Sheffield woman who has fostered 60 children over the last 50 years set to retire

Anne Shaw, from Wadsley Bridge, started fostering when her son, Andrew, and twin girls, Rachel and Judy, were four and three.

The year was 1970 and ever since then, the 80-year-old has been able to offer a home to children who have not been able to live with their birth families and was even awarded an MBE for services to children and families.

Now, five decades on, Sheffield Council marked her retirement with a special presentation at the Moorfoot building on Tuesday, March 3.

Speaking at the event, Anne said: “I’ve had a marvellous life of fostering. I’d tell others who want to become foster carers to just go for it. I would always give it a try because I think fostering is wonderful. Yes you do have some difficult kids, but there are so many rewards from fostering. You need to give children lots of love, every single child is totally different.”

From a very young age, Anne says she knew that she wanted to help children who didn’t grow up in loving supportive families.

But, it was only after she married her husband Alan that her dreams became a reality.

“My husband had a friend who was a foster carer,” Anne said. “They fostered babies but I was already at home with three children - I always had wanted to look after other children and that I saw as a way into looking after other people’s children.”

Shortly afterwards Anne and husband Alan headed to Barker’s Pool – which was the home of the children’s social care services department at the time – where they were soon approved as carers and eventually began fostering a young girl.

Life was busy for the pair, supporting vulnerable children facing a range of challenging circumstances and helping to significantly improve their life chances, with Anne only taking a short break when he daughter Joanne was born.

“When my children grew up and went away then I fostered sometimes two at a time,” Anne added. “We used to have a caravan at Chapel St Leonard’s and we used to go down every weekend.

“We couldn’t all get in the car so Alan used to take all the baggage and all the food on a Friday afternoon and I’d collect the kids from school or meet some of them at the station, and I had three sisters at that time. Then, we’d go down on the train to Skegness – we had to change in Nottingham – and then got the bus from Skegness to Chapel St Leonard’s and we did the reverse on Sunday nights and the girls’ parents would pick them up from there.”

In 2016, Anne was was given the Long Service Award at the annual FosterTalk Foster Carer Awards, and just a year later she received a New Year's honour in recognition of her work.

She said: “Funnily enough when I got the MBE and I got lots of cards from past foster children and that was lovely because I’d had a boy from Scarborough and not known where he’d gone when he left me to go independent and he sent me a card. I’ve kept in touch with a few of them over the years, especially now we’ve got Facebook.

“It was when Ringo Starr was made a knight and he was so small, it’s no wonder he played on the drums because if he’d have stood up you wouldn’t have seen him!”

And some of Anne’s biological children are already following in her fostering footsteps such as Rachel, who herself has been fostering with Sheffield Council for 30 years.

Anne said: “I did think about giving up when Alan died in 2004 but my foster child who I’d got then just stuck with me. She went to the funeral and went to her granddads when things were bad but we just carried on and I just carried on.”

Her very last foster child left home in January this year, but despite the retirement, Anne said she will not be fully relinquishing her duties just yet as she will still be helping Rachel with her children.