In Essex, 100 new foster families are needed every year to care for the county’s vulnerable children.

This film was developed for Essex County Council’s Fostering Recruitment team, to inspire and inform not just those people who might be considering becoming foster carers, but also those who didn’t necessarily think it was for them.

A scripted voice-over was created to set the scene and link a series of moving and informative interviews with current foster families, alongside illustrative footage using adult and child actors. The final DVD gives a rounded picture of what fostering entails, its challenges and its huge rewards, as well as emphasising the broad range of people who can foster. The contributors were uniformly passionate about the importance of their work and its capacity to change a child’s life.

At the same time, Deadline also worked with a team of young people, all of them natural children of foster carers, to create a film about being a foster family from the perspective of younger family members. To find out more,
click here.