 For those of you who have yet to meet me, my name is Jackie Russell and I'm the Cabinet Member for Children and Young People here at Wester Six County Council and it's a real pleasure for me to have the opportunity to say a few words to you for Foster Care of Fortnight and to thank you on behalf of myself and my council member colleagues for all that you are doing for our most vulnerable children and young people 24-7, particularly during these very strange times. And these are without doubt unprecedented times that throw up many challenges as we try to find new ways of working. One thing I'd noticed in the last few weeks is the amount of media coverage in terms of praise and recognition for our NHS workers and care home workers and rightly so. But for me there was a rather significant group of people completely left out of the mix and those are the people that look after our most vulnerable children and young people and that is you, our foster carers. Last week I had the opportunity to speak with some of you and to speak with some officers together collectively and talk about the effects of the pandemic in terms of finding new ways of working and the impacts that it had on your lives on the front line there. I heard about your loss of downtime and also your lack of access to your support groups which to name but two things must be very draining and very isolating. We all sat and we listened and we will go away and we will try and work on things in a creative way to wrap around as much support around you as is possible. Personally I can't thank you enough for the time you took to speak to me and provide that invaluable insight and I would like more opportunities in the future to do that with you. Because as far as I'm concerned you are by true definition our unsung heroes and as your cabinet member I should be going forward singing very loudly for you and we will be meeting again. Thank you all.