I remember one time we were at the zoo, and this random woman asked me if my son was 'the way he was' because I was such a young mom. I was so shocked, I asked her to repeat herself, but I think she suddenly realized what she had said and got really embarrassed and walked away." Gina, from the seaside town of Margate, UK, has been a foster carer for Ben*, an autistic and epileptic child with multiple complex needs, for the last nine months. He is 12 years old. She is 23.A child is taken into care every 20 minutes in the UK, and there is a constant and desperate need for thousands more foster families, particularly to home disabled children and teenagers. There are currently 55,000 foster families in the UK, but young carers are a rarity. A recent survey published by the Fostering Network found that, of the 2,530 foster carers who responded, just 4.2 percent were aged 18-34, compared to 80.3 percent who were aged between 45 and 54 years old.In some ways, this is unsurprising. Kevin Williams, chief executive of the Fostering Network, says that lifestyle and financial restraints can make fostering trickier for people in their twenties. "Relatively few 25 year olds have a spare room or the financial independence which fostering requires," he says, "but age, in itself, should not be a barrier."Gina believes that her youth has actually helped her with caring for her boy. "There's no way I'd have been able to look after him if I was 50 years old. I mean, physically, I just couldn't do it." Both Gina and her husband Michael had already worked professionally with challenging children for years before they began the process to become foster carers. But even they found the first few months with Ben tough. "He was completely non-verbal when he got to us and could only communicate through Picture Exchange Communication," she explains, referring to the communication aid commonly used by children with autism.Read more on Broadly.
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