Why I Put My Own Child into Foster care — part two

3 years on; where are we now

By far the biggest response to a story I’ve posted on Medium has been to the one I wrote about why I put my child into foster care.

As you’ll see from the responses on that story, the feedback was mixed, with some people empathizing with my situation and others offended by my actions. I can understand. It’s not a situation most people ever get to experience.

To summarize for those who’ve not read the whole story:

• I separated from the mother of two of my children
• They lived with her and I saw them at weekends
• One day my wife said the older one had to come and live with me due to behavioral issues
• The behavioral issues continued impacting the entire family
• I couldn’t get anyone in the family to take her in so she went into care for (what I think was) her own good and for the good of the family she was tearing apart

Fast forward three years to now …

She was a model foster child, getting on well with her foster parent and all the others who came through their home.

She’s now living on her own, away from care.

She’s holding down a couple of jobs and has just started a foundation degree course as she hopes to get into social work.