how to count fostering hours

[Tine]

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Hi All,
I was wondering if any of you were volunteer fosters and how you counted your hours when it came to reporting them on your applications. I've been fostering for about 2 years, maybe taking a total of a couple months break from it. I mostly had nursing kittens so it was really almost a full time job. Just curious if anyone else had a similar situation and how you dealt with it. Thanks!

 

[chris03333]

Hi All,
I was wondering if any of you were volunteer fosters and how you counted your hours when it came to reporting them on your applications. I've been fostering for about 2 years, maybe taking a total of a couple months break from it. I mostly had nursing kittens so it was really almost a full time job. Just curious if anyone else had a similar situation and how you dealt with it. Thanks!

Add it to your animal experience section

 

[kate_g]

I had a marginally similar situation with a truly countless number of research hours (full-time PhD student for 7 years). I just made an honest estimate. I was actually pretty conservative, e.g. calculating only 8 hours a day of work. I just couldn't see the difference between 15,000 hours and 20,000 hours being a make-or-break thing, and I felt more comfortable knowing I'd erred on the side of *not* exaggerating.

My suggestion to you would be to do the same thing - make an honest estimate in order to enter a number in the "hours" blank, and then just say in the "description" field that this is necessarily a very rough estimate because of the nature of the work. If you have space, outline how you made the estimate (number of litters fostered times number of feedings per day plus time spent cleaning, socializing, etc.). I think as long as it looks like a reasonable number the adcoms will understand. Agree with Chris that this definitely counts as "animal experience."

 

[Vet2be2012]

Hi Tine

I was in this situation also. I highly underestimated my foster hours. I don't think they want to see 50,000 hours for fostering. It's just not realistic, even if you did spend this much time fostering. As remember, playing and stuff like that, is considered more fun than volunteer work anyways. I'll go and try to find my application from last year and see what I put for fostering hours. I think I put about 1,000 hours. But I truly have done way more than that. I have been an almost continuous foster parent for 11 years now, since I was 14 years old. I have sacraficed my time, school, money, and everything else to do this, so it has truly been a "Full" time job for me unpaid, actually losing money. I lost over $1,000 alone just on my 3 foster orange babies since I took them overseas and their adopter gave me the usual $95 adoption fee, lol. I have taken in around 600 to 800 kittens. I lost count along time ago!!! Whether the schools looked heavily upon this or not, I don't think so! Even though I was what you would call treating them medically and everything like doing vaccinations, sq fluids, medicating, force feeding, .....! I have forgotten much of what I have done actually because there has just been too many. Actually, I think you could call all of that hospitalization!

I just found my application: Even though I have fostered for so many different organizations, I didn't list most. Instead, I just put kitten/cat rescue, 1,000 hours for total hours and 15 hours per week. As you can see, this is definitely highly underestimated, but I was thinking they don't want to see 50 hours per week and something like 20,000 hours total. But I would ask an adviser or someone very familiar at the school with this very issue. Good luck and thank you for being a fellow foster care provider! If only you knew how much they really need it, lol! Not too many people will do this as it is not looked very highly upon with potential adopters and they complain about the adoption fees. They act as though your foster babies aren't worth anything!

 

[philomycus]

I probabaly underestimated too. I've been fostering since 2001 and put down 300 hours last year, as I know it was way more than that, but I didn't want it to look like I was trying to exaggerate to compensate for something else.

good luck !!

 

[Vet2be2012]

It's definitely hard to count fostering hours. I honestly have no clue how many hours I truly have spent with my fosters. However, I know it has to be more than several thousand actual time spent with them in their bathroom or my bedroom, driving to appointments, cleaning up after them, driving to peoples homes to do home checks, and everything else we have to do to ensure they are being well cared for and finding excellent homes.

One thing I left out, I volunteered at the humane society. After 4 years, they calculated 6,700 hours with their computer. Some were foster hours. They calculated around 300 hours per litter, just in case this helps. However, if you have fostered about 20 litters, and multiply by 300, it really sounds kind of e.xaggerated. on the application. I guess this topic is open to interpretation. Just use your best judgment on what you feel is appropriate. 🙂