At Progress, I class everyone as family

As Toni celebrates her 18th birthday, she reflects on her journey through foster care. This is a heartfelt story of resilience, trust and the life-changing support she found at Progress:

Gemma (a team member at Progress Fostering Service) has been very helpful and helped me so much since I’ve been in foster care. She has been the one for me to look up to and know that I have got the support and someone who I can talk to about my emotions and understand how I work. Plus, even though I have moved around so much Gemma has never left me and made sure I was happy and if I needed to cry to someone, I have that trust to be open with her.

Foster care is hard for young children because they have come from a bad environment but when we come and find a nice place like at Progress where I class everyone as family and the fact that all of the staff have known me for so long such as, Gemma and Michelle and have supported me since I first came into care. Now I’m coming up to 18 in three days. I’m very upset about leaving but it is so exciting to go into supported living. I would like to say thank you to Gemma and the whole of Progress for getting me through everything when I was having a bad time at my previous foster carers.