment changes children’s lives and it changes the lives of the families who foster in all kinds of amazing ways. Now, more than ever, children in our communities need loving, safe, stable homes where they can thrive and grow. You can be that adult that changes a child’s life forever.

“Mary and Adam have been doing just that for 24 years now. They have walked side by side with the children in their care on a sometimes-winding road,” she added. “It’s a journey that can last a lifetime, but it’s one that neither Mary nor Adam shows any sign of ever wanting to end.”

The increase in demand means that Tusla is looking for people from diverse backgrounds, in communities across Ireland, to provide all types of foster care and other supports for young people who need them. A schedule of events will be held throughout June, which will include local and online information sessions for anyone interested in learning more about becoming a foster carer.

For more information and to register for a foster information session visit fostering.ie, call 1800-226771 or visit www.fostering.ie