Issue 12 – Life stories – part two

Foster journal Issue 12 (2021) celebrates IFCA’s 40th anniversary. It’s entitled Life stories – part two, and it continues where issue 10, Life stories, left off. It presents personal contributions by people whose lives have all been touched by foster care. This issue marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of IFCA in 1981 and presents first-hand experiences of foster care dating back to the 1970s in Ireland.

The stories in this issue come from a woman from the Travelling community who grew up in care, a family who became foster carers for the first time during Covid-19, a group of migrant siblings in care, a relative foster carer, a birth parent, and a retired social worker and former national management member of Tusla—Child and Family Agency. These powerful and inspiring stories reflect the complexity of the wider field of foster care and they urge us to hear and understand the many perspectives contained within it.