Fostering during a pandemic is more than just child’s play

Our new foster baby arrived in December, announcing himself with what is now his trademark rasping cough, weeks before the era when looking as if you’re about to clear your throat makes everyone cross the street in panic.

He’s very affectionate, and generally likes to get close enough to wipe his facial fluids all over us and our friends at every opportunity, which was never a concern a month ago. At home, he’s started walking, but stays safely in his pushchair or backpack when we venture outside for our daily stroll, where he laughs crazily at the spring trees and flowers, raising a brief smile from people scurrying past three metres away.Across the city, foster families are settling into the lockdown like everyone else, their foster children fully part of the vulnerability of everyone in their households. Children are carriers, it seems, but rarely suffer badly themselves, which is a big issue in the complicated lives of city children looked after by foster carers. In normal times, we often have to help facilitate an array of ‘contact’ visits every week with parents and siblings from several different households, visits usually held in centres where multiple families pass through every day.All of which came to a stop as Covid-19 arrived, of course, leaving already struggling birth families without any real life physical contact, possibly for months to come.Our little boy knows nothing of the global crisis, or the daily death count. He enjoys having both of us around all the time, but we think he misses spending an afternoon in the countryside, playing with his fellow toddlers, or nipping in for a warm milk at a cafe. We’ve been counting the days since his last physical contact with anyone in the outside world, and calculate he’s now probably clear of any chance he’s inadvertently picked up (or passed on) the virus. So we breathe a sigh of relief, and get on with helping him develop from the quiet and withdrawn and scared child he was when he arrived to the boisterous chattering star he is now. Before long he’ll be saying his first word. We hope it doesn’t begin with C.