Armed With Understanding
In foster care, a referral lands as a folder of words. Possession. Theft. Burglary. It reads like a warning. For a lot of people considering fostering teenagers, that folder is where fostering ends before it begins. It is the moment they decide they couldn’t cope.
Wendy and Paul Pescud read the same folders. Then they meet the young person the words describe, and the text on the page rarely survives the front door.
“It’s just words on a piece of paper,” Wendy says.
She tells the story of a young man whose file flagged “fire setting.” It sounded extreme. In reality, all that had happened was that he’d taken a toaster up to his bedroom, absent-mindedly balanced a plastic plate on top and set off the smoke alarm when it melted.
It was far from the threat hanging behind those words: “fire setting.”
That gap between the paperwork and the person is where the Pescuds work. After more than 60 young people have come through their home, they’ve learned that the thing that matters most isn’t a qualification. It’s understanding.
A relationship built on coincidence
Wendy and Paul are East Londoners – Paul from Walthamstow and Wendy from Chingford – although these days that feels like a different world.
They met in a London bar in December 1997, weeks before Paul left to travel the world on a ticket he’d already bought. The impossible plot of a Richard Curtis film followed. There were letters back and forth while Paul made his way to New Zealand, followed by an invitation for Wendy to meet him in Bali.
And Wendy did just that.
She phoned her boss to ask for more time off. He said no. She resigned by fax and stayed.
That knack for landing on the same idea at the same moment showed up again years later. One day, each had separately noticed the same advert in the local paper: a call for foster carers. Neither raised it until the evening, when they both brought it up.
By then, the Pescuds had moved north to Huntingdon. Wendy was pregnant with their son Harrison after they had previously been told children were unlikely.
Harrison, now 25, has long since flown the nest. Their daughter Grace is weeks from starting university. The house today holds Wendy, Paul, two sausage dogs, a German Shepherd, and whoever they happen to be fostering.
Wendy’s career has included youth offending, residential care, missing-from-home services and an exploitation team in Cambridgeshire. She understands teenagers to their core.
Paul manages an adult alcohol and drug treatment service. As a result, he’s already familiar with much of what the young people in his home have lived through, often due to the experiences of a parent.
The sharp end of fostering teenagers
“There are two kinds of fostering,” explains Paul. “Traditional fostering – long term or short – and High Acuity fostering.”
High Acuity fostering often supports teenagers with emotional, behavioural, medical or developmental needs. It’s frequently the realm of young people who have moved in and out of the criminal justice system, been exposed to criminal or sexual exploitation, and passed through placement after placement.
‘Vulnerable’ doesn’t begin to cover it.
And yet, the young people who have been in the most trouble are often the most polite. They are the ones who offer to unload the dishwasher, help clean, run errands or do chores.
“It makes sense when they’re here,” Wendy adds. “Talk nicely to someone, and they’ll talk nicely back. Most of these kids have spent their lives being rejected, dismissed, and ignored, and they’ve learned that going loud is the only thing that gets them heard. Change the input, and you change the output.”
No two weeks look alike.
With High Acuity fostering, placements are temporary and can last for a matter of days or a few weeks. One young person might be quietly independent – out to see friends, back for dinner, no drama.
The next might go missing for three days. Then, it’s a constant line to social workers and police.
But the children, Paul says, are rarely the hard part. The hard part is the system around them – the meetings, the logs and the organisations that don’t always have as much invested in a young person as you do.
That is why it’s essential to have the right support around you. It’s a rewarding profession, and an important one.
Fostering teenagers: you don’t need qualifications
The biggest myth, in Wendy’s view, is that you need a wall of qualifications to become a foster carer.
You don’t.
You need patience, tolerance and a willingness to understand what’s actually going on behind the behaviour. It’s not a job, it’s a profession.
“You always read the referral when it comes in,” she says. “There’s important, sometimes safeguarding-critical information in there. But don’t let it decide who a young person is before they’ve walked through your door.”
For the Pescuds, it’s more important to be curious. Ask what a frightening word actually means in context.
Picture your own life summarised as a rap sheet – every speeding ticket and every mistake, written down and handed to a stranger. That’s what some young people arrive carrying.
“A document that reads ‘fire setting’ doesn’t explain the truth or the detail – it’s a phrase approved by the system and that’s it,” reveals Wendy.
The parenting style is different, too. You don’t have to win. You don’t have to have the last word.
The Pescuds try not to say “no”. For a young person who’s heard nothing but no, it can be a trigger. Instead, they find ways to negotiate around it.
They pick their battles.
A young person five minutes late gets “thanks for coming back, mate,” not a lecture.
“Does it really matter, in the big scheme, if the bed’s a mess or they’ve eaten half a loaf? See beyond it,” Wendy adds.
Much of the early work happens by text for the Pescuds. A young person might not ask for anything face to face, so they send messages – goodnight, do you want anything, I’ve got cereal, toast, bacon.
A bit of love. A bit of space. Reading the room.
Wendy reckons every young person who’s come through the house has ended up accepting a hug eventually, even the ones who arrive certain they don’t do that sort of thing.
And none of it requires a certificate. The knowledge is out there for anyone who wants it – you just have to be willing to learn.
The right kind of support
None of this happens in isolation.
The Pescuds have fostered through a private agency and through a local authority, and both experiences taught them what they were really looking for.
Known as the “teenage whisperers”, they became so in demand that they couldn’t step back – referral after referral and pressure to keep saying yes. Eventually, that pressure built up.
A manager they’d worked with pointed them towards Little Acorns – a small, family-run agency renowned for supporting its carers.
For the Pescuds, the difference shows up in the everyday.
Every carer with Little Acorns has a supervising social worker as their first point of contact. There is genuinely someone on the end of the phone at two in the morning if you need them. Crucially, that person knows you and the child placed with you.
Little Acorns filters referrals rather than sending them over in bulk. The team also understands and respects the limits and boundaries each fostering family might have.
Part of the job is matching young people with the right families.
Little Acorns is also a safe space for learning, support and venting when you need it. In many ways, that is exactly what foster carers are trying to give the young people under their roof.
The difference is you
Recently, the Pescuds received a text message from someone they used to care for.
He had arrived with a reputation – “a bit of a gangster,” in his own telling. Now he was getting in touch to say he’d joined the armed forces, reconnected with his family and wouldn’t have made those changes without them.
That’s what fostering can achieve. That’s why it matters.
Young people turn their lives around, build meaning and find hope.
Goodbyes are bittersweet. When you don’t hear from a young person again, it usually means they’re doing fine on their own.
Which was the whole point all along.
“You’re changing a young person’s life,” Paul says.
“You’re handing back a future, and hope, and the proof that not every adult lets you down,” adds Wendy. “You’re telling someone who has been pushed aside their whole life that they have a place in this world.”
The need is real, and it isn’t going away.
In 2026, The Fostering Network estimates that 6,000 more foster families are needed across the UK over the next 12 months, including 5,000 in England. There is a particular need for foster carers who can support teenagers and sibling groups.
The very young people the Pescuds have spent years supporting are among those who need someone to show up for them.
You don’t need a qualification or a perfect house. You need patience, curiosity and the willingness to see past a folder of words to the person underneath.
If fostering teenagers sounds like something you could do, get in touch with Little Acorns and find out more.