MY current looked-after child has been opening up about his
life before coming into care, my social worker says it’s good for him to talk.
She says the sort of things that have happened to him are all too common. The
hard part for us is listening to the experiences he tells us about, it hurts to
hear it. The even harder part is finding the right thing to say after he’s
shared.
MY best friend who is also a foster carer, says her current
child has similar stories to tell. It seems to be the case that the average
parent whose children have to go into care hasn’t set out to be a bad parent,
they just haven’t a clue about looking after children, and spend all their time
trying to manage their own chaotic lives.
HE tells us things in bits and pieces, his social worker
fills in the gaps, not by way of gossip, but because carers need to know as
much as possible about the child in our care to do the job.
SO, this was a typical day for him (actually, this isn’t a
typical day for him due to confidentiality reasons as I cannot share this, but
the description below does reflect the typical day a looked after child may
experience based on listening to others during our foster care support groups.)
MUM gets up late and starts the day shouting at her own mum
into a mobile that she’s getting a Court Order against “Dad” because he had it
off with his girlfriend on the sofa last night while she was up the pub. According
to Dad, he’s left mum six weeks ago because of her drugs. He says he’s been
sleeping on a mate’s sofa. Mum likes to go to the pub most nights because she
has a hard time looking after all the kids all day and she needs her “Me Time”.
Mum is incidentally, obese, pregnant, and
was in care herself when she was a child. Dad is nearer seven feet tall than
six and has been to prison for assault.
MUM hasn’t a job, nor has Dad. Dad needs money because he
needs to go to all his teams home and away games, and that’s expensive. His benefit doesn’t pay for his travel,
beers, fags and other stuff, so there’s a big issue about how much of the child
benefit he is entitled to. Mum makes Dad
do babysitting shifts so she can go out and she pays him. He brings fish and
chips and beer and watches the big flat screen TV all evening. The children are
locked in their bedrooms. The doors have had brackets and padlocks fitted. The
doors were opened to push in sausage and chips in paper wrappers and they were told
to be quiet. He leaves when Mum texts she’s on her way home.
AFTER midnight there’s a big argument on the phone, with Mum
accusing Dad of everything from having his girlfriend show up even though she’s
banned from the home, to pushing his fish and chip wrappers down the back of
the sofa instead of clearing them away.
NEXT morning her eldest (now with us) has wet the bed again,
and needs to learn he shouldn’t, so she removes all his toys from his bedroom,
he can have them back when he goes a week dry. She opens his bedroom window and
hangs the wet sheet on the sill to air, it doesn’t smell that much, if it’s not
dry tonight he can sleep on the bare mattress. He has to learn. Mum probably
thinks this sort of parenting is what everyone does, because it’s all she knew
when she was little, and her friends agree with her, even help with more advice
about how to control kids.
HER eldest goes out and stays out all day, she is worried
sick. She calls her friends, then the Dad, her social worker then finally the
police. After her eldest comes home safe
and everyone else has gone away she takes his confiscated toys into the garden
and makes him watch as she smashes them all to pieces. He has to learn not to
disappear.
HAD enough yet?
THERE'S definitely more to come, and when it does we’ll
continue to listen, trying to be neutral. By which I mean we don’t pass
judgement on his parents while at the same time being sympathetic, which is the
tricky balancing act. The thing is he doesn’t know his life was unusual and
wrong, he assumes it’s normal, as all children do. Until they see what family
life should be like.
OUR job as foster carers is to work towards the family
getting back together, but every other carer I’ve talked to about this agrees
that unless and until the parents get proper help with their parenting the
cycle will just go on.
THE children? They all seem to want to go home, no matter
what home was like, no matter what the parenting. They quietly plot and scheme
ways they can get their parents to love and like them, it’s painful to see.
PAINFUL, and probably futile.
OUR own children have benefitted in many ways from our going
into fostering. There have been problems, of course, but among the many
benefits has been them learning, well, how lucky they are.
HAPPY Fostering
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