THE SADNESS OF THE TENDER HEART

 Have you ever heard a dog owner who's out walking their TWO dogs say;

"Two dogs are easier than one."

Well fostering is different. If you've one child that child and your family have to find a way to knit, but the knitting is kind of one-dimensional; a blood family/a non-blood addition. There's a lot of getting to know one another going on, it's hectic for all concerned, especially the foster child.

When you have more than one foster child the dynamics get complicated; you have a) your own family and b) the background and personality of the first foster child and b) the background and personality of the second foster child. So there are four dynamics that have to be kept on track: a+b, a+c, a+b+c, and of course b+c.

Right that's enough algebra, down to brass tacks;

Having a parent and child under your roof means having a whole lot more than the above, because you're helping and advising the parent, minding out for the child, and crucially you are forming a judgement about whether or not the parent is up to the job.

The father is now past his honeymoon with us and has started to beg for nights out leaving us with his 18 month old daughter. It's understandable in any young man, but I have to be up when he gets home to see his state. So far so good, although he smells of tobacco (I think it's only tobacco but I'd make a useless sniffer dog), he isn't tiddly at all. He makes no secret that he smokes and goes to the bottom of our garden for one. The question is would he do so if he was alone with the child in social housing accomodation? Or, would he simply light up, Social Services are dead against smoking in the company of a child for whom they Care.

Hmmm.

It was noble of the dad to step forward and announce that he would look after his daughter once the mother had disappeared, but he has to do the job properly. It might be a case of waiting to see if the novelty wears off. Social Services have tried to make clear to him that he has to make parenting his daughter his absolute priority, that they'll be running regular checks and if he blows it the child will go into Care alone and probably put up for adoption. That process would take up time, effort and the Courts, but it's the only way. He nods his head while the deal is explained to him but I'm not sure if he's any good at listening. Lots of people switch off when another person is talking.

So; we know he smokes. But doesn't appear to depend on alcohol.

He struggles with making age-appropriate conversation with his daughter. This is partly because he doesn't speak clearly. Not only that, he uses negotiation as a tool to get his daughter's co-operation and you can see she doesn't always get it. 

Example;  he might say to her

"If you go and get daddy the remote control off the TV stand you will earn a biscuit"

But it comes out like this (phonetically);

"Ere yer are, go get va remote off o' the telly fing and I'll giv yer a bikky"

It's hard enough for a child to pick up a language, but when the individual words are skewed and run together it's harder. Even harder when the adult uses slang and lazy speech. Even worse when the behaviour the adult seeks is mildly wrong in lots of ways. In the case of the above, the proposition is absurd because when he said it he wanted to watch Sky Sports which would alienate him from his daughter when he ought to be engaging with her. Not only that, if he was too shiftless to get up himself and get the remote he would probably have deferred the 'reward' until he was next in the kitchen, so the child would have felt cheated.

But; at least there was some effort at engagement…

The above example is not exceptional. Single-parenthood is difficult in many ways. In some ways it can be better than having two parents if, for example, those parents fight a lot. But in many ways it's harder, not just in that there's no-one else to share the jobs and no-one at home to talk to about the child.  It can be lonely.

This young man still has plenty of his youth to enjoy.

I'm starting to lean towards saying that in my humble opinion he's going to struggle and therefore so will his daughter.

Luckily the final decision rests elsewhere, but my views will be listened to.

I must be honest, although it may be for the best that the child is removed, I have a heavy heart.

Our Blue Sky Social Worker is magnificent. She is constantly reminding me that we're in the business of doing what's best for the child. She tells me of many cases where the best thing that ever happened to children she's looked after was to be separated.

My head gets that.

It's the heart that struggles..

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PARENT AND CHILD

A lost mitten belonging to a child has been hanging on our gatepost for the last couple of days. It looks miserable, but the hope is always there someone will rescue it and get it back together with the other one. Bit of a metaphor for fostering actually. 

A neighbour said to me he was surprised somebody hasn’t stolen it. When I said that I didn’t think anybody would steal a single small mitten he replied;

"You’d be surprised."

A fostering friend once told me that her stock reply to anyone who ever said to her "You’d be surprised" is to say "I’m in fostering. Nothing surprises me."

I like to think the same thing applies to me.

However our latest placement has definitely raised my eyebrows a notch higher than ever before.

They’ve been here now nearly two days and nights, and the usual adjustments to our home are bedding in. It always takes a bit of time before you understand a new placement and work out how the people dynamic in your house is going to operate whilst they are with you.

They are not my first parent and child pairing. I go back to the days when it was called mother and baby. Even if they still call it that, we wouldn’t be able to in this case. For the simple reason that we’ve got the dad and his child.

Let me tell you what I can about the backstory of these two. The father and mother of the child are unmarried, and are in estranged due to insurmountable and sometimes extremely hostile difficulties.

The mother was looking after the child who is now 18 months old. She was living with her parents but it appears that her volatility cause ructions in the house which culminated in the mother running away leaving the child leaving teh child with the grandparents. The mother's whereabouts are unknown but she was seeing a young man who describes himself as a man of the road, living as he did in a converted van. It seems there are no fears for her safety at the moment, and although we understand the police are on the lookout for the van should its numberplate literally cross the radar, it’s it’s not yet a missing persons thing.

The mother's parents are neither able nor willing to look after an infant, so social services stepped in and were about to find a foster home for the child when her father showed up. He had heard the news on the grapevine. Correction; there is no grapevine anymore, he read about it on Facebook.

To his credit he said he’d like to look after his child.But here’s the thing, he himself is a bit of a sofa surfer. His parents are separated and he doesn’t have anything to do with them. So social services were looking for a foster home that would taking dad and his child until they could do two things. Number One find some social housing for them, Number Two to establish that he is capable of parenting his child

At this point enter myself. Or should I say enter them into our home. The job of Parent and Child is a kind of fostering plus, you have to provide all the things you normally do in fostering, but on top of that social services ask that you make ongoing assessments of the capability of the adult.

I’ve always found it a massive massive responsibility, and the first time I did it I hold my hands up because I know I got it wrong. I was too keen to help the parent keep her child, I believed that if I was given enough time I could’ve turned her into a good enough mum. Social was sceptical and looking back they were right.

I had to be reminded that my responsibility was mainly to the baby and I ended up agreeing that it should be adopted.It came as a surprise to me to discover that the mother didn’t bat an eyelid at the news she was losing her child which only went to show me how far off the mark. 

I can tell you a little bit about father and child. Starting with the child (I’m now consciously putting the child first). I can’t tell you the child’s name, but it’s useful for me to conjour one just to paint the picture. To give you some idea of her name let's say she is called Sue, short for Suzuki. Children coming into care often have arresting and exotic names, I don’t know why. Little "Sue" as no idea of her circumstances obviously, but he is curious, engaging and playful and seems blessed with all the normal competencies of a toddler. It never ceases to amaze how well balanced babies can turn out to be despite whatever chaos and shortcomings the biological parents carry around.

So, here I am at present keeping an eagle eye on Sue to ensure she has all she needs, the right food and drink, safe environment and mental stimulation mainly in the form of contact and conversation and interaction. I’m keeping a different kind of eagle eye on Lenny (I'm calling him) watching to see how he develops the skills necessary to be a complete single parent where usually two doing the job find it easier to share responsibilities.

I don’t think we’re allowed to say anymore that two parents are better than one so whether I think that or not I’m not going to go into here. Come to think of it it won’t be long before we’re not allowed to say that a child in infancy needs a mother more than a father; it's a fast changing world - mainly for the better by goodness we have to concentrate.

Besides checking that Lenny knows or he needs to know information about potty training and feeding and sleep patterns I’m also watching to see what his inborn parenting skills are like.

These things are difficult to measure but measure I must; so I’m constantly on the lookout for empathy and the signs that he is worth Sue attaching herself to and absorbing pieces of his personality.

Social Services are not intending to begin the hunt for some social housing for the pair pair until Lenny gets approval to take her on.

I’m looking forward to getting this one right and next time I’ll be able to tell you a bit more.

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HEADS WE WIN

 A reader, "Lilbets" asks how things are going with eldest foster child's resolution to geet me with a cheery "Good morning!" instead of the usual grump.

The novelty lasted for…

…one morning. 

Had my hopes, but did anyone expect anything better than that? 

Not me. I bet not Lilibets too, much as I feel Lilibets is on side. I suspect Lilibets knows which way is up. But; there is a big "but" namely that although I don't get the ultra-flamboyant Hollywood-esque Von Trapp children's nauseating cheerfulness, there has been a detectable improvement in disposition.

Now, and teenage child is duty-bound not to come over all nice as pie, because that would be, to them, a capitulation. Not only that, it would be stretching things a bit because the child would have had to concentrate really hard coming down the stairs and on top of everything, that kind of greeting is toungue in cheek, almost a micky take.

But I've ALWAYS found in fostering, where the child needs help with something, the progress is so slow you can hardly notice it and this is what has emerged the big win of the "Good Morning" resolution.

He's marginally, slightly, only a tiny bit better, but you'd need an atomic miscroscope to get anything concrete. It's in the air that surrounds him. It's a slight raising of the temperature, a lightning of the dark cloud that hovers over him (except when he's watching a Simpsons).

For example, he came down from his room on Sunday and plonked himself on a kitchen chair with only me there, and asked me what he should do with his hair. Sounds nothing to many people, but not we fosterers.

Many children in care need control. They've had such little control during the chaos of their real homes that they crave ownership; of themselves and their property.  This is why I get co-operation at bathtime with my much-trumpeted technique of getting them into the bathroom by saying;

"Which woud you like; a bath or a shower?"

The question appears to give them control, while actually it's me that's getting their own way.

So; for a child to risk handing control of something as personal and prized as his hair is a huge moment.

Huge.

It got better. I keep some electric clippers in a kitchen drawer, he knows where they are because he often takes them up to his room to do a bit of hair maintenance.

This time he asked me to have a go at it. He's seen me cut other people's hair in the kitchen, he knows there've been no disasters.

Nevertheless, it's a big something for a teenage child in care to trust his look with his foster mum.

And so okay, he's stopped his jaunty "Good Morning!" but replacing it is a closer relationship.

The very act of cutting his hair (he wanted a number two on the sides and a bit off the top but the front bit left to grow) meant I had to get in his space, something he's previously been wary of.

So, Lilbets; thanks for asking. I'd take what he ended up giving over what I'd asked for any day.

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EMERGENCY

 We've got our first ever emergency placement arriving later today.  I'm as surprised as anyone that not only did we get plenty of notice, but that I'm so organised that I've got time to talk a bit about this particular strand of fostering.

Some fostering folk specialise in it, they prefer it to standard fostering. Some do it alongside having a foster child in the house. The fostering folk I've talked to about it say it's a good way to help the system and the child, and because emergency fostering is a short-term thing it doesn't mean too much change in the way a family home works. 

The 'but' is that the child is likely to need a lot of looking after, because the 'emergency' bit often relates to the gravity of the chaos they've been enduring.

The young person who is on her way to us will be with us for a minimum of one night and we've agreed that if it takes a few days to get her a fixed placement that'll last we'll continue to let her stay.

I can tell you a bit about her story.

Oh dear.

So, she's 8 years old and her father is a man historically convicted of GBH and ABH. He's been prosecuted for damaging police property, namely making a mess of the cell door he was locked behind. He has a string of other convictions including stalking, for which a Court Order was obtained preventing him from approaching a woman who he said had paid her less for the extension he built onto her home than was agreed. He has a charge of breaking and entering pending.

As foster carers we're provided information about our prospective foster children so that we know what we're getting into, and can help the child the best we can. I've heard from other people who foster that they sometimes think they don't get the full picture because the local authority or fostering agency don't want to scare them off. I can say hand on heart that Blue Sky has a golden rule that it never happens with them.

So, this girl; call her Rachael, was removed from the family home because there had ocurred an incident. The incident involved a knife. 

Police were called to the family home when the child's mother dialled 999 because the father was going toe-to-toe with the eldest son in the kitchen. They had both picked up knives, but although they were holding them, there didn't seem any likelihood of them doing any damage. But it was wrong, big time.

Now, that's nearly bad enough, probably enough for the police to consider calling in Social Services to make an assessment of the safety of the children.

However while the police were in the home they identified other things that were concerning. One of the younger children had bruises to his face. Another was unresponsive to human contact and spent her time rocking back and forth holding a blanket over most of her face. The father's builders truck (one of those trendy open back four-wheel drive jobs) had equipment stored in it that was associated with construction but also burglary. The burglary kit was found underneath the passenger seat.

So far, no overwhelming reason to take the children into care; the father is a bad egg, the mother cares, the childen are in self-defence mode and out of the worst of the firing line.

No, the reason is this; the son who confronted the father in the kitchen and alledgedly grabbed a knife is on the run. The father, who also alledgedly grabbed a knife remains at home. But the children have been taken into care because of the potential danger of further violence between the father and son.

The son is on the run from the police, could show up at the family home any time he chooses. That's why the children have been taken away. 

BTY, the father is a vastly overweight forty-somehting who claims he once led the Millwall (I have little idea what that means as a credential except it implies he was some sort of super-hooligan).

The son on the run is aged 13.

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