The day I… cuddled my first foster baby: Cheryl Dufton, 37, Aberdeenshire, shares her story

I graduated with a chemistry degree but decided to go into family law so I retrained and qualified. I worked with a small law firm in Northumberland.

As much as I loved family law, fostering was always something my husband Richard and I thought about. My mum and dad were emergency foster parents and I had seen from a teenager’s point of view the huge difference they made.

My experience of being in a foster family wasn’t always easy. My parents helped the children they cared for come through really challenging times. They made them feel safe, which led to improvements in their behaviour and performance at school. It was inspiring. And from my own children’s point of view, I felt it was important for them to give something back; to see that they were very lucky.

But our plans to foster didn’t get far at that time because I fell pregnant with my son Aedan just as my husband was made redundant.

We moved to Aberdeen where Richard, an IT applications engineer, found another job and I became a stay-at-home mum. Just when I was considering a return to the legal profession my daughter Kinvara came along, so I put it off again.

It was just as well. When Aedan (pictured right with myself and Kinvara) was about 10 he had to be admitted to Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital after developing orbital cellulitis, an inflammation of the eye tissue. Over a two-week period he had two stays in hospital. Doctors administered high-level antibiotics because they feared the infection might spread to his brain.

We were with him all the time he was there. But other young patients were alone, without parents or family. It was sad. It brought fostering to the fore for us again. We knew we could help.

We made some initial inquiries and looked at different fostering agencies, including the local authority. But we finally decided to work with Barnardo’s because it seemed, for us, to offer a better training package and put more emphasis on matching the family to a child. It felt that we would have the support we needed if we fostered with them.

In May 2018 we went through a series of assessments and security checks.

A full report was then drawn up for a panel of volunteer childcare professionals.

Richard and I went before the panel in the November of that year and were delighted to be given the green light to become foster carers. We decided we would foster children up to the age of six.

We have not had a teenager before and felt that before we foster one, we should experience that first with our own son to get a handle on it. These kids need a lot of support so we felt it was better to go with an age group with which we already had experience.

From our daughter’s point of view, we felt it would be better for her to have a younger child in the family, rather than another older sibling.

We have so far fostered one baby and are waiting for the next one. It can take a bit of time to find a match.

When we finally got our baby, it was a whole roller coaster of emotions. It brought us together in ways I never expected it to.

Aedan, 12, and Kinvara, eight, are now at an age where they want to play on the Xbox and do their own thing.

But we found they were wanting to be with us and the little one; so we would have movie nights or play some board games with the baby in the room – much more than we did before.

The kids were really hands-on, they wanted to help choose the clothes, and help feed and cuddle. It was wonderful.

No foster carer does the job because of what it gives them, but it meant a lot to me and my family to know we were able to give the baby a safe, loving home; to be there when there was no one else; to give the cuddles, love and attachment a new born needs.

It brings out such a positive feeling that you can do something for someone else and it’s a very good lesson for our children, to be able to give something back.

Fostering is very different to law. In law, when I was dealing with children I wasn’t getting to have that direct input.

Although what we were doing in the court system would, hopefully, ultimately make their lives better, to be at the coalface and to use our own love and guidance to help those kids, and then see how they respond, is hugely fulfilling. And to do this with my husband and family is incredibly special.

I loved being a lawyer, but fostering is much more rewarding.