LOOKING AFTER NUMBER ONE

 The most important person in your home?

It should be you.

What I mean is that if you aren't on top of your game you can't give your all to the others.

Can't meet your foster child's need as best you should.

It can be darn hard putting yourself first in certain situations, sometimes you just have to.

Take last weekend.

Eldest foster child had been invited to a gathering. It was at the home of a friend from college.

Eldest is growing in independence and we're all out to support the guy.

So I answered yes when asked if I'd be taxi for the night and drop off about 7.00pm, a journey of about 10 miles. And I answered yes when asked if I'd collect.

At "About 11.00…or maybe…dunno…is midnight too late?"

I stuck up for myself:

"I think 11.00 is late enough. We won't get in until 11.30 and that's plenty late."

So I dropped off and came home.

And stuck to drinking tea for 4 hours, where normally on a Saturday evening a glass of red hits the spot.

A text message pinged around 10.00pm:

"Can u make it 12.00? Big pls?"

I folded; "Ok but be waiting outside."

I've had enough experience of waiting in the car outside to pick up from gatherings, under firm instructions not to come to the front door.

An hour later my phone pinged again;

"It's ok. I'm gonna stay and kip on their sofa, their mum is cool."

Luckily I've met the mum, she picked up from ours a while ago. She is indeed cool, as in I can trust.

Me to child:

"9.00am tomorrow then?"

I got the fat thumb emoji.

Hauled myself up the apples and drifted off.

Phone pinged and woke me up.

"Can't sleep. Can you come now?"

I looked at the time. 

4.55am.

The correct response, finally, is no. 

A deal is a deal. Children and young people sometimes have to learn the hard way.

If I'd got dressed, snuck out and got in the car to pick him up at his whim I'd have been flying in the face of everything I knew about parenting, fostering and life in general.

I was reminding myself of this as I overtook a milk float five minutes later, heading for guess where.

Spent the following day yawning theatrically; partly for effect, partly because I was cream crackered.

Kept wondering if I should have put myself first.

Finally I managed to escape feelings of being weak and downtrodden by reminding myself I did it because I wanted to.

I enjoyed every minute of the drive over, loved seeing him sitting on the wall outside the house.

Lapped up every ounce of indifference I got in response to my questions such as;

Question; "Good party?…Sorry, I mean good gathering?"

Reply; "Dunno."

Question; "Are you planning to go to bed when we get back?"

Reply; "Dunno."

Lapped it all up, every micro-second of it.

Chatted with my Blue Sky SW about it;

Her Question; "Why didn't you just say 'No'?"

My Reply; "Dunno" 

By "Dunno" what I meant was this: I couldn't put my finger on exactly why I went the extra mile, it was a feeling rather than a scientific decision.

But it's happened loads of times especially in fostering, and it'll happen plenty more times.

It was what I wanted to do.

I put myself first.

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NEEDLES AND HAYSTACKS

 Our newest foster child is going through it at the moment, it's worth sharing.

Sometimes in fostering one can fall back on previous experiences. Most often you find oneself in a "Day One" state of mind.

The little feller likes life as a foster child so much he's not wanting to go home.

I've never quite had to deal with this one before. 

Shades of it yes; kids who want to 'stay in touch', kids who 'will never forget you'. Even had one who asked if instead of them going home their parents could move in with us 'to see how to be proper mummies and daddies'.

The child's trepidation about being returned has to be peeled down to find out what the core problem is.

Our Blue Sky SW is being a bastion, working closely with the child's Local Authority SW.

The picture we're getting is that the child believes he'll be harmed if he goes back, but we have to go deeper and try to find out in what way might he be harmed and how real is the danger.

Physical harm is done to all too many kids who come into care. I've had slapped kids, smacked kids, punched kids, kids whacked with a baseball bat, had a toaster hurled at them. Had kids locked out in the garden all night in the rain, locked up in their bedroom. Locked into a cupboard. Tied up, gagged, had cold water poured over them. The list could go on.

It seems the bruises heal, it's the emotional scars that stay.

And of course, it's easier to spot a physical trauma than an emotional one.

So what everyone's working on is finding out exactly, or as near as exactly, what the child is fearful of and then trying to ensure the child is spared the experience.

If that means confronting the parents over aspects of their parenting, that's what will happen.

But. It's needle in a haystack time, because young children rarely (if ever) understand what's happening to them and around them.

Or the effect it has on them.

The one thing we have established is that he's afraid of bedtime, and not in the normal "It's too early, can I stay up a bit longer", or the equally normal but more problematic "I see funny shapes on the curtains" way.

Needless to say we were quick to wonder the worst.

As far as I know (foster folk aren't always fully apprised of proceedings against a foster child's significant others, something to do with their human rights maybe)…

…as far as I know there are no allegations of impropriety or worse against any of the householders or the many, many occasional visitors.

Yes, it's an open house where he comes from, funny how chaotic homes are often a cross between a pub and a house of ill repute. 

Time is not on our side. The current economic nightmare is pressuring social services to find solutions quickly, and it's also forcing more children into care, meaning more foster places are needed.

Whatever the pressures, everyone is working to get it right for the child.

As ever.

Must dash, up to my neck in hay and no sign of any needle.

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FOSTER KIDS AND MONEY

 There's a bit of paperwork involved in fostering, as I'm sure anyone thinking about signing up to foster would imagine. Fortunately nowadays it's almost entirely online, or at least made more do-able thanks to the joys of the word processer and spellcheck.

The most important thing one has to write up is the regular report on your child's progress.

I find that doing my reports help me no end to stay focussed on what the job is all about; looking after someone else's child. Helping them cope with their difficult life. Doing everything I can for them.

Blue Sky supply their fosterers with a blank report that divides fostering into its parts. Even that simple technique helps me separate the different things I have to consider in fostering.

For example; there's a box to fill in to describe the child's health. It remind me to record any trips to the doctor's, but also to bear in mind any aches and pains the child reports. One of the most interesting box to fill in is all about the child's relstionship with money.

It's always a bit of an eye-opener when a new child reveals what they know (and don't know) about money.

One child came to us from a fairly well-off background compared to many. He was a very withdrawn person, given to bouts of anger and misery at first, aged 6. He was old enough in our book to look after some pocket money so we sat down with his Social Worker to fix an amount. We figured (we tend to do it this way) that it should be enough for him to be able to save towards something, but also enough for him to buy some treats of his own. We figured; two packs of crisps a week and a packet of Tanfastics plus same again to put aside as savings. When we told him he'd be getting X per week he literally filled up. He was happy for himself, but angry about how he'd been treated before where, although his significant adults could easily afford pocket money, they were more keen to flash their cash on fancy furniture and exotic holidays. They banked all the allowances they were paid towards the upkeep of all their kids, but pocket money? He got 10p per week. That meant he'd have to save 6 weeks to buy a bag of crisps. It made him feel unloved and worthless. He went on while he was with us to become very competent with money, handling savings and expenditure with class.

We've only had money stolen once, I left a twenty pound note on the phone table to pay for the pizza when it arrived. When it arrived the note had gone. We had no fewer than four staying with us at the time. A Careful investigation left us in no doubt who it was and we confronted her. She acted deeply offended and offered to pay us the money out of her own account, which she said was a gesture of goodwill and no there'd be no need to call the police (not that we'd threatened or intended to).

The interetsing thing here is that the girl who swiped the note wasn't a foster child. She was the daughter of a wealthy Russian who we took in as a student, the thing we did before fostering. She was 16 and a bit of a minx. I mention this as a lot of people think that in fostering you're likely to get turned over by mythical junior pickpockets. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's rare. Rarer than what people call the "real world".

Oh and the student who filched from us? You'll be tickled to know she grew up to become an accountant...

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CHANGING TIMES

 There's no sugaring the pill; most children taken into care have suffered some sort of damage. They arrive at the home of their new fostering folks with a lot going on inside.  There's a famous opening line from one of those Russian novels it goes something like;

"All happy families are identical. All unhappy families are unique in the cause of their unhappiness."

And for sure, every child we've looked-after has been singular, except for two things.

One. They've each had to bear the stress of being taken away from their familiars and put with a bunch of strangers.

Two. Their problems have been brought about by poor upbringing, chaotic environment, inadequate surroundings.

Stand by for another quotation. Ancient Chinese. About kids; 

"The fruit of the bramble will always be bramble, the fruit of the willow will always be willow."

Willow means upright and true. Bramble is all over the place.

Upright parents have upright children. Chaotic parents have chaotic ones. 

That used to make sense, probably was true 99% of the time.

But nowadays? Not any more.

Thanks to our incredible, fantastic, wonderful system of caring the fruit of the bramble can become willow. That gladdens the heart.

Unfortunately the reverse seems to be gathering ground. The fruit of the willow becoming bramble. Upright parents having children go all over the place.

We had our street party yesterday, and what I saw makes me even more sure that something strange is going on.

The party was for our street and the one adjacent. About 100 houses ranging from flats and bungalows, semis and detached. 150 people came. All generations were present. Our own kids and our foster kids showed up with varying degrees of reluctance and shyness. I know them inside out now and was proud to see them mingle and generally look and behave no different from the other young people. Our eldest foster child was on brilliant form, chatting away to adults he'd never met before. I could have cried, the kid is on his way in the world. I can't tell you what the child has been through in life, but believe me that child has no right to any kind of equilibrium. But the child is getting there. And doing it on their own, their way. Any credit belongs to the child.

To the best of my knowledge my lot were the only young people at the party who were in care. The others belonged to families one would best describe as mostly middle class, some as well-to-do. There was even a smattering of children who go to fee-paying schools.

I chatted to lots of neighbours and near-neighbours, many of whom I'd hardly met before, some I'd never even seen before, and the subject of children came up a lot. Only a few of my immediate neighbours know I foster. In talking to the other parents, stuff came out. The parents wanted to talk.

And a) I kid you not and b) I am going to be extra-cautious not to say anything that would allow anyone to identify anybody or even worse themselves. And please believe me I mention what I'm about to say with a heavy heart and purely in the spirit of care and the will to understand.

Of the other young people at the party (remember they all are fruit of the willow); there's been one attempted suicide, one in and out of police custody, one who has to be restrained to recieve the cocktail of medication that keeps them on the straight and narrow, another who hasn't spoken to their father for nine years, another who had to be removed from school, one who has given up on therapy and medication, two who are transitioning, and a horrific one where the child went to a party and never came home.

There were other youngsters there who seemed uncomplicated but they seemed in the minority. A friend of mine who teaches in Primary School tells me that the average number of children who have 'needs' is now over 50%.

I'm not calling them bramble, I have spent too long in fostering to ever judge anybody.

But.

These kids are in various degrees kids who have experienced, and many still are experiencing, substantial difficulties. So are their families. In fostering the children are removed from their parents' care because of the detriment the adults are doing to the children. Yet in our neighbourhood alone the majority of the kids seem to be bringing chaos and heartache to their parents.

Is this something strange and unique in my neck of the woods? Is there something in our water?

Or is something strange going on? 

If so what?

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