KINSHIP FOSTERING

 We've got a new arrival.

A young person caught in the middle of what newspapers used to call a 'tug of love'.

If only there was a bit more love involved it wouldn't be so heartbreaking.

Here's the story; I have to be sensible about what I say because the privacy and in particular the identities of those involved is paramount.

The child was removed from the real home because major risks had come to light and it was ruled the child was in danger. The adults in the home were drug-dependent alcoholics whose mental health was not only poor, but declining. They resisted medication and counselling, arguing there was nothing wrong with them it was everybody else that was at fault.

Both parents came from families that had chequered records. Both sets of grandparents had criminal pasts, had abused alcohol and been violent.

The child's father had a sister who was more on the straight and narrow even though she'd been through the wringer as a child just like her brother.

When it was announced that the child was being taken into care the sister stepped forward and offered to look after the child.

It's often called Kinship Fostering.

Kinship fostering can have many advantages over bog-standard fostering such as the fact the child knows their new home, the carer knows the child, and it's easier for the child to stay in contact with their real home.

For the volunteer carer there's a crash course in fostering and a fast-tracked approval system which is just as thorough as the normal one. As with all children in foster care, the local authority retains parental responsibility.

But it didn't work out in this case, mainly due to one of the big stumbling blocks to kinship fostering, namely family rivalries.

Blimey, family rivalries are commonplace enough and not confined to families with deprived backgrounds. Ask Buckinham Palace about family rivalries.

The child's social worker told us they did everything they could to fend off the inevitable accusations;

"What makes you lot think she's any better than us?"

"I could tell you things about them that would make your blood go cold."

The warring parties threatened to regress into the exchanges they were familiar with from their childhoods. An arguement would kick off followed by insults and accusations which result in pushing and shoving which ends in a slap then a punch. The result could be a rolling brawl.

Can't risk that happening with an innocent child in the middle.

So the child is with us, until further notice.

It's a placement made trickier by the fact that they've witheld details about us from the child's family, just to be on the safe side. Our social worker hasn't spelled out exactly what their concerns are but it's clear to me that the two embittered families might bury the hatchet and join forces against us professional foster carers;

"What makes them think thjey're any better than us?"

"Bet we could find out things about them that would make your blood…"

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FOSTERING AND THE SCHOOL RUN

 Phew, just got back from the morning school run.

"Phew" because - as usual - there was endless criticism then arguments then borderline abuse about my driving. Happens every morning. Going to have to do something about it.

But what?

Sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee to sooth my wounded ego I can think a bit more clearly.

The sad fact is that many children coming into care are more argumentative than the average child. This probably has something to do with the fact that chaotic households are often a hotbed of disagreement. Shouting and swearing is all too normal and it rubs off on the children. Many of the disputes are baked into the home's brickwork. Regular arguments happen routinely. They happen over time-honoured topics such as pecking order, territory, and possessions. The same arguments get repeated over and over so much so one wonders if the combatents get some kind of peace and security from their familiarity. 

Argueing can be the closest some children get to intimacy and affection.

But when the household breaks down and the children enter foster care the shock and fear of the experience often sees them fall back on their security blanket of dispute. It can start small with squabbles, escalate to confrontation then disobedience and end in ill temper.

What to do???

The first thing your social worker will remind you of is that your own well being is extremely important. If the foster parent is knocked off her game she can't foster as well as she might. So; look after yourself.

Linking this back to my problem with the school run; if necessary I could find an alternative to driving them myself. Maybe seek out a car share with another parent, find out if the local authority has a mini-bus service, or put them on the bus.

I've had a better idea.

Sitting here thinking about it, their dissing my driving skills is obviously born out of the fact that a) they don't want to go to school b) they don't want to be in care and therefore being driven to school by someone who embodies their being in care is a hefty reminder of their plight.

I can't do much about that. But there is something I can try.

I notice that their beligerence begins at the start of the journey when I have to pull out of our road onto the main road. There's a slight backward slope so I have to do a mini-hill start, and according to them I always do it badly. Next there's my speed; it's a 30mph road and I tend to do 27/28mph, which gets abuse as it's "pathetically slow". My riposte than speedometers can be up to 5% inaccurate (I heard somewhere) gets ripped up by some sleight of mathematics, then we're on to my method of tackling the 3 roundabouts, all of which are 'incorrect'.

So. Here's my thinking. It may be that the route is festooned with triggers. There might be 20 or 30 triggers along the journey, from the mini-hill start to the exact spot of the final drop off.

Here's the plan. Starting tomorrow I'm going to use a different route. I'm going to exit our housing estate via a different road. I'm going to go what we call "the back way". It's a bit further but has only one roundabout and it's a different one.  And I'm going to finish by dropping each of them off at a different point to the one we've always used. 

And to top it off we're going to have Classic FM on and to h*ll with Radio One.

I might work... it might not.

Going to be fun finding out.

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ONE OF LIFE'S GREATEST MOMENTS

 What is there not to love for foster parents when we meet other foster parents?

Everybody enjoys the company of like-minded people. Everybody from football fans through to Buddhist monks, we feel at home with our own.

There's something, dare I say it out loud, that's a bit extra special for us who foster. 

In a nutshell it's this; nobody knows for sure exactly what fostering is like unless they've done it. So it's always glorious to be chatting away with a fellow veteran. 

ONLY FELLOW FOSTER FOLK KNOW WHAT ONE OF LIFE'S GREATEST MOMENTS ACTUALLY FEELS LIKE.

I'm absolutely not knocking anyone else here, especially the amazing social workers and other professionals that surround us. They provide everything they can and that's pretty much everything we need from technical back-up (most fostering folk are pretty much greenhorns on matter of the law relating to Care, for example) to emotional understanding and encouragement.

The bald fact is, however, we are trained, supervised and supported by people who have not actually experienced the thing they are training us, supervising us and supporting us to do. It's all credit to them for doing it so well.

I can only think of one solitary human being who achieved something having been trained, supervised and supported entirely by people none of whom had done the thing he was being lined up to do, the thing he did do and do it well.

Neil Armstrong.

So; of course it can be done based on theory rather than practice, but;

Until and unless a person has experienced what I believe is one of life's biggest single moments they can only wonder what it feels like.

That moment happened to me like this;

The child was a nine-year-old boy I'll call Jason. He was our first ever placement, and that's a clue to the moment I'm on about.

We had only recieved approval to foster a few days prior to his arrival. We'd had all the visits, the reports on us had been written up and we'd got the nod. Thus far in fostering all our experiences had been similar to others we'd had in life. The big unique moment was on its way.

I'd actually been introduced to the child before his placement with us was made. Blue Sky, thorough as ever, wanted me to meet the boy to see if I could manage him, he was a handful.

But I've hooked up with kids of all ages and types down the years, so still; nothing new or big yet.

He was only going to be with us for a weekend, it was respite for his permanent carers who were pooped.

He arrived with his carer plus the child's Social Worker and our Blue Sky Social Worker and he got down to opening the 'present' I'd bought to welcome him. It was a football annual all about the team I knew he liked. His father was a notorious man who 'ran with' a dubious squad of men who followed this team round the country having bust-ups with rival 'fans'.

Not something I wanted to encourage son to follow father in, but what the heck, I found the book in a charity shop, and it was a book after all, probably the first he'd ever owned.

The three adults sat with me at our kitchen table and went through some stuff; hints and tips about the lad's likes and dislikes plus a few forms to exchange and telephone numbers to swap.

Then the moment began to show on my radar…

They all stood up and put their things in their bags. They smiled and exchanged words such as "Lovely to meet you" and "I'll have our office email those details to you". And as they spoke they moved off towards out front door.

They collected their coats from the pegs and buckled up… and I could feel the moment rushing at me…

The front door was opened and they trilled off up our garden path with my Blue Sky person calling over her shoulder;

"Don't forget we're on call 24 hours, and I'll ring you in the morning."

I watched them get into their vehicles and pull away, me standing in the porch watching them go, my hand in the air waving goodbye.

And then; THE MOMENT.

I closed the front door.

And opened the world of fostering.

I was doing it. Fostering. The other people had left and it was now down to me and my wits and everything the world had taught me so far.

I can honestly say I've never had a moment like it. I felt gifted, yet anxious. Proud, yet uncertain. Empowered but fragile. Focussed but giddy.

I felt all sorts of things...I'd never felt so exhilarated. So alive.

Fact is I didn't get more than half a moment because I had to rush around trying to find the lad, he'd started exploring the house. He was such a fireball the weekend was a blur.

But whenever I meet a foster mum or dad I often ask them about that first moment in fostering. They compare it to when they first rode a bike, or swam in the deep end, or opened the big Christmas present.

We usually agree, the great moment is all those things.

And a little bit more.

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FOSTERING WORKS

 In fostering you get little moments that are a bit special. Sometimes they're straightforward parenting moments, other times they throw fostering into special relief.

If we keep our wits about us there are endless clues that fostering works.

So, what happened last Saturday morning was this.

I came downstairs, let the dog out for a pee and fired up the kettle. Whenever I let the dog out I leave the back door open (weather permitting) for her to pad back in when she's done and I make her a pre-breakfast snack; a little ridged ball smeared with peanut butter. She's at it for twenty minutes while I sup my first cup of tea.

Then she gets her breakfast of a proper bowl of food and I make my second cuppa and the family starts appearing.

I'd made the kids a bunch of toast and a couple of bowls of Weetabix and we all sat in the front room watching cartoons, then I went back into the kitchen because after my first two cups of tea I move onto coffee. That's when I was suddenly aware of a kerfuffle on the inside of the kitchen window. At first I thought it was a massive moth going bananas like they do. But no.

It was a bird!

A tiny thing, flapping away like mad, trying to get out into the outdoors but the glass was obviously too strong.

For some reason the first thing I did was softly call out to the rest of the house;

"There's a bird in the kitchen!"

One and all they came running in; after all, this was SOMETHING.

And it turned out to be a beautiful something.

The foster kids took the lead. Drama was something they knew all about. 

The bird had been banging itself against the window pane so feverishly she clearly had at best a headache, so she fell onto the lino and lay still. 

Eldest child stepped forward as gently as possible and curled a tender hand around her. Then picked her up and whispered;

"It's alright. Everything's going to be alright. We'll look after you."

They fetched an empty cardboard box (of which we now have plenty; thank you Amazon) and rumpled up some soft toilet tissue to form a makeshift nest. The bird squatted there motionless, but open eyed.

The children formed a rescue committee; one went off to the garden to find a worm, another closed all the curtains so that if she flew again she couldn't hit glass.

They opened the kitchen door and the front door so that there was a through breeze that the bird might get a piggy-back ride to freedom.

Then they decided it would be best to leave her to recover in peace.

They said that their presence, loving though they were, might be daunting for her.

They placed her 'nest' on the kitchen draining board next to the open door having observed that in the end it turned out that it was just as well that next door's cat had needed to be put down a few weeks ago.

We all made our way silently and slowly out of the kitchen and into the front room.

Eldest pointed out that he'd never before heard the birds singing in our garden so loudly. They wondered if they were calling her home.

Eldest gave the little visitor 5 minutes then crept into the kitchen to check on her. A triumphant voice called out;

"She's gone!"

And so she had; flown back to her own.

You don't need me to unpack all the parallels here between them and the little bird.

It was a brilliant episode, can't wait to share it in my next Blue Sky report.

Fostering works alright.

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