In my experience
As Mother’s Day approaches, three women share their very different routes to motherhood
‘I’VE FOSTERED MORE THAN 200 CHILDREN’
Author Maggie Hartley has written 24 books about her experiences as a foster carer. She has one grown-up biological son.
I’ve always loved working with children. My passion for it started when I was 16 and volunteered at a holiday playscheme for children with disabilities, many of whom had autism. One day, I saw a young boy who was sobbing and distressed. He didn’t speak English, but I watched, amazed, as another volunteer calmed him down just with her expressions, gestures and touch.
It had a pivotal effect on me – I knew then that I wanted a career that helped children.
In my early 20s, I began working at a residential care home, before becoming a house mother at a school for children with behavioural and emotional issues, where I looked after eight children, day and night. It was this role that led me to become a foster carer. I had the right experience and I wanted to support the children that other people had perhaps given up on.
Special relationship
I was single and in my mid-20s when I began. I applied to the local authority and had a rigorous assessment to check my suitability to be a foster carer, before I was interviewed by a panel of social workers and lay people. I was overjoyed when my application was approved.
My first foster child was a 17-yearold girl, and her newborn baby. I was delighted but also worried – what if she didn’t like me, or my house? I needn’t have worried. As I was quite young myself, she felt at ease with me and we soon developed a good relationship. She arrived scared and uncertain, and was incredibly nervous around her baby.
During the two years she was with me, I worked with her to build her confidence. She left with a house of her own to go to, excited about her future. It was very special to be part of her new beginning, and I still speak to her to this day.
Since then, for more than 20 years I’ve helped over 200 children – of all ages, races and backgrounds. Sometimes it’s been a simple case of providing respite care while a child’s parent was in hospital. In other instances, I have had children who’ve been through awful trauma – some whose parents were addicts, or who had suffered abuse or neglect, and others who’d been orphaned. While I couldn’t change what had happened in their past, I could try to help them move forwards by parenting them, laughing with them, playing with them and nurturing them. To see a positive change in a child and to know that I played a part in it makes me incredibly proud.
One pair of siblings were two and three when they came to me. They’d suffered terrible neglect, had no toys and didn’t know how to pla
