Our Bradford team treat our birth children for Sons and Daughters Month

Every October, the fostering community come together to celebrate Sons and Daughters Month, an annual campaign by The Fostering Network. This year our North team decided to celebrate this at our Bradford office and give recognition to the important role that birth children and young people play in welcoming foster children into their family. This celebration is a fantastic opportunity for us to acknowledge and thank all the sons and daughters of our foster carers for helping to play a vital role in their foster family. It's not easy welcoming other children into your home, knowing that your parent's attention will have to be split. However, just being there can sometimes help children in care settle and develop due to having other children their own age or older. You are all stars! We chose a day in the October half term, which meant more children and young people could attend as they wouldn't be at school. We treated the birth children to have lunch at Nando’s and then followed this with a game of bowling. The Nando’s restaurant was chosen, not only because of the food but they also catered for a Hala diet and provided vegetarian options. Our fostering support workers sent out individual invites to the children inviting them along and detailing the location and plans for the day a few weeks in advance and it was a huge success! We had excellent attendance with eight birth children, two foster carers and two staff attending the event. It was an extremely positive afternoon and all the children and young people go along very well, which was excellent as some of them were only meeting for the first time. The activity choices of Nando’s and bowling were well suited. The meal at Nando’s gave an opportunity for the children and young people to meet and get to know each other within a relaxed environment. Hollywood Bowl provided a fun space for the young people to have more fun, we were even given the VIP area to use which the young people loved! We had one game of bowling with two teams, the young people enjoyed cheering each other on and the friendly competition. Overall the afternoon was a success and the young people certainly enjoyed themselves. We even spoke about the opportunity to create a 'birth children group' which many were keen to join to have more fun days out like this, which will hopefully start in the new year, which we can't wait for. As a little thank you and reminder we gave all our young people postcards on the day.