My working day begins at 8am, but I do not know what time I will be home tonight. I often work as late as 9.30pm, but I am not the only one. All the persons that make up the fostering team are dedicated individuals, who willingly work at odd hours if necessary. Ours is not a job; it is a vocation for providing children with a nourishing environment in which to grow up.

My role as the Fostering Team Leader of Agenzija Appogg includes all that is necessary to make fostering possible, from assisting the establishment of fostering law and getting involved in awareness campaigns, to fostering training and leading a team of social workers in various aspects of fostering.

On entering the office I make time to greet my colleagues—I feel it is of utmost importance to have good relationships with my team. We deal with delicate issues on a daily basis, therefore we need to have very good communication.

I personally train the members of my team to carry their own case load, whereby they perform assessments of prospective foster carers, monitor existent placements, perform regular home-visits and provide constant support. The child, natural family and fostering family each requires their own social worker so that everyone is given unbiased protection and care.

We have regular meetings for case reviews and I would normally start the day by  supervising their cases, but this morning I find that two new, individual cases must take priority. In one case, it is the mother that wishes to place her own baby in a home, while the other concerns a child protected by a Care Order.

The young mother sits before me, clutching her two-month-old baby boy close to her chest. Most commonly it is the parents themselves that approach us, asking for help. Parents may come for various reasons. They may want to protect their own children from an environment of drug addiction, prostitution, mental disorder or domestic violence. Perhaps, having themselves been abused as children, the parents suffer an abusive relationship as adults, or it could have resulted in that they do not know how to raise their own kids.

As the young mother finishes her own story and looks at me with tears in her eyes, I brace myself—I am still not immune to beholding distress. It is obviously very difficult for parents to let go of their children. But because they feel that the kids belong to them, they rarely opt for adoption and will usually prefer to put them in residential care rather than foster care because they feel threatened.

While parents may hope that things will be sorted out and that the children will go back to their actual homes, we encourage them to opt for fostering, offering education about what fostering entails and the role of the foster carer. Parents need encouragement and they need to believe in themselves but we also need to be more aware of the needs of the children.

I advise the mother, placing emphasis on the research that has shown that individual care is of utmost importance for children under three years of age since they require stimulation and emotional development.

The first three years of human life are the formative years and thus the most important in a child's development. It is in those early years that we acquire emotional language, distinguishing the mood associated with laughing as opposed to crying, for example. Otherwise when we grow up we cannot read any emotion in another person through facial expressions and body language—like a toddler that cannot read the signals and is afraid of nothing.

In residential care it is not always possible to give the necessary one-to-one attention due to time constraints, where the ratio is one or two nuns to twelve children.  It is also necessary to take into consideration that, in later years, the emotional development process may be very slow, not as it would be in the first three years of a child's life, when the brain is learning fast. The mother finally opts for her child to be fostered.

I deal with the other case where an eight-month-old baby girl has been placed under a Care Order. In such cases child protection is our first priority, yet we need to be aware that the kids are not at fault and need not be detained in residential care while the parents are living their lives freely.

Research has also found that children who have experienced emotional traumas at a young age are often not emotionally intelligent when they grow up. For example, they cannot understand facial expressions or tones of voice and can understand that they have done something wrong only by being hit. Thus it is most important to put such children in a safe environment where they can learn body language through the proper interaction, otherwise it may be lost forever.

Presently, there is no Children's Act to protect these kids although we do have a Civil Code (Chapter 16) which regulates rights and duties of parents and children. However, children may be moved from one residential home to another, often separated from siblings.

I discuss the two cases with my team. However, I will ultimately do the matching. I am also a member in the Children and Young Persons Advisory Board so I have a direct role in seeing where the children go. During the twelve years of fostering in Malta we have found a foster home for 250 children

While the process of matching children with their ideal foster carers can usually take months, for babies and young children the quicker we find them a home the better, due to the importance of their receiving individual attention.

For older children, the matching process is a most sensitive and time-consuming process, since we must be very responsible—we cannot risk the children being rejected again! So much care is taken for matching that we normally encounter no problems with fostering thereafter.

While aiming for the right psychological match, we must get to know the foster children and the foster carers personally and deeply. We try to match the needs of the foster child with the  environment that can be provided by the foster carers. We must also take into account practical factors, such as age, and we must examine both sides of the situation.

We regard with respect the foster carers' own children while sometimes even people with no children of their own or single parents may foster. Indeed, there are children who can trust only one adult. After the placement, we encourage the contact of the natural parents with their children only if it is in the interest of the children.

The assessment of these two cases has taken up most of the morning, amidst taking phone-calls, checking emails and the occasional face around my office door. I take my lunch on the go, although the staff occasionally eat together as a team.

I like to take time out for the staff—I support them as much as possible and accompany them sometimes on their visits. I also feel it is important that the staff are praised and encouraged, especially when dealing with stressful cases. I understand how easily one can get burnt out and I truly respect the carers from residential homes because I know how heavy and intense their load can be. 

While I am also a qualified social worker, I have lived and worked in residential care for twenty years as a brother of the Salisians. It is the experiences had during that period working in residential care that drives me towards fostering, for the benefit of the children. I deeply believe that if kids can live in a family it would be better than in residential care, especially for babies and toddlers. If residential care can be successful, fostering is incredible.

This afternoon I accompany a team member on a home-visit. Placements are monitored continuously through home visits, whereas the Placement Agreement outlining the terms and conditions of the placement, including life-skills development and the progress expected in a child's emotional condition, is reviewed every six to twelve months.

We regard foster carers not as clients but service providers. Upon completion of the foster training and educational sessions provided by Appogg, prospects decide whether to proceed. Before approval, an assessment—similar to a character profile—outlining their abilities concerning child-care, how they would they handle stress that may arise from the situation, their own relationship as a couple and so on, is carried out.

This is a Care Order case—a recent placement of a child who had suffered abuse and emotional trauma. I am touched by the tender expression in her carers' faces as the child interacts with each of them. She is learning to develop a trusting relationship with her foster carers and the social worker reports great improvements in her progress.

The goal of fostering is to re-integrate the children with their natural parents while giving them the opportunity of a loving family experience in the process. Yet, while foster carers are bound until the children reach eighteen years of age, most youths remain in their foster home thereafter, bound by love.

Back at the office, I prepare for delivering a training session for prospective foster carers. Today, a foster carer will share her experiences. Foster carers must be aware of certain issues that they may have to deal with and these are covered during six sessions of three hours each. 

Foster children may often have behavioural problems such as misbehaviour or they are very withdrawn. Some kids may be younger than their age in terms of emotional development, practical capability and self-control. Before anybody can become a foster carer, one needs to learn skills on how to communicate with a special child.

Fortunately, the vast majority are success stories. This is because we are so careful during the matching process and we follow through each case individually, giving as much support as we can. There are also support group meetings for foster carers, foster children and the children of the foster carers every month and we network to enable foster carers some rest while others may be prepared to take on the responsibility of another or more children.

Fostering is really a vocation and although people may decide they want to foster we may refuse because we feel that perhaps they are considering their own needs rather than the needs of a child. Furthermore, while Child-in-Care benefit is given by the government, the generosity of carers is extreme by comparison.

After a full day at the office, it is not over yet. I go to the Foster Carers Association meeting to fine-tune the last details for the Christmas Party. Actually, these meetings also serve as an opportunity for us to share with others who have also dedicated their lives to making a difference in a child's life... regarding only the children's smiles as the reward!

For more information visit www.appogg.gov.mt or call Agenzija Appogg on 2295 9000.