Fostering is facing a huge recruitment crisis. Reporter Keely Greenwood went along to one Kent fostering organisation to find out what it is looking for in a foster parent and spoke to a former foster child who is now helping match children with new families.

When Natasha Morgan went to her GP thinking she might need a course of antidepressants, she was given the pills without any questions.

“He didn’t ask me anything or offer me any alternative support,” the former foster child said. “He just looked at my records and prescribed them straight away.”

Natasha, now 33, said the stereotype of being “a child in care” has been with her for her whole life.

“When he saw I had been in care he obviously decided I definitely needed the pills without feeling the need to ask me any other questions,” she added

It was the same at school. Chatham-born Natasha says she was written off as coming from care, with the label being used as an explanation for her behaviour.

“Children in care get looked at differently,” she said. “They think you are damaged goods and you can’t do certain things.”

She would keep her background a secret from her friends, while she herself was kept in the dark about her own live, left listening at doors for snippets of conversations to find out why she was taken from her family and moved into a new home.

For this reason, she said she hated being in foster care.

“I would refuse to sit at the dinner table and eat with the family,” she said. “It wasn’t what I was used to, so I just refused to eat.”

“I had been ripped away from my parents and I didn’t understand why, so I didn’t want to be there.”

Natasha, who went into care when she was just four years old, admits to running away from her foster parents to find her mum on many occasions even though the family was very loving towards her.

She knew nothing about her past, although she was still allowed supervised contact with her mum. She had to wait until she was 20 to apply for her case file which told her details of the life she had left behind.

“No one explained to me why I was in care. I didn’t know where I had come from,” she said. “It was traumatic to read.

“A line about what I was wearing when the social worker came to see me would trigger vague memories.

“But it put a lot of things into perspective.”

Her background has left her with imposter syndrome, when someone doesn’t believe their success is deserved, even though she has turned her life around.

After finishing school she completed a diploma in business administration and is now the chairman of The Hazel Project, a private organisation which matches foster parents with children and supports them through the process.

“I did not think I was good enough because of my history,” she said. “I am overwhelmed with how far I have come.

“It’s about not letting your history define your whole life. You cannot use it as a barrier to letting you lead a normal life. It’s about moving forward and feeling worthy of achieving things.

But it actually means she is the perfect person to help match children with foster parents.

“Being a child from care, I look at it a bit differently. A person might tick all the boxes but have they demonstrated they can connect with a child? Would I feel safe in this person’s home?”

Now she wants to inspire other children in care to achieve.

“I want to tell them if you stick with the support rather than push it away you can go places,” she said.

Finding the right person to help a child is the key focus of The Hazel Project which has a very strict application process for potential foster parents and works hard to ensure children are placed in the right setting.

Tracey Sullivan, director of The Hazel Project based on St Mary’s Island, Chatham, says finding a foster parent is not about looking for “perfect people”.

“We want people who have had challenges through their lives and our more relatable to our children,” she said.

“We would not strike you off just because your DBS says you were arrested for being drunk when you were 19 years old. It’s about the parents being committed to investing in their own development.”

Other important credentials are about having an understanding that all children should be treated as individuals, listening to children’s views, letting them be involved in decision making, and giving them equal opportunities, especially if they have their own children.

She added: “It is also about investing in them and not thinking of their time with you as a temporary measure.

Fostering is facing a huge recruitment crisis at the moment, which Tracey described as “beyond crisis point”.

Since 2019 the number of fostering households has decreased by 1,045 while the number of children in care has increased by 5,690.

Tracey said the reason behind the decline is due to foster parents quitting due to a lack of support, feeling undervalued and not feeling respected by social work teams, along with inadequate financial support.

She said: “These reasons for foster parents leaving the profession are the exact ones that The Hazel Project have always sought to address.”

While numbers may be depleting, it does not mean they will except anyone.

A foster parent must be in a stable place in their life. They must have the emotional and physical space to take on a child, which means they must have a spare room and the time to invest in the child’s well-being, as well as the obvious credentials of being kind, understanding, resilient and be able to act as an advocate for the child.

“It is about fighting for that child to get what they need,” Tracey said.

A potential foster parent must go through a strict application process, which includes being assessed by a panel made up of members offering a range of different perspectives - from someone who grew up in a foster family, to former foster parents, an ex-policemen, social workers and a medical advisor.

Once they have passed the various stages of the application process and been approved they must then go through strict training in topics such as safeguarding, first aid, managing challenging behaviour and skills to foster.

There are also bespoke training programmes for each family, including topics such as gang awareness and eating disorders.

Emma Hopkins was a foster parent for six years.

She said it was the “small steps” which made it such a rewarding role.

“It’s seeing how the children really make progress. Not the big stuff, but the really small stuff that you see as the foster parent that other people who are part of that child’s life might not see.

“Even getting up and making their bed for the first time or eating a green bean for the first time that they they’ve pushed away on their plate because they are so suspicious of food types that are really alien to them.

“Going for a walk on a Sunday as a family and being able to walk further than 20 minutes and skipping and cartwheeling and building up that physical stamina that they weren’t able to do at first.”

‘You are going to absorb all of that child’s trauma and you will experience secondary trauma and compassion fatigue’

But Emma, who started her career as a social worker, said the hardest part was not having professional status as a foster parent.

“It’s about needing to have a voice which carries the weight that it should as part of the decision making for the child,” she said.

The 44-year-old, whose parents were fosterers, addressed the “very real fear” that people considering fostering have about dealing with a child who may bring with them a lot of trauma.

“It is a real thing,” she said. “You are going to absorb all of that child’s trauma and you will experience secondary trauma and compassion fatigue from giving the child so much compassion.”

But she said The Hazel Project ensures none of its foster parents are ever alone by offering a well-being hub, buddy systems massage events and ensuring they take the time to do something for themselves.

Tracey said: “You get to know other parents who will be your source of help and support.

‘The work our families do is life-changing and in some situations it’s even life-saving’

“You will never be left to deal with a challenging situation alone. It’s about catching it when it’s a niggle rather than allowing it to escalate.”

She added: “We make sure our foster parents are at the centre of the organisation and get all the support they need with all the trauma they are welcoming into their homes.”

The Hazel Project, which was founded more than 25 years ago to support foster parents and help children find a caring home, said getting professional status for the foster parents is one of its key initiatives.

Tracey said: “The work our families do is life-changing and in some situations it’s even life-saving.

“If you think about the analogy of a surgeon earning a salary relevant to their expertise and training why is it different for these people who are bringing trauma into their homes and supporting it every single day?”

She added: “People don’t do it for the money but they could not do it without.”

What is The Hazel Project?

It is an umbrella organisation which includes two independent fostering providers; Diverse Care and Excel 2000. It has hubs in Sittingbourne, Chatham, and Essex.

Can I foster if I have a pet?

Yes, the only stipulation is that you cannot have more than three dogs as they could be seen as a pack which may attack the child.

How long do foster parents tend to have a foster child?

It completely varies, from just a couple of days, perhaps when a family are in crisis or dealing with an emergency situation and where the child can then return to their parent, right up to decades of living with their foster family and until the child reaches independence and beyond. A lot of children who initially go to a family as an emergency for two days are still with their foster families a decade later.

Can you foster a child if you are a single male?

Yes. Different children respond to different family setups, some children will have come from a busy home with multiple siblings and will feel more comfortable joining a family with lots going on, while some benefit from the calmness, care and attention that a one parent family can provide.

Mick Connor, who has been a foster parent for 15 years, offers support to other men who foster.

He said the biggest issue they face is public perception: “People have a real problem with men looking after children. It’s to do with culture, society and ignorance. It’s not seen as the norm and we need to change that.”

Can you foster if you have a child with special needs?

Yes. It means you can advocate for children, adapt your parenting style to the child's needs and stick by them, which are important traits.

Are children and foster parents matched according to culture and ethnicity?

Where possible but there are not enough families for the number of children coming into care, let alone families of a matching religion, culture and ethnicity for each child.