Prospective Foster Carer's reading list
Whether you're just starting to consider fostering with Bucks or would simply like to learn more, these books can provide a valuable glimpse into the difference fostering can make. All of the titles below can be found in Buckinghamshire libraries!
Sarah Naish: The A-Z of Therapeutic Parenting : strategies and solutions
Summary: Parents of children with attachment difficulties, or who have experienced childhood trauma, need to parent differently to meet their child's specific needs and help them start to make sense of the world. This book is everything you need in order to therapeutically parent.
Andy Elvin and Martin Barrow: Welcome to fostering : a guide to becoming and being a foster carer
Summary: A comprehensive guide to foster parenting, this title offers guidance on all aspects of fostering. Exploring the practicalities of receiving a new child in the home, and how to deal with the more complex issues that may arise, this book covers the joy and wonder of fostering as well as how to cope with the crises and setbacks.
Laura, the foster parent partner: First-time Fostering : a practical guide for supporting kids in foster care
Summary: Parenting a child in foster care comes with unique challenges that most parenting books don't cover. It's easy to feel overwhelmed and alone. 'First-Time Fostering' offers practical, in-the-moment guidance so foster parents and kinship caregivers can navigate hard moments with compassion and confidence.
Dr Margot Sunderland: What Every Parent Needs to Know : a psychologist's guide to raising happy, nurture children
Summary: Based on over 700 scientific studies into children's development, Margot Sunderland explains how to develop your child's potential to the full.
Hope Daniels: Hackney child: a true tale of surviving poverty and the care system
Summary: 'Hackney Child' is about a resourceful child, whose parents are unable to cope. Hope is left to help her brothers survive poverty and the economic collapse of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Lemn Sissay: My name is why : a memoir
Summary: At the age of 17, after a childhood in a fostered family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. This is Lemn’s story; a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. Sissay reflects on a childhood in care, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home.
Looking for something for children?
Looking for something to introduce the idea of foster care with your children?
We have a booklist for children aged between 5 and 14 years old, that has a selection of brilliant stories all children will enjoy reading, with characters who’ve been fostered.