“If I remember correctly, the first answer to whether they wanted the boys at my house for care was no. They were very scared of everything,” recalls Karolína Vránková. At the age of eleven, he has his brothers Dan and Samuel in foster care. “But then they were at my house and they really liked my kitchen, I think that made a big difference.”
Karolína took the boys into foster care when they were ten years old and four years old. “It was expected if I could do it. It’s generally difficult to take siblings into foster care, and I was alone,” she describes the situation in which she brought her little brothers home. “And it’s fair to say it was crazy at times. Maybe I squirted juice on you once,” she turns to Dan. “Do you remember it?”
“The best thing was that I could try to live a normal life,” says the older of the brothers, now an adult Dan. “I was supposed to be in a children’s home until I was eighteen, then this option opened up. “I don’t know what would become of me, how my future would unfold. It was one of the best decisions I could have made, even though my fear of change was very great,” he recalls.
As a long-term foster carer, Karolína praises the help of accompanying organizations and the state. “The foster parent has a salary, money for the child’s needs, and then there are also funds for some other expenses. For example, we spent a lot of money on good therapies for both boys. I mean, it probably saved the younger guy’s sanity. In addition, the foster parent has mandatory training sessions, which he spends with experts and with other foster parents, which is priceless. I never felt alone.’
Listen to Swings with foster mother Karolína and her foster son Dan.
