With nine years' experience as a foster carer herself, Chris Gunter is the perfect addition to a Bath-based team of social workers.

Now Chris, who recently joined Bath and North East Somerset Council's social services department, is using her own personal experience of fostering to encourage more people to do the same.

The social worker, who also adopted her son from the age of nine, worked with a Leeds-based team for 12 years before moving to Bath.

She said: "As a foster parent myself, I really do know about the ups and downs."

Chris says she can offer advice to parents on how to help a child feel secure and loved after her son lived in seven different children's homes and with foster parents before he moved in with her at the age of nine.

Through the team, every foster carer is given training and allocated a personal support worker whom they can contact at any time.

This training includes the effect of separation and loss on the child, how early life experiences affect the children's behaviour and how to maintain contact with a child's birth family.

Chris, who is based with a team which works from Manvers Street in Bath, said: "It is tremendously rewarding. Fostering is hard work, but fun.

"We need all sorts of carers - single, married, living together, divorced, remarried, with children, without, working or not. All you need is commitment and to care for children."

To find out more about fostering ring Chris on 01225 395308.

Used courtesy of the Bath Evening Chronicle