Debra Hall fosters three children, a 16-year-old boy and girl and a 10-year-old boy. She also has three children of her own still living at home in Cheshire.

"I get up at 6am, shower, finish off sandwiches for up to six packed lunches, feed the two dogs and three cats. At 7am I wake up the children, then do some emergency ironing. At 8am two taxis arrive to take the teenagers to school. Then I do a round trip of the town taking the other children to school.

"Some days I care for a 14-year-old girl who isn't at school, so I pick her up and take her up to my horses where we muck out and ride. All this is before lunch. After taking her home there's three loads of washing to do and a food shop every day. This week two of the children have birthdays so I need to organise presents and parties.

"The logistics of dealing with so many people in one house means I have to be incredibly organised. I'm on call all the time, and can have a phone call at 10pm because someone's missed the bus."

Liz and Eddy McCloy have been fostering children with special needs for seven years at their specially adapted house in Glasgow.

Liz says: "We hadn't said we were interested in any particular side of fostering but when we were approved there was a six-year-old boy with cerebral palsy and his nine-year-old sister who had learning difficulties and emotional problems. They needed somewhere with lots of space and we had two spare rooms so we thought we would try it.

"They are both now permanent placements. We adapted our house so that the boy could have a ground-floor bedroom with a hoist over the bed and an en suite bathroom. Another disabled boy of four came two years ago as an emergency placement. It was meant to be short term, but he is still here, although the plan is to move him to a more permanent placement.

"We get up before 7am. The youngest boy is very disabled and has to be fed through a tube. The older girl gets herself ready. My husband helps her brother get ready. Two school buses come to the house for the two boys. The rest of the day is our own. There is a vast amount of washing as both boys are doubly incontinent, they don't speak or walk either.

"Then there's the shopping, tidying up, and meetings with social services. We try to catch up with our grandchildren. Then after school there's dinner, and reading the school diary to see how they're doing. It is a lot of physical care."

Sue Clements and partner Chris Thornton from East Sussex were approved as short-term foster carers after taking early retirement nearly three years ago. They care for two girls, aged eight and six.

Clements says: "I always had to go to work when my two children were small, but now when they go off to school I have time to think about dinner.

"The children we look after have had traumatic lives so they respond to a gentle routine.

"After retiring I watched a TV programme that reawakened an interest in fostering I had had since I was in my twenties. I felt I couldn't do it because I was working and had two children of my own. If I had investigated it further I would have realised we could have done it then."

Thornton says: "Some people think of this as a job but I think there are easier ways to earn money because it's 24/7 - you can't stop at 5pm."

Gwen Hutchinson has been fostering for 18 months with her Jamaican husband Leo in Essex.

She says: "Because we are in a mixed race relationship it means we can have black, white or mixed race children. For about a year we have had a 16-year-old white English girl and a 10-year-old black boy from Sierra Leone living with us. He was in a children's home before and at first he didn't know what to do with the freedom here.

"When they are at school I do the cleaning and cooking. They are allowed to see friends after school and the girl has a boyfriend. But he is home by 6.30pm and she is home by 8.30pm at the latest. They are in a routine they are happy with.

"I adopted my niece when she was 12 days old. She's now 18 and still living with us.

"When we first fostered my niece didn't like it much because she had been on her own. It was an invasion of our privacy and your whole routine changes. Now the two girls want to get a flat together."

Wren Sidhe gave up being a university lecturer to become a foster carer with her partner Helen Udo-Affia, a carpenter. They care for a 13-year-old boy to whom they are committed until he is 18.

Sidhe says: "Helen is Nigerian so we had a boy placed with us to help support his mixed race background. Our agency is supportive, but there's a lot of public disapproval of lesbians fostering.

"He [the boy] has been with us for seven months and has emotional and behavioural problems. He is in school three days a week because he can't cope with a full week. This morning I took him to hospital for a speech and language assessment. Then I took him to school where we had a meeting with one of his teachers because he assaulted another pupil yesterday. He wrote a card apologising to the other boy and gave him one of his computer games. We were told he would be excluded if his behaviour continues.

"I was home by 11am to find messages from the personal adviser for looked-after children, the fostering agency and the home tuition service, so I dealt with these.

"This afternoon I will speak to his social worker about the situation at school. We are also preparing for another boy who is coming to stay with us for respite care for a fortnight. This means dealing with all his appointments, for example with the youth offending team and a young people's mental health project. At the end of the day there's paperwork, filing and writing up the daily log.

"Sometimes we feel like tearing our hair out, but we have done things that we wouldn't have done otherwise and we have had fun."