MANY people of retirement age tend to find reasons for not doing the things they've always wanted to do because the opportunity has passed. Vi Gregory had merely postponed her strong desire to foster children when the chance came to do so after her husband died.

"I could have sat around moping and grieving, or got back on my feet and helped others," said Mrs Gregory, now 73, from Llanmartin, in Newport.

More than 50 children in need of TLC can thank her for taking the latter course and devoting herself to their welfare during the last 10 years.

To foster at any age requires commitment and parenting skills in situations which sometimes defy belief. When you have brought up your own family with love and affection, the sight of those who have received little enough of them can be especially shocking.

Mrs Gregory was not only over 60 when she started, but she had five children and 12 grandchildren. She now has six great-grandchildren as well.

"I didn't feel old at 62 and I don't now," she said. "I've always had plenty of energy. I've also had lots of empathy for little children who have been abused. My own children had a great upbringing, as they'll tell you themselves. I loved my children and I loved being a mother.

"But I also love a challenge. If someone asks me to do something I am there and I have to do it.

"No matter what happened in their families, those foster children loved their mothers, and when you realised what some of the mothers had done to them - or hadn't done, as in cases of neglect - it made you wonder.

"But they loved their mothers despite what had been done to them. It's all they knew. And when someone they loved and trusted let them down, it must have been dreadful for them."

Although Mrs Gregory had to have a strong constitution to deal with many of the problems her extended family brought with it, the end results were often highly emotional.

"I had one baby from four days old," she said. "I took her from the hospital into my home and she was with me for 15 months. I brought her up as my own baby. At my age it was a huge challenge, but when she left me it broke my heart."

The baby's foster period was just three months short of the average time Mrs Gregory looked after a child, though not all departed in such tearful circumstances. "It was a wrench with many, but with others it was just the end of a job of work," she said. "You knew you would have to let them go, but you did have little favourites. The thing was, you knew what they were going back to, sometimes to their parents. But I always knew that the children were not mine."

The reality in the case of people who foster over a long period and are always available to take on responsibilities is that as soon as one child has left their care, another is waiting to be taken on. Such is the plight of the young in our sometimes harsh society. In many ways it is a professional job; in others there is nearly always two-way emotional traffic. The foster parent gets as much from her charges as they do in the opposite direction.

"Children may come to you who may be grubby and dirty and with their hair full of nits," she said. "But you bathe them and clean them up and then see them blossom as the weeks go by. That's so rewarding. You have to do it to understand how rewarding it is." The appreciation of the children for this care and commitment is reflected in the way many of them keep in contact with Mrs Gregory. The baby she looked after straight from the hospital is now six, and she sees her several times a year. She has lots of photographs of her, and her parents and their friends visit regularly. The baby calls her "Nana Vi".

At the same time, she often wonders what has become of children she took on when they were about eight and would now be in their late teens and on the verge of adulthood. A few of them keep in touch, but others have lost contact.

One visited her not long ago, having remembered her time with Mrs Gregory as part of a life in care of one sort or another, but still not able to say that she had found a settled life. "I suppose I had been a stabilising influence on her," she said. "Some foster children could be quite rough and badly behaved. But I always believe in disciplining with love. I don't believe in hitting children. You can talk things through quietly with a child and that child will listen to you. All my family are the same. They are very children-orientated and have always been supportive of me as a foster parent, and so have my neighbours."

After the heartache of having to relinquish the baby she'd looked after as her own, Mrs Gregory decided to restrict her foster children to between three and 11 years of age. Urgency did persuade her to take on a 16-year-old girl when social services asked if she could provide shelter for her for a couple of nights. She stayed six months.

By this time the attractions and difficulties of fostering had grown on her, but the first children she took on were two neglected young brothers, who were traumatised and upset and being sick throughout the first day with her and after she had put them to bed. "After three changes of the bedclothes during the night I began to wonder what I had let myself in for," she said.

"But they progressed really well, they were a lovely pair. I have a photo of them but we have never kept in touch.

"It was the first time that I knew the rewards of fostering would outweigh anything else." It was also a pleasure when she discovered that her foster children went on to live the stable life she had provided them with for the first time.

"A brother and sister went to live in Bristol after they'd been with me to another foster carer," she said. "They rang from time to time and then I didn't hear from them for a while, but I found out that when they were asked what they wanted most of all they said they wanted to see me again, which was arranged."

It's been a busy, productive and life-enhancing 10 years for a woman who has always been surrounded by children. Last August, she knew it was time to finish.

"I decided on impulse," she said. "I had to have a knee operation and I felt that I wouldn't be able to give the children 100 per cent. And anyway I wanted to spend time with my own great-grandchildren. But I do miss having children coming in and out, children I don't know and whom I get to know while they are with me.

"But you know you don't have a lot of time left and you'd like to spend it with your own family. I do realise that though I've finished fostering there are still children who need help."

She said she now had time to reflect on the lives her foster children had led for many different reasons and the one she had known.

"I did compare their lives with my own." she said. "I had a wonderful upbringing myself, I loved my mother and father, and I tried to be the same for my own children Mrs Gregory regards herself as an ordinary woman rather than a remarkable lady, even though she won the Welsh final of Britain's Best Grandparent competition and climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge at 70 while on a holiday in Australia.

"I would say to anyone who is my age when I started and is considering fostering - give it a try. There is nothing better than seeing a child who has come from the dregs going out of your house smiling and happy and looking so well. What you need is patience, understanding and common sense."