When taking children and young people into your care it is important that you make them feel welcome and part of the family.
One way of doing this is to create new family traditions, these don’t need to be big and expensive like trips and parties. New traditions can be little things just to ensure that everyone is included.
It is also a good idea to allow the children or young people to suggest ideas of what these new traditions could be, allowing them to be part of this process and giving them a voice is a great way of making them feel like their opinions are important.
Example of these new traditions could be:
- A regular meal with all the family such as a pizza or fajita night
- With younger children it could be baking cakes or cookies
- A monthly walk or hike
- A regular family movie night (maybe someone different gets to choose the film each time)
- A Weekend cycle ride
- A regular local park run (find yours here http://www.parkrun.org.uk/events/events/)
- A games night (Although be warned these can cause arguments!)
- A picnic in the park
- A regular Sunday roast or brunch
Do you use new traditions like the ones above to help integrate foster children and young people into your family? Do you have any that you use that have worked well? We’d love to hear from you on our Facebook page.Show all news articles
