If you’re a support carer or thinking about becoming one, you might be worried about all of the ‘practical’ things you can do to make a difference for a child; giving them a bedroom of their own, providing favourite meals, doing the school runs, for example. These things can really help. But it’s usually the deeper, often less tangible things about care that really make the biggest difference for the child. One of the most powerful things a support carer can provide is stability.
At first glance, this is quite a dull word. Perhaps you think of excitement, grand gestures and gifts (Christmas comes to mind or a long-anticipated holiday). In reality, stability is none of those things. It’s not loud or particularly fun, but it is the quiet consistency and reliability of an adult’s presence in a child’s life from one day to the next. For Foster Care Wales, contact saferfostering.org.uk/foster-care-wales
Think of how different this must feel from the kind of unpredictability children in care have so often experienced in their past lives, at home and perhaps also with previous support families or in residential settings. To cope with this unpredictability, they’ve learnt to rely on themselves alone; they’ve been let down, disappointed, time and again. The effect of this is very physical as well as emotional. A child’s whole nervous system can become alert to potential disruption and threat.
Fortunately, the kind of radical shift in a child’s worldview that can happen through contact with stability doesn’t need to happen overnight. The knowledge that rules exist and apply today as they did yesterday; that an adult’s reaction will be the same whether having a particularly hard or easy day; all of this contributes to feelings of safety for the child, of security and calmness. The nervous system starts to relax, slowly, over days, weeks, months.
Stability sounds like a simple enough thing to offer a child. In fact, it isn’t. Some of the simplest, most ordinary moments with the children in your care will end up being some of the most important and precious.
About Author
