Practical guidance for real fostering life.

What if they lie to me, and what if money starts going missing? Why children in care lie and take things, what to do in the first ten minutes, and the question worth asking before you ring anyone.

Most people who ask us about fostering a teenager ask about drugs sooner or later. Here is what is actually likely, what the law says about drink and drugs in a fostering household, and what to do on the evening something turns up in a coat pocket.

A twelve-year-old can lose forty pounds inside a game you helped him download, and the only trace is a line on a card statement a fortnight later. What the law actually says about children and gambling, what you would notice at home, and why the answer is the payment settings rather than confiscating the phone.

Many children in foster care come from a home where one adult was frightened of another. Here is what a child carries out of a house like that, what not to say in the first week, and the support Greater London Fostering gives carers who take it on.

Therapeutic play and play therapy are not the same thing, and only one of them needs a qualification. What a foster carer can do at home, the small rules that make play feel safe, and how to tell when a child needs more.

Bedwetting and soiling are common in foster care, treatable, and almost never about behaviour. Here is what the NHS and NICE actually recommend, which handed-down advice to unlearn, and how we support carers through it.

Nearly six in ten children in care are recorded as having special educational needs. Here is what a learning disability actually is, the free NHS health check from age 14 that most carers are never told about, and the one question to ask if medication is suggested.

You do not have to share a child’s faith to look after a child who has one. A plain guide to the food, the calendar, the school arrangements, and who actually decides when a child wants to stop practising.