[DemolitionRed]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

I'm in shock... someone has it in their heart to open their family to a child in need and straight away there are those who take that a a negative.

Shameful.

I've got to disagree on this. Social workers have to make decisions in the best interest of the child. If it was just a case of someone opening up their family unit to a child in need, it would be easy but its much more complex than that. Language, religion, culture and even race are carefully looked at (by most) when it comes to fostering a child and rightly so because children need as much familiarity as we can possibly give them and on top of that, those children are not finding a permanent family but a temporary one.

I'm presently working with refugee kids. Many of them arrive here with no living family, many don't speak the language. Some of the younger children get fostered out to English families because there just aren't enough people from their own heritage that want to foster. Those kids do suffer further trauma because there's no familiarity. Of course its important that the child learns our language but we need to understand that these children aren't just Syrian, African or Iraqi by language but by culture and religion too.

As a kid we moved house and my parents binned everything and purchased all new furniture. I had a meltdown over the loss of an unfamiliar red lampshade. Of course, it wasn't just the lampshade, that was just the trigger. If the loss of familiar furniture can affect a child, imagine what its like for children who lose all familiarity. If only it was so simple as the love of a family. The reality is, its so much more.