Sandy and Patrick's story

Our Fostering team and local Reading foster carers are encouraging others to consider fostering a child or young person to help them create lasting connections in Reading.

Whether it’s the bond between a carer and a child or young person, the relationships built with social workers, or the friendships nurtured with other fostering households in the community, strong relationships are the golden thread that run through all fostering stories.

Sandy and Patrick are long-standing Reading foster carers who have provided a loving, safe and caring household to many local children and young people when they’ve needed care. Read their story below.

Sandy and Patrick’s fostering story

“Some of my earliest memories relate to fostering as my family started fostering shortly before I was three. I remember both excitement and anticipation of new foster siblings arriving, as well as hiding behind a chair when some adopters arrived to take their baby (no transition time in the 1960s).

I eventually had three long term foster brothers who are all still very much a part of our family, and my parents also cared for over 120 other babies and children over the next 40 years or so. However, the main reason that Patrick and I started fostering came from wanting something positive to come out of a somewhat traumatic experience which involved pneumonia, sepsis, an emergency C-section and a premature baby!

We only ever intended to do short term and emergency care, which we did for ten years. This changed in late December 2014 when we were asked to care for an extra special baby for ‘a few weeks to a few months.’

Ten years later, he’s still with us: life with him has taken many twists and turns but has also given us the opportunity to develop unexpected skills. Patrick has a great reputation at school for adapting battery toys to make them accessible, and I can tell people far more than they’d probably want to know about a blended ketogenic diet!”