Fostering is an incredibly rewarding role, but shaping the lives of children living with trauma can also be challenging and takes a huge amount of patience, resilience and empathy, every single day.
Whether you’re a seasoned foster parent or new to the role, if you don’t look after your own well-being, it may become more difficult to keep providing children with the care and support they need. That’s why it’s essential to build a self-care toolkit that helps you feel your best and gives you the strength to carry on.
Join us as we explore what self-care really means, when it’s time to dig deeper into survival care, and our tips for creating survival care strategies and a self-care toolkit to safeguard your well-being.
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Caring for yourself is an important part of caring for the children you support. If you ever need guidance, reassurance, or simply someone to talk to, ISP Fostering is here for you. Our experienced team offers ongoing support, training and understanding at every stage of your fostering journey.
What self-care really means
Self-care is often misunderstood as taking a trip to a spa or having a bubble bath. Although these things can be helpful, self-care is really about making small changes to your everyday life to protect your overall well-being and to prevent burnout from creeping up on you.
But sometimes, even those acts of self-care can feel out of reach when you’re trying to cope in the here and now. For example, when a child’s survival strategies or big emotions knock your emotional thermometer off balance, sending your nervous system into fight-or-flight, and making everything feel too big to manage.
These are the moments when self-care is needed the most but might not be possible, and when leaning on survival care can help you reorganise your thoughts and keep going.
Self-care vs Survival care
Self-care and survival care are similar – they both help you look after your overall well-being. But when and why you use them sets them apart.
Self-care is about maintaining your emotional, mental and physical health. It’s preventative, helping you reduce the risk of burnout, strengthen your resilience, and protect your long-term well-being.
Whereas survival care is about what helps you right now. It’s the steps you take in the moment to feel safer and more in control of your thoughts, feelings, and actions when you’re feeling overwhelmed or dysregulated. Survival care is the point when self-care becomes finding small ways to get through the day or manage something you have no choice but to face.
Building self-care strategies that work for you can limit how often you need to rely on survival care. But even with these in place, there will be times on your fostering journey when you have to dig a little deeper into survival care.
Recognising when to use survival care strategies
Survival care strategies are the small things that help you feel better, bring you back to the present, and give you the energy boost you need to face the next challenge.
But before you can begin using survival care, you need to recognise how you’re feeling. This self-awareness helps you consciously realise when things are getting too much, so you can act quickly by reaching for a survival care strategy before things become unmanageable.
The emotional thermometer is a brilliant tool that can help. This simple visual scale, which starts at 1 (you’re feeling great) and goes up to 10 (where you’re exploding out of control), can help you become more consciously aware of how you’re really feeling. It can also encourage you to get into the habit of regularly checking in with yourself, so stick it on the fridge or bathroom mirror as a gentle reminder to pause and reflect throughout the day.
Once you’re aware, you can lean on your survival care strategies. These will be personal to everyone, but here are a few ideas to help you think about what could work for you.
- Grounding techniques: Use a grounding technique that works for you, such as the 5-4-3-2-1 method. Something that brings you back to the here and now and helps you regulate your nervous system.
- Micro me-times: Sometimes, all you need is a few minutes by yourself to gather your thoughts and feel ready to tackle the next challenge. So pause for a cup of tea, pretend to take the rubbish out or pop to the shop on your own.
- Text a friend: If you don’t have time for a long chat, you could ask a friend to be your go-to person to text when you need to vent your frustrations or want a reminder that you’re doing a great job. Even if they don’t reply straight away, just offloading can help you feel a lot better.
- Pick your battles: When you’re in survival care mode, it’s more important than ever to pick your battles. If arguing about screen time or desperately encouraging a child to brush their teeth sends you to ten on your emotional thermometer, you have to ask yourself, is this a battle worth having today?
- Slot in feel good things: When things feel heavy, little pick-me-ups that help you feel good and make you smile can get you through each day. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of slipping on your favourite hoodie and a cosy pair of socks or starting your day with a song you know will lift your spirits.
- Extend empathy to yourself: During tough times, try to remind yourself that you’re only human, reframing your thinking from ‘I can’t do this’ to ‘This is hard, but I’m still here, showing up for a child.”
Realistic acts of self-care
When you have time to use self-care strategies, they can protect your long-term well-being and help make the stresses of daily life feel more manageable. They don’t have to be big and include things that, at first glance, may not seem like an act of self-care. Here are some examples of realistic acts of self-care that, over time, can help you feel more in control, grounded and ready to face challenges head-on.
- Reduce your mental load: Meal plan, schedule your weekly shop, use a shared calendar and prep for the next day. Getting organised will prevent your mental checklist from growing day by day, clearing your mind, and lightening your load.
- Be careful with your time: Your time is precious, and sometimes we all need a little reminder that it’s okay to say ‘no’ or to postpone something that can wait until another day. Setting boundaries around how you spend your time and who you spend it with isn’t selfish; it’s an act of self-care.
- Move your body: When you’re exhausted, it can be really difficult to find the motivation to get up and move. But daily exercise, no matter how small, can really improve your energy levels, lift your mood, and safeguard your mental health.
- Get some fresh air: Make sure you get outside at least once a day, even if it’s raining, and use all your senses to be present in the moment. When you just sit and take it all in, it will remind you that in this noisy, turbulent, and unpredictable world, you can still find peace and beauty.
- Escape through art: Dance around the living room, watch a whole film from start to finish, or read a good chunk of that book you bought a year ago. Art isn’t just there to entertain us, but to help us escape from the monotony, stress, and responsibilities of daily life.
- Check in on your inner voice: When you’re busy and feeling close to burnout, your inner voice can either make things better or ten times worse. Although it’s not always easy to switch your mindset from pessimistic to positive, regularly checking in on your inner voice can help you catch unhelpful thoughts before they spiral.
- Know when to take a break: At ISP, we know that caring for children living with trauma isn’t easy. That’s why, when you foster with us, you receive 22 nights of paid respite allowance each year.
We’re here to support you
At ISP, our wrap-around therapeutic support means you’re never alone on your fostering journey. We’re here for you, no matter the hour, so don’t wait to reach out:
- We’re only a phone call away. Whether you’re on the brink of burnout or just need a little guidance or advice, our team is here for you 24/7.
- Make the most of your supervision meetings. Be open and honest with your social worker about the challenges you’re facing, so they can give you the support you need.
- Join our reflective practice sessions. These group discussions can help you reflect on your experiences and learn from other foster parents. They’re also a great way to find out which well-being strategies work for them.
- Lean on our network of fostering specialists. From therapists and social workers to education advisors and counsellors, our network of fostering professionals is here to support you in all areas of foster parent life.
- Relax and have fun. Come along to the activities and events we plan throughout the year. They’re a great place to meet other foster families and build an even wider network of support.
- Explore our well-being training. These training courses will teach you how to build your own well-being toolkit, practise mindfulness, and safeguard yourself from foster parent burnout.
- Check out our well-being hub. Log in to our foster parent portal, where you can find guided meditations, workouts, and nutritious recipes that look after your body and mind.
Remember: You’re only human
Every foster parent experiences challenges on their journey, and that’s okay. What matters is how you manage those challenges.
Regardless of how you’re feeling, you show up for children in your care every day, and that’s something you should be proud of. But it’s important to remember that you’re only human and you can’t run on empty.
Building self-care and survival strategies now will ensure you can continue to help children heal from their trauma, form trusting connections, and have the childhood they deserve.
Ready to enquire?
If you’d like to learn more about fostering, we’d love to hear from you. Call us on 0800 0857 989 or submit an enquiry form to discover how to become a foster parent and the support you’ll receive on your fostering journey.
