FOSTERING AND FOOD

So; Sunday morning quite early I was standing at the sink trying to work out how to clean out a peanut butter jar of those smears you can't get with a spoon, because I've just found out you're not supposed to put anything with food attached or even to which food has been attached (eg pizza boxes) in the recycle bin.

Complicated? Still it's for the best.

I had a kettle boiling to try to melt the stuff off, I'm standing wondering why the peanut butter people chose a jar which has an inside lip which stops you getting the last remnants of peanut butter out to smear on one last slice. I bet there's a YouTube on it. I found myself remembering that the mustard magnate Colman said that his fortune depended on the fact that over half of his mustard got put on the side of people's plates then scraped off after the meal uneaten.

Don't stings like that make you uneasy? Some things we discover are not for the best.

So I'm standing there feeling a bit, yeah, less than 50%.

Then eldest sends me a text message from his bedroom, this is eldest foster child. 

Eldest was neglected as a baby, as an infant, as a child. As Foster Carers we're trained to know that sometimes neglected children are enhanced by their neglect because they need to develop strategies earlier than children who are cared for properly. Is that theory true? Read on…

Eldest texted;

"Can I have a bacon baguette?"

See that? Not just a bacon sarnie or a bacon roll, no…a bacon baguette.

I sussed that this was because child had seen the French stick I'd bought on my Saturday shop, just for fun. But he'd had one before.

So I set to work, fished a pack of back bacon out of the fridge.

Child needs all the white fat cut off the bacon before it goes in the pan, and while it's cooking I have to be standing by with kitchen roll to dab off any blobs of white stuff that bubble up on the bacon which I told him were just water (I hope they are), but child still insists on zero white stuff.

While the bacon is cooking I slice the baguette lengthways into two separate pieces (child doesn't want hinged baguette, says they are hard to close without stuff spilling).

Eldest, estimating the time the bacon baguette will take to be ready, arrives in the kitchen two minutes early and says;

"And can it be a BLT?"

I replied yes. Then he said;

"Is the lettuce an Iceberg?"

I replied that it wasn't. I said that I'd had to chuck the last of the Iceberg last night as what was left of it was going brown. So he asked how I was going to come up with a BLT. I said;

"There's a couple of little gem lettuces in the fridge. He said;

"Little gem? Are they like Icebergs?"

I replied that frankly, lettuce is lettuce. A bag of water for 90 pence yeah?

"Wrong!" he said. "Some lettuce is more…"

I waited. Silence. Then I said;

"More what?"

And he replied;

"More…profound."

Gobsmacked by this insight I stuttered;

"Profound?"

"Yes!" he said, "Deeper, stronger, more…lettucey."

"And you don't want that."

"No"

So I ended up trimming off the darker green flowery ends of the little gem so all he had were the crunchy white stalks and the insipid pale yellow part of the leaves that mimicked the Iceberg.

He took the creation up to his room. 

A couple of hours later he brought his plate down. Which, by the way, was big. It was like;

"You did the work on the baguette = I bring the plate down."

By which time I still hadn't fathomed the peanut butter jar problem.

But I'd had another reminder why I love this fostering thing.

Catch a niff?

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SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT

She came to us at very little notice...it was either our house or she'd have to sleep in a police cell, would you believe, aged seven.

I have never found the police to be anything other than fantastic when they are involved in helping children. All the same our spare bed was better than a night in a police station, with who knows yelling what in the next 'suite'.

My phone had rung at about 11.30pm, it was the emergency officer at the local authority. I didn't know the young social worker but she seemed to know me, she said;

"It might only be for one night Mrs ******, we'll do the placement process in the morning. Do you want me to call Blue Sky and let them know?" 

Blue Sky are 24/7, but whichever Blue Sky person is on duty might as well slumber on, all was well. I sent them a text message.

The main thing is to get the child a roof over their head, a full tummy and a warm bed. We can do the paperwork when offices open.

The police car was outside our house not ten minutes later. The officer's had got the go-ahead from the local authority and brought the little girl up our path. Two officers, one male one female, both being so soft and gentle it made the heart glow.

They handed her over, she was feigning being asleep or semi-conscious, so I took her straight upstairs and got her into bed. Her name was Rachael. She had nothing apart from her T shirt and leggings. Bare feet, cold hands. The officers had put a few bits of clothing in a carrier bag. She didn't want anything to eat. I tucked her in and said some kind words.

I dashed downstairs to catch the officers and see what they could tell me about what had happened, but they'd told my husband everything they knew so they left and the two of us had a cup of tea and he filled me in.

There'd been a 'five fencer' and the police were called. A 'five fencer' is a domestic that can be heard five houses away. 

The police turned up to find a rolling conflict between several adults. Two or three of them scarpered when the blue lights arrived. This was on an estate not far from us which has a reputation, probably well earned, for upheaval. 

The first police unit called for backup as they were outnumbered and in the meantime started de-escalation. They told my husband they suspected from the off that all of the adults were affected by alcohol and probably by substance abuse. The officers spent the time until their colleagues arrived smiling and agreeing with every outrageous accusation that was put to them, calming things down.

The adults were asked if anyone else was in the house. One of them said something about a niece but that she was 'someone else's problem'. One of the officers carried out a house check, looking in every room and calling out. Nothing. 

Two adults were handcuffed and put in a car, their arrest being on the basis that blood had been spilled and that those whose blood had been spilled were more likely to be the victims, so an ambulance was called for them. 

You could see what the officers were doing; they had to move things on. They couldn't spend all night piecing together events in search of the truth, not with a bunch of angry inebriates. So; two to the cells, two to A+E, a third adult who apparently was not the worse for wear, went with the 'victims' in the ambulance to support them.

At that point the original two officers were left with an open house, lights blazing, TV blaring. They went in to make the house safe, and one of them did a final sweep of the house. 

Upstairs, under a pile of rank old clothes and a soiled single duvet, she found a cowering trembling little girl, Rachael.

Imagine. Imagine what Rachael had gone through that night. Actually probably not much different from most nights of her life. 

She stayed for two nights, didn't go to school, just in recovery. I gave her every ounce of love and empathy I could but I don't think anything got through. It takes a lot longer. Social services tracked down her mother's sister who they said was on the straight and narrow and would look after Rachel until things sorted themselves out, whether they did or not I don't get to know.

You never forget any of the children who come to you for foster care, no matter how short the time they're with you. You remember everything about them, with hope and optimism. 

These little ships that pass in the night.

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MUMS AND DADS

When a young person comes into your home to live, their thoughts about their real parents are so very important to the whole exercise.

Fostered children have difficult perceptions about their parents, most will always struggle thinking about  their mum and dad.

Who doesn't sometimes?

A few years ago, after my dad died, I found a photo of him I liked. He was a young man of 29 sat astride a big motor bike. I had the photo blown up and took it to a framing shop to get it made up. The young man in the shop looked at the photo and went;

"Wow!"

I said;

"Yeah, that's my dad."

He went;

"It's a BSA isn't it?"

He studied the pic with ferocious intent.

"Yeah definitely a BSA, I think."

I said I didn't know, and added; 

"It's my dad."

He said;

"Cowling is the key, I'll get the magnifier."

He did. My dad was indeed sitting on a BSA. This interested the man no end.

"I think it's a 350." he said, adding "Wow."

I said;

"My dad motorbiked across Europe on it after the war. He rode it all the way to East Germany and tried to defect to the Soviet Union."

The man didn't reply, he was trying to read the number on the bike's petrol tank. I went on;

"My dad was very idealistic. He believed that communism was best for a fair and peaceful world."

The man replied;

"The first number looks like a '3', so It's probably a 350."

I continued;

"Of course back then we didn't know about the terrible things Stalin was doing to his own people. Good job they didn't let him in, or else he'd probably have ended up in a Gulag. And I wouldn't be here."

The young man ended the 'chat' by saying;

"They don't make 'em like that any more."

He framed it for me and it's hanging in the kitchen. I often look at it and remember my dad.

I also remember the young man, who had such an impossible task getting his heart to wake up to the concept of 'dad'. Why was he deaf to the word 'dad'?  It was worse than deaf, it was almost a dead word to him. Why did the person in the picture mean nothing to him compared to the machine?

I expect his relationship with his dad was what we call 'normal'; probably fair to average. I doubt he'd been taken into care or anything drastic, but it reminds me how difficult it must be for fostered children to think about their parents - if a 'normal' lad struggles to picture someone else's dad but instead displaces the concept in his head with motor bikes.

Bottom line for me in fostering is this; I never, ever ask. If they mention their folks I'm happy to go along but what we talk about and how we talk is in their control.

Even so it's a fair bet there'll be some anger shortly afterwards...

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