I haven't taken on an emergency placement for a long while, mainly because there's been no room at the inn. If you have a foster placement in your home they're cautious about introducing an emergency case.
I didn't look forward to our first one because my thing was wanting to get down to work with the child for a meaningful period of time. Emergency placements don't last long.
Unless the fostering parents declare they want to keep the child on.
That was the other bit I found hard. I wanted them all to stay. If your heart's in the right place in fostering, I thought to myself, how could you want to agree they should leave you and go to another foster home?
Our Blue Sky social worker spotted this in us straight away. And put us straight.
See, an enormous amount of work goes into getting the right match for a child and their foster home.
Every home is unique. Ours is, we were reminded.
And so is yours. Yes you.. reading this…your home is unique; the interactive dynamics of the people who live in your home, their dispositions and history, their comings and goings.
Unique.
Every child is very, very unique. Ten times more unique when they're a child taken into care. Every trauma is utterly unique.
I was reminded of the emergency placement system because of something one of our foster children said the other day. It was something I didn't know about them, and it helped me to an even better picture of the child.
I already knew that the child had been removed from their birth parents under emergency circumstances. The police were involved, a dozen or more policemen and women. Three police cars and a transit-full of uniformed officers. It must have been horrific for the child. A furious arrest was taking place alongside a search of the house, then social workers took over and had to try to remove the children. Social services had hardly any advance warning of the swoop, and while they were engaged in trying to calm the children and persuade them to walk to the social workers' cars, half of the local authority's social workers were telephoning their list of carers who offered emergency care, the other half were phoning around trying to find permanent carers.
My child was found an emergency home for the night. The following day a permanent home was found for the child.
Imagine.
You sleep in your own bed (well on the floor actually), then overnight in an strange house with strange people, then on to another house and more strangers. 3 homes in 36 hours, dear god.
The child's permanent placement turned out not to be permanent. The poor foster carer, a single woman who was signed up with the local authority struggled to cope with the child's emotional state. And in a mad moment, slapped the child. We don't know how much of a slap, but it crossed the line.
That was that. You NEVER EVER EVER lay a hand on a foster child. Personally I'm for the people campaigning for it to be illegal to lay a hand on their own child…anyway.
So now our child was on the move again. To another emergency foster home.
We knew the child had been to three foster homes in a matter of weeks before the child came to us, but assumed the second emergency placement was, like the first one, for one night only.
Then, ten years later, the child says this, casually:
"Yeah, that second emergency woman was kind. Barbara. I got to know her 'cos I was there for two nights."
The child is hardly a child anymore, has been with us through to adulthood.
Chatting casually with the child, his perceptions of those experiences shaped his view of himself. Because, it turned out, he understood why, when the child was small, horrible people hated him, but then had to learn that kind people hated him too. Because, obviously, it seemed to him that Barbara rejected him.
Of course she didn't, but it seemed like that to the child.
The info helps us help him. We work day and night on his self-esteem, and we're getting there.
Aren't these poor kids effing amazing?!
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