So You Think You Want to Foster?

At the age of four, because of the Easter bombings in May 1941, wewere bombed out of our beautiful home and evacuated to a farm thirtymiles north of Belfast, Northern Ireland. A year or so later, we returnedand lived in a very deprived area in the city. My father, an old soldier, was an alcoholic who smoked in the region of a thousand cigarettes aweek, so, the cupboards were bare and family life broke down. Mymother had little or no money for food, or even necessary items. Ibecame something of a problem child and was convicted of theft forstealing food. They put me in the care of an extremely tough children'shome until the age of sixteen. Because of the problems in my earlylife, I never did smoke or drink and at the age of twenty-six, marriedmy wife and we subsequently went into fostering and did it for manyyears along with our six children. We finally retired over forty-fiveyears later. My experiences gave me a lot of insight and I felt that Ihad a story that needed to be told, that's why I wrote my book; 'So youthink you want to Foster.'