HAMPSHIRE foster mum Sue Edmond loves children so much she spent more than £10,000 expanding her home so more youngsters can come to stay.

She specialises in caring for teenagers with behavioural problems - and when her three bedroom home in Harefield, Southampton, proved too cramped for her extended family she had extra rooms built.

Sue explained: " We did it 13 years ago. To keep the costs down I paid the builders for their time and I bought all the materials myself.

"We went from three bedrooms to five bedrooms two bathrooms, extended the lounge and created a dining area."

The caring mother of three has always loved children - but rather than have more of her own she decided to start fostering and now has three teenage boys living with her family.

"When I was young I used to bring home pram loads of children and beg my mum to keep them," said Sue, 49, of Cheriton Avenue.

"If there were big local families who were struggling a bit I used to take the baby home and bath it. I used to cut up our towels to make nappies for them which didn't make me flavour of the month with my mum."

"I had three children of my own and I thought I could carry on having more but I decided to give fostering a go. I did my training in 1988."

She has always had at least three and sometimes four foster children at home - and in the beginning her own children would give up their beds for the youngsters.

"My own children slept on the floor for a year until we decided to extend the house so we could all live more comfortably," she recalled.

Her dream of creating a big happy family has meant the youngsters have had to come to terms with the lows as well as the highs.

When Sue's builder husband Steve suffered a heart attack and she had to be by his side constantly, all her children helped each other to cope.

"They were marvellous. They knew I had to be with him and they just got on with things. I could have asked for them to be taken away while Steve was unwell but I didn't want that because they are part of the family," she said.

The experience of fostering has led to Sue's son Ross, 23, who has just completed a masters degree in art and philosophy at Portsmouth University, also training to be a foster carer.

"I wanted to do it to help mum," he said. "Sometimes they can be a bit of a handful and I wanted to have the training so I would feel confident about helping. I hope to carry it on when I eventually leave home."

Now Sue is helping others to prepare to foster and works as a project carer for Southampton City Council.

"The more carers we have the more choice it offers us and we can match the children to the carers," she said.

Today is the start of Foster Care Fortnight in Southampton. Tomorrow's Daily Echo includes a feature explaining how you can get involved as a carer because fostering can be for as little as one day a month.

For more details contact 023 8079 9142.