THE PLUS SIDES OF CONTACT

I'm not going to go on - again - about why the whole business of Contact could be improved.

Instead I'm going to sing one of its genuine praises that deserves to be sung.

Contact is where a foster child is given contact, usually for an hour once a week, with a significant other, usually a parent.

When you foster a child it can take a long time before you get a really good picture of who your foster child is.

Of course, you can never get a full picture because the picture is always changing, hopefully for the better.

If the child isn't developing then they need help.

Some children, when taken into care, have started to give up on the world. Their hopes and dreams have begun to go up in smoke. As their foster parent one has to roll up one's sleeves and try to turn them around.

It's not just the kids that give up on themselves. Some aduts form the view that children who've suffered have begun an irreversible decline . One poor mite I had to take to counselling was bright as a button inside, just mixed up.

I told the counsellor that the child had a fine mind, and had it in them to get to a good university and make a go of life. The child didn't like being counselled, so gave up after the second session. But the counsellor thought they'd learned anough about the child to have opinions.

For reasons I won't divulge I was recently privvy to many of the child's records, including what the counsellor wrote about us;

"The child's foster carer has unrealistic hopes for the child."

Imagine the joy I'm having in writing to the counsellor and informing them that I've just learned that the child, now a young adult, is being offered a Foundation Year at none other than Cambridge University.

As Nelson says in the Simpsons;

"Ha ha!"

One of the good things that Contact's got going for itself is that you get to see, and sometimes meet, the child's family.

It can really, really help to get hold of this peice of the jigsaw of their problems.

Example;

Jethro was eight years old when he came to us. He was very hyper. Always on edge. We tried to meet all his needs, and in particular we tried to calm him down.

All the while trying to work out why he was nervous. One time I asked him to pass me a pair of safety scissors and he picked them up with theatrical care, gripping the blades and holding them pointing down. I thought little of it at the time. On another ocassion we were eating tea and one of my kids was telling an animated story while holding a slice of pizza. "Stop waving that pizza about!" I laughed, and Jethro added "You'll have someone's eye out."

Hmmmm

Then I met his mum. She was heading into the Contact Centre but saw us parking up. She waswell dressed but carried a bewildered stare. As we got out of the car she called out to me' "Where's his coat? He'll freeze to death in this weather!"

Jethro made his way towards her at a fast walk.

Mum shouted "Be careful! Don't run! You'll fall over and cut yourself to pieces!"

They disappeared and I had easily picked up another bit of Jethro's identikit picture.

His mother was a nervous, anxious woman. One who had taken being risk averse to great heights.

She was a bit of a catastrophiser.

Someone constanty treating themselves to mental pictures of the worst case scenario.

The problem as far as I was concerned lay with Jethro developing it by proxy.

I talked about it with our wonderful Social Worker.

The solution lay in not wrapping Jethro in cotton wool. He was allowed to climb the little apple tree in our garden without anyone shouting that annoying phrase all too many parents use:

"Be careful!"

He skinned his knees after discovering a rusty pair of roller skates in the shed. I'd accompanied him into the shed (as you should always do), but didn't keep saying things like "Don't touch that!" or "Watch yourself there!"

I didn't allow him to take any real risks, only little ones that barely had any consequence. For example, he'd never been allowed to bounce on his bed "You'll fall off and break your neck!"

Did the treatment work? I think so, a little bit. He had fun for sure and fun is very therapeutic.

But it was all thanks to Contact, and what I learned about his mum, his home life, the reason he was jumpy.