A book can help with
For a child living with a foster family, and for the questions nobody can answer yet.
A child coming into care arrives with a great deal they cannot say yet, and with two questions underneath everything else: why am I here, and whose fault is it. A book will not tell them how long any of it lasts, but it can answer those two, and it can do it without anybody having to look at each other while it happens.
Fostering is not adoption, and children in care know the difference long before adults credit them with knowing it. The uncertainty is the part that wears them down, and the books here name it rather than tidying it away. If your child’s story is an adoption one, there is a separate page for that.
Find your child’s age and start there. Read them yourself first, and go slowly with the older ones.
Leaving home, in duck form
A very young child coming into care cannot follow an explanation, but they can follow a duckling. The Dennis Duckling books come from CoramBAAF, and they are what social workers actually reach for at this age.
Dennis and his sister have to leave their mum and dad because they cannot be looked after safely, and go to live on a river with grown-up ducks who care for them. The character has been used by carers and social workers since 1981 and this is the redrawn edition. There are notes at the back for whoever is reading it aloud.
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The sequel, for when decisions about where a child will live are actually being made. The social worker, the judge and the guardian all appear as birds, so a very young child can put a face to each of the people deciding things about them. Some reviewers find it stretches a three or four year old, which is worth knowing before you start.
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The third Dennis book, for when a child is going back to their birth parents. Dennis’s mum and dad are given help to learn to look after the ducklings properly, there are visits and then sleepovers, and the social workers keep coming to check. The only book here about the going back rather than the arriving.
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What is happening, and whose fault it is
A young child in care is usually carrying two questions at once, why they are here and whether they caused it. Everything here answers the second one directly and repeatedly, which is what it takes.
Murphy is a puppy who is moved from home to home and starts to believe it must be something he has done. It was written by a therapist, and the whose-fault question is the reason it exists. Using a dog rather than a child gives a young reader somewhere safe to put the feeling.
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The clearest answer I have found to the question a young child actually asks, which is why they cannot live with Mum. It explains what foster carers do and why children come into care without saying anything unkind about anybody’s parents. The refrain running through it is that kids are important and none of this is their doing.
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Calvin has lived in a lot of houses and still has not found a home, and he wants to trust Maggie but has learned better than to. Written by a psychotherapist, and Kirkus called it as much a model for foster carers as a story for children. The title is the honest part of it.
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A hen cannot look after her chick safely, so the chick is raised by another family. It exists to answer the question almost nothing else on this page answers directly, which is why a birth mother could not keep a child. The subtitle covers adoption, fostering, kinship care and special guardianship, so check you have the situation you want before you buy.
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Aimed at the size of the feelings rather than at explaining the process, for the stretch when a child is not coping and nobody can tell them what happens next. The title is the advice. Small-press, so easier to find online than on a shelf.
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Part of a long series in which a boy and his pet dragon take on one difficulty at a time, this one being foster care. Putting it on the dragon keeps the subject at arm’s length, which suits a child who cannot talk about it head-on yet. Written to a formula, and children who already know the series tend to take to it.
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Living with not knowing
By this age a child understands that nobody can tell them how long any of it lasts, and that is usually the hardest part. These say so rather than tidying it away.
The honest answer to most of a child’s questions in care is maybe, and this book starts there instead of pretending otherwise. It goes through who all the adults are, the social worker, the carer, the lawyer, the judge, and what each of them is actually for. From Magination Press, with a long afterword for carers at the back.
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Nutmeg the squirrel leaves a home that could not keep him safe and, in time, finds a permanent one. It was written by an adoption social worker and is widely used in life-story work, because it is honest about the sadness as well as the hope. There is a whole series behind it if the first one lands.
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Josh was a squirrel nobody wanted, and he worked hard at frightening each new family off before they could get rid of him, until he met the elephants. Written by a former foster child and mostly autobiographical, and a good deal funnier than that makes it sound. Good for a child who has already decided this placement will not last either.
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A whole childhood in care
Older children in care have often been moved more times than anybody has counted, and have worked out a version of events that is harder on themselves than the truth. Each of these gives them somebody who has done the same.
Tracy is ten, living in a children’s home, and completely certain that her mother is a film star who will come for her any day now. She lies, she fights, she is very funny, and the gap between what she tells you and what is happening is the whole book. Children in care tend to recognise her within a page.
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Hollis has been moved so many times that she keeps her memories as drawings rather than words, and she runs from anywhere that starts to feel like home. A Newbery Honor book, quietly devastating, and clear-eyed about how much a child can want a family and still wreck it.
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Gilly has been moved between foster homes so often that she has turned being unpleasant into a defence, and then she lands with Maime Trotter, who simply refuses to be driven off. It is funny and it is bruising, and the ending is honest rather than tidy. Gilly uses some ugly racist language early on, which the book treats as her problem to face.
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Something to do together
A page for a child to set down what they like, who matters to them and what they want the grown-ups to know, so it travels with them. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
Nothing about being in care is a child’s doing, and that is worth saying out loud far more often than feels necessary. Children left to work it out alone almost always land on a version that is harder on themselves than the truth.
So say it plainly, say it again a week later, and let a book say it too. Your supervising social worker will have seen every part of this before and will not think less of you for asking.
These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.