THE PROBLEM WITH SOME BIRTH PARENTS

 One of fostering's biggest headaches can be the child's birth parents.

I have to remind myself loud and often what it must feel like to be a parent to a child that's been removed from your care. They must be mortified, well, they ought to be at any rate.

Unimaginable thing to have to deal with mentally.

They have to process social workers, sometimes the police, who have made a damning verdict on their ability to do one of life's most fundamental and important jobs. You can't get into much of a worse place than being told your parenting is so bad you're being relieved of your own children, and no argument.

It's only to be expected that many birth parents turn their frustration on the foster parents;

"Who do they think they are?"

"What makes them so special?"

You sometimes get deliberate dificulties put in your way such as unreasonable requests over contacting the child, or stipulations about haircuts or choice of new clothes.

We foster folk manage this challenge with the help of our Blue Sky social worker, and y'know what? It often turns out we're more concerned about the effect it has on the child than the effect on ourselves.

But then you sometimes get the opposite, and this one's hard too.

I'm talking about the parents who seem only too glad to see the back of their children!

They're happy to go on collecting the benefits (last time I asked the parent of a child taken into care still recieves the same benefit they collected when the child lived with them - I must check if that's still the case, but I haven't heard otherwise).

One case I remember vividly.

The child arrived at our house having had an irreconcilable dispute with her existing foster carer, I think it ran deep and was complicated by the fact the foster carer had a highly opinionated teenage son who saw himself as protective of his mum. The foster child had been subconsciously trying hard to userp the son as the mother's favourite and naturally, friction happened. When there were clashes the mum and the son joined forces and in the end social services felt it was best the child moved on.

So she arrived at ours, and we got to learn all about her circumstances.

The big issue with her was that social services were trying their socks off to return the child to her birth home. They had begun a transitory phase where the child would spend every other weekend at her mum's house and then return to care. It was part of my remit to drive her home on a Friday evening and collect her on a Sunday late afternoon.

This all looked like a piece of cake on paper, mind you it was an hour's drive there, an hour back, which was about my limit as a cabbie, but hey ho.

The child arrived midweek. Over tea one evening I asked if her mum had been in contact, she replied no, but that mum wasn't very good with mobile phones.

Ten days went by, the girl was in great shape. Happier than in her last foster home, and still ejoying the hallowed honeymoon period of being polite, obedient and respectful of her foster family.

Then Friday night arrived, and the tension began to mount. She couldn't decide what to wear. Couldn't make up her mind whether to cram her stuff into one holdall - which made her look casual - or use a suitcase, which she decided against as it made her look like she had an "I'm moving in" agenda. 

She came down with too much make-up on and her hair seriously boufant.

I drove her over to her home mostly in silence, she was clearly doing heavy-duty visualisations of how she hoped the weekend would play out.

I took her to her house, it had been agreed I should go in and say hello to her family. When she reached the door I saw her pull out some keys and let herself in; this was clearly a big thing for her; she had the key of the door. This house was her home.

When I followed her into the living room I was so saddened.

Her mum was slouched on a sofa strewn with food wrappings, a pack of Jaffa cakes on the go, her main TV remote in one hand, the other two balanced on her knee. She not only didn't get up to greet her daughter, she didn't even look up from the TV. Instead she mumbled into the air in front of her face;

"It's a mother an' 'er daughter. They's goin' fer the jackpot."

Some TV quiz show.

The girl asked;

"Is Emily (her older sister) in?"

The mum ignored her, repeating the quiz question out loud;

"What female singer had a number one with Elton John?"

I knew it was Kiki Dee, but daren't get involved in what was clearly a seismic dynamic, albeit a deeply damaged one.

The moment moved on. The mother said to her daughter; "You've missed tea, hard luck. Yer'll have to order sommatt fer yersel'."

The girl turned and took herself and her luggage upstairs.

I introduced myself to the mother as the child's foster carer.

The mother still didn't look up from the TV, just started clicking around as the credits rolled on the quiz show.

Eventually she replied;

"Right…so, you've got her for now then yeah?"

Then she muttered:

"Lovely Jubbly!"

'Lovely jubbly' is slang for lots of money. Many parents of children taken into care believe that foster families are only in it for the money and that it's big bucks.

I left.

Got a phone call the following day; the child had been arrested in town for shoplifting.  Social Services decided the child should stay on with her mother that night and that I would collect her on Sunday. On monday they'd review the arrangement, there was concern the child had offended as a reaction to being outsidered by her mother and sister.

When I arrived to collect her it was clear there'd been some recent antagonism. The child wasn't packed to come back with me, the mother was again splayed out on the sofa, this time clutching a fag which she was tapping ash off into a heaped ashtray. I got the strong impression the mother and older daughter were keen to get the girl gone from the house, yet I'd already got to know her well enough to know that she wanted to stay. 

Most of all, she wanted them to want her to stay. But there was no chance of that.

I treated her to a Big Mac on the way home, which cheered her up no end.

But what chance has a youngster got in life when rejected by her own mum?

*PS Forgive me using phonetics for the mother's spoken words, it's something I don't normally do, but in this instance when I wrote it up initially my accurate spelling and correct grammar and punctuation gave an inaccurate impression of her overall laziness and cyncial dismissal of everything, especially her own child.