3:00pm Tuesday 13th October 2009
By James Calnan
A COLCHESTER woman who fostered 19 children by the age of 31 despite a childhood blighted by tragedy has been shortlisted for a top award.
Louise Grove, 31, has been picked out from hundreds of entries to be shortlisted for the Cosmopolitan Ultimate Women of the Year Awards, which will be handed out next month.
Over the past five years Louise has given 19 children a caring and stable place to call home, despite not matching the usual perception of foster parents as being a married couple.
Now she has been shortlisted for the Ultimate Family Girl category, and will find out in the coming weeks if she is invited to the awards evening in London on November 11, which last year was attended by the likes of the Prime Minister’s wife Sarah Brown and Olympic gold medallist Rebecca Adlington.
Louise said she was “surprised” to hear of the nomination. She added: “It’s quite a prestigious magazine, so I’m quite proud of that achievement.
“I was surprised by the telephone call to be honest, as it’s not the sort of thing that you generally pick up the phone to.
“I think anything that puts fostering in a positive light has got to be supported and can only encourage other people to perhaps consider it.”
Louise spent some of her childhood in foster care. She was ten when her mum had a brain haemorrhage, and social services decided to send her to a boarding school in Saffron Walden. When she was 12, her mum died and two years after that her dad, who had been divorced from her mum, committed suicide.
She was temporarily placed in foster care, but despite liking the family, she decided she needed to go back to boarding school six months later.
At 16, Louise was dealt a further devastating blow when her brother Patrick, who was ten years older, also took his own life.
Aged 18 she married, and knowing she was unable to have children as she had been born without a womb, they decided to look into fostering. But the couple split up two years later, and it was only at 26 that Louise felt financially and emotionally able to start fostering.
Now she enjoys helping the children in her care achieve as much as they can. In return, they bring her great joy.
“It’s great to sing together in the car or sit on the sofa with a pizza,” she said.
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