This comment came in after my last post

"Thank you for those comments all of which are true. I held on to the placement eleven months after the assault, and the accusations of me attempting to throttle them, the permanent exclusions from school for violence, etc etc etc. I had intended to keep the child until 18, but it became unsafe for me to do it - child is no longer in a family placement but in a therapeutic community. The damage by birth parents compounded by multiple placements and changes in social workers. 

I haven't given up, several very successful placements before this one and just in process of going through panel to be a full time fosterer!!

When the failed placement grows up and reflects on their time in care - they will at least know that I did all I could to keep the placement intact - and even now I still think of that child almost every day


Oh by the way - I am female!!"

I've read this comment again and again, ten or twenty times,

"I still think of that child almost every day"

Enough said. 

Thank you for your comment and your great work. Thank you for your humanity, courage and damn dogged determination to do something good and valuable. You are about the very best a person can get to be. Ditto to every foster carer. It's one of the highest challenges now available on earth.

I remember a training session, many years ago,  when the lecturer said "You have a problem with young people; every mountain has been climbed, every ocean has been crossed, what is there for people who want to make a mark to do?"

There are lots of people who yearn to do something that makes a difference. In the past it was men who wanted to discover new countries or kill big animals.

Today it's different.

There are now people, mainly women, but men also, who will take into their homes and lives a bunch of children who are heading downwards at speed, and those men and women use their basics - love and love and some more love to fix it for them.

Could the heroes from history do this job? No. The Gurkha's, the SAS, the Dam Busters, the heroes of old did wonderful self-sacrificing deeds that made the world a better place.

They helped us get the world we have now, where world war is no more. But battles are now being fought against hideous forces: cruel and unjust homes and families.

No medals in this war for us foster carers. No headlines in the news; even though we've climbed  a mountain, or jumped  out of a balloon at 20 miles.

We don't do it for medals, just like the Gurkha's, the SAS the Dam Busters didn't. 

It;s just the right thing to do.

The Secret Foster Carer

ps, to Carer, it wasn't  a "failed placement". It was a good job, done well. Stay in touch.