Family-run agency, TheraParent Fostering, has launched and will see children in care receive better support

Coming into care is a traumatic process for young people, but TheraParent – a recently launched fostering agency based in Waterlooville – is hoping to help ease the transition, offering continued therapeutic support to both children and their foster parents.

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The family-run therapeutic fostering trio, which officially launched last month, is made up of Mike Spencer and his birth daughter and son-in-law, Katie and Mark Gibson-Cook, with over 55 years combined experience in fostering and social care.

‘We’ve worked in fostering for many many years and we saw the need for therapeutic input was really high,’ says director and supervising social worker, Mark, 37.

Their main aim is to work with children and their foster parents to provide therapeutic support, helping to ensure they achieve the best outcomes for the children and the families they support.

‘We will have therapeutic input for all children and all foster parents,’ says Mark.

‘Local authorities can invest in the children and buy more of that, but as a standard we want to build a therapeutic community,’ he adds.

Unlike other fostering services, TheraParent is owned by social workers and one of the main aims for the small-scale agency is to stay small, ensuring their foster parents are supported by a familiar team who know them well, and who also know the children they care for well.

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‘Every month, each foster parent will have a consultation where they get to unpick the behaviours that they’ve experienced from their young person,’ says Mike, 61, director and therapeutic consultant.

‘We help them put a therapeutic response together, to help foster parents understand the behaviours and where they come from. Traumatised children need to be responded to in different ways. We coach them, and teach them a different parenting attitude, and that attitude enables relationships to be built,’ he adds.

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Mike’s long-spanning career of 43 years in care settings has seen him manage three children’s homes, as well as foster at least 20 children and adopt two.

‘I’ve worked in social care since the age of 18. Originally I worked in children’s homes as a residential member of staff, I really enjoyed that work and working with young people,’ he says.

‘A lot of these young people are so angry that all they try to do is destroy relationships. We help foster parents understand that so they don’t personalise it and enable them to still deliver unconditional love to them.’

Not only does Mike take pleasure working with young people in his job, he is also passionate about helping them to achieve the best outcomes in his personal life. A goal which he hopes – through TheraParent – he and his family can continue to fulfil.

‘Apart from professionally, I work with young people, coaching judo and boxing, some of those have become British champions and done amazing things,’ he says.

‘And that’s exactly what we want to happen with our foster children too, we want them to have the best possible opportunities.’

As well as weekly or monthly therapeutic support, in which the family trio are each trained, TheraParent allocates a life coach to all children who live with foster parents, who support the child directly.

‘One of things I recognised over the years was there were lots of children in homes that could be looked after in good foster homes,’ adds Mike.

‘The majority of these young people, with the right support, their outcomes can be amazing. We’ve seen, if that support is in place, those young people do better in school, health, in sport, and social activities – that’s what it’s all about and that’s what motivates us.’

Mike’s daughter Katie, 33, says her experience as a birth child in a fostering family ‘molded’ her into the person she is today, and inspired her – like her dad – to help make a difference to the lives of young people.

‘I have always known I wanted to become a social worker to work with fostering families like ours,’ says Katie.

‘My parents began fostering when I was two years old, they fostered many different children throughout my childhood and only stopped fostering when I was 24 years old so for me, fostering was a very normal part of growing up,’ she adds.

While she credits her youth for her love of social care, Katie acknowledges that the job can often be a tough one.

‘It was not always easy, that’s for sure,’ she says. ‘My mum and dad were very experienced foster parents therefore they would often care for some quite challenging and complex children. Sometimes these children had so much anger within them that they would break things, throw things and scream,’ she adds.

However, despite the struggles which sometimes seemed daunting to Katie as a child, her parents' unique ability to manage the often delicate situation, carving out special time for both her and her brother, and the highs of being in a family so full of life and love, outweighed the challenges.

‘We had a lot of fun with the children we cared for, we had family holidays and played in the street with our neighbours, all the things families normally do really,’ she says.

‘Fostering taught me a lot about the differences in people's backgrounds and I think ultimately taught me about tolerance – you never know what someone may be experiencing at home.’

For the family, the launch of the year-long project has been a dream come true, and after receiving Ofsted Registration in January, the agency is keen to get started, providing therapeutic support and helping to prevent a cycle of placement breakdown.

‘Often you’ll get foster children who last a year and then their placement will break down, that’s a continuous pattern in their lives,’ says Mike. ‘We want to get in there quick enough so we can stop it.’

And they have the experience to back it up.

‘We’ve seen young people that have developed and grown in confidence and self esteem, and gone on to do greater things, including developing positive relationships,’ says Mike.

‘We work with children that will deliberately break down placements, when you see that same child stay in a placement for four, five, or six years – that’s absolutely amazing. Then move onto college, develop themselves socially, that’s massive.’

‘For us, that’s why we do it,’ adds Mark. ‘With my early career, I had to learn you can’t help everybody, and that’s hard, but those that you do support and help, you’re making a real difference.’

For Mark and Katie, it’s the little things that stand out to them, and keep them going.

‘For example, a child not eating a certain food, maybe they can’t eat with a knife and fork, or they throw their coat on the floor and never hang it up,’ says Mark

‘All those little things where six months later you have a phone call with a foster parent whose over the moon because a child has done – what seems like a really small thing – but we know is massive.’