{"id":137330,"date":"2021-08-31T10:27:32","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T10:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/?p=137330"},"modified":"2021-08-31T10:27:32","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T10:27:32","slug":"couple-who-fostered-over-600-children-in-total-retire-after-56-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/precoinnews.com\/world-news\/couple-who-fostered-over-600-children-in-total-retire-after-56-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Couple who fostered over 600 children in total retire after 56 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Britain&#8217;s most generous couple? Husband and wife who have fostered more than 600 children and once turned their garden into a campsite because they were looking after so many, finally retire after 56 years<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Pauline and Roger Fitter, from Haslemere, retired from fostering after 56 years<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>The kindhearted couple have welcomed more than 600 children into their home<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>One summer they even made their garden into a camp site to house 11 children<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Pauline, 81, and Roger, 86, have kept photographs of every child they housed\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>An elderly couple who fostered more than 600 children over 56 years and once turned their garden into a camp site to house the youngsters have finally retired.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Pauline and Roger Fitter, from\u00a0Haslemere, West Sussex, have retired from fostering after deciding from an early age they wanted to help as many parent-less children as they could.<\/p>\n<p>The kindhearted pair have fostered children from as far away as Belarus and Lithuania, with ages ranging between just three days old to those in their late teenage years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They also found time to raise five children of their own, including a foster child they adopted, and even continued to house youngsters during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>Pauline, 81, and Roger, 86, have now retired after 56 years of fostering, which saw them welcome around 620 children into their home &#8211; but they confessed they stopped counting after reaching 600.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2021\/08\/31\/09\/47316657-9942725-image-a-6_1630397112319.jpg\" height=\"410\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Pauline and Roger Fitter (pictured), from Haslemere, West Sussex, have retired from fostering after deciding they wanted to help as many parent-less children as they could<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2021\/08\/31\/09\/47318151-9942725-image-a-32_1630399881403.jpg\" height=\"966\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>The couple (pictured with a foster child in 2018) fostered children from as far away as Belarus and Lithuania, with ages ranging between three days old to their late teenage years<\/p>\n<p>The caring couple even took in 11 children at once one summer and Pauline, who was a Girl Guides leader at the time, turned their back garden into a camp site to house the youngsters.<\/p>\n<p>Pauline said: &#8216;One summer &#8211; it just happened &#8211; we had 11 kids at once. Our four and two from a boarding school, then another came, and another&#8230; it just built up out of nowhere.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I was Girl Guides leader at the time so we turned the back garden into a camp; sleeping in tents and even doing morning inspections which the girls always won.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Roger used to joke that he&#8217;d count the heads at the dinner table when he got in from work &#8211; just to check if anyone else had arrived.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Pauline,\u00a0who is originally from Yorkshire, said their four-bed detached house now will be a quieter space for Roger to return to after work as a private forestry consultant.<\/p>\n<p>But the couple keep the memories of the 56 years they spent fostering children alive in photo albums, holding on to the pictures of every single child they housed.<\/p>\n<p>Pauline, who was a children&#8217;s nurse before she began fostering, said her parents told her that from the age of five, she knew she wanted to look after children.<\/p>\n<p>She explained: &#8216;I was born in 1940, during the war, and I didn&#8217;t see my father for the first five years of my life &#8211; but I also knew a lot of my friends&#8217; fathers never came back at all.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2021\/08\/31\/09\/47316667-9942725-Pauline_81_and_Roger_86_have_now_retired_after_56_years_of_foste-a-3_1630397062827.jpg\" height=\"458\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Pauline, 81, and Roger, 86, (pictured with their own children, children&#8217;s partners and grandchildren) have retired after 56 years of fostering, which saw them look after 620 kids<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2021\/08\/31\/09\/47316659-9942725-image-a-16_1630397261705.jpg\" height=\"414\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>The caring couple (pictured with a foster child in Christmas 2006) keep the memories of the 56 years they spent fostering children alive in photo albums<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2021\/08\/31\/09\/47316663-9942725-They_also_found_time_to_raise_five_children_of_their_own_picture-m-10_1630397212860.jpg\" height=\"938\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>They also found time to raise five children of their own (pictured with firstborn Joanne), including a foster child they adopted, and even fostered children during the Covid crisis<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I decided as early as 19 that I wanted to look after children who didn&#8217;t have mummies or daddies &#8211; I knew I wanted to stop as many as I could from becoming institutionalised.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Pauline said she originally moved to West Sussex to help look after Roger&#8217;s two infant children after he lost his wife suddenly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She admitted she had only intended to stay for a month but the pair ended up marrying in\u00a0September 1965 and taking in their first foster child later that year.<\/p>\n<p>Pauline said: &#8216;In December we took our first child from West Sussex Social Services and rushed out to find something to put under the Christmas tree for a three day old baby.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;He was with us for ten weeks. He suffered from bronchitis, and cared for him in a handmade steam tent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Then one day he was suddenly taken away and found a foster family. That night as we stared at the cot at the end of our bed we could still see the divot where he had slept.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I just sobbed and sobbed and Roger said, &#8220;if this is what fostering is like, we are not doing it again&#8221;.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>But the couple continued to welcome more than 600 new arrivals across the next half a century,\u00a0taking in five newborn babies in the year after their first child was re-homed.<\/p>\n<p>Pauline continued:\u00a0&#8216;Almost immediately after that first child we had five new born babies in one year, one after the other, which meant a lot of night feeds at two in the morning and not much sleep.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Times have changed now; back in those days if you said yes they didn&#8217;t ask many questions. There was no training, no real checks.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Now it can take up to nine months to get approval from social services and we are something like 9,000 foster carers short.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2021\/08\/31\/09\/47316661-9942725-image-m-18_1630397286853.jpg\" height=\"923\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>The couple (pictured) even took in 11 children at once one summer and Pauline, who was a Girl Guides leader at the time, turned their back garden into a camp site to house the youngsters<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2021\/08\/31\/09\/47316665-9942725-image-a-14_1630397254961.jpg\" height=\"414\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Pauline, who is originally from Yorkshire, said their four-bed detached house (pictured) will be a quieter space for Roger to return to after working as a private forestry consultant<\/p>\n<p>She added: &#8216;One boy who was in the Army came to us every weekend before going on to fight in the Falklands.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;He wrote extraordinarily detailed and descriptive postcards about what he&#8217;d seen, and used to ask us to send him lady&#8217;s winter tights to keep him warm.&#8217;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Having offered their roof to children for 56 years in what Roger jokes was a &#8216;production line&#8217;, Pauline decided to retire to offer her husband a quieter home.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She said: &#8216;We handed our last child to his permanent foster family earlier in May this year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;He had come to us at the beginning of the first lockdown &#8211; a lively but lovely little baby of 20 months &#8211; and he followed a four year old who left us just before that lockdown in March.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Roger has recently built a pond at the end of their garden to replace the\u00a0<span>trampoline, swings and slide which used to stand there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Pauline admitted that although she rarely shed tears when waving goodbye to the children, instead treating it as a celebration, she found it extremely difficult to see their last child leave earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>She continued:\u00a0&#8216;It&#8217;s like climbing a mountain: we take them up and walk back down to take another child up.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;But seeing the last child leave in May was especially hard, because I knew no more children were coming to replace him. I usually strip the bed, remake the room and get ready for the next.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Many children who had stayed at the Fitters&#8217; house have kept in contact, with some sending photos of their wedding days from foreign shores, and others returning to reminisce.<\/p>\n<p>Pauline said: &#8216;One time a woman I didn&#8217;t recognise said hello to me in a caravan park in Chichester, saying &#8220;Aunty Pauline?&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;She was there with her husband and kids, and it was only after I saw her children&#8217;s faces that I knew who she was &#8211; they looked just like her when she was a child.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2021\/08\/31\/09\/47316669-9942725-image-a-13_1630397251966.jpg\" height=\"399\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Having fostered children for 56 years in what Roger jokes was a &#8216;production line&#8217;, Pauline (pictured in 2010 with two foster children) and Roger said goodbye to their last child in May<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2021\/08\/31\/09\/47316675-9942725-The_couple_Pauline_and_two_foster_children_in_2002_fostered_chil-a-8_1630397174427.jpg\" height=\"388\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>West Sussex County Council presented the couple (Pauline with two foster children in 2002) with a plaque commending their achievements earlier this summer<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;She had come to us when she was just three years old and stayed for around 18 months.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;We have met up with her adopted parents since, who tell us she&#8217;s a great mother. I was absolutely thrilled to hear that.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>The couple are now encouraging others to volunteer as foster carers, with Pauline insisting that although many people think they wouldn&#8217;t be able to do it, there is a lot of support and training in place.<\/p>\n<p>She continued:\u00a0&#8216;I really wish a few more people would try it and see if it&#8217;s for them. It&#8217;s surprising our house is still standing after 600 people have called it home, but the rewards are well worth it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;When a quiet child who won&#8217;t let anyone touch them lets you give them a goodnight kiss, or you hear them singing and laughing &#8211; those are the real rewards.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>West Sussex County Council commemorated the couple&#8217;s achievement with an afternoon tea at Chichester County Hall earlier this summer, during which they were presented with a plaque commending their achievements.<\/p>\n<p>Daniel Ruaux, Assistant Director of Children Services at the local authority said: &#8216;Pauline and Roger are amongst the most caring and loving foster parents I have had the privilege to meet.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Their commitment and nurture to help our children reach their potential is extraordinary and so very inspirational.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Their love and devotion has changed and influenced the lives of over 600 children and we can&#8217;t thank them enough for over 50 years of fostering with us.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-9942725\/Sussex-couple-80s-fostered-600-children-retire-56-years.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Britain&#8217;s most generous couple? 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