WHAT IT MEANS TO BE PROPERLY "FULL TIME"

 Of people who work, some are part time, some are full time. The full-timers believe they are full timers, but, know what? The fact is they aren't. There's only one profession on earth that works FULL time, that's us fosterers. Proper nailed on 24/7 we are. Don't even let that frazzled bloke who came to fix your gutter tell you he's run off his feet because he does gutters by day then puts in a shift behind the bar at the Royal Oak, don't let him pull rank. Good luck to him or her and their efforts to make ends meet, but they go home at the end of their long day and switch off.

I never bother to tell folk what it feels like to be on the clock every minute God sends. 

Keep it to myself, is best. Mind, if you foster, you find that fostering crops up in conversation with new acquantances from time. I'm talking about anyone from dog-walkers to fellow parents waiting for their kids at the school railings.

Our reticence is due partly because frequently - almost always - when other people discover they're talking to someone who fosters they get flustered. 

I never volunteer, but sometimes folk ask you disinterestedly what you're "Up to these days?", or that most boring question; "What you do?"

If you say; "Actually I foster.", their response is almost funny. They blurt out things such as;

"Ah fostering…actually, a friend of my sister works in a Care Home..."

Seriously, she did, this woman I was on nodding terms with from dropping off at school. First time we chatted she told me how it's difficult it is to find tenants for the holiday home they owned in Italy, and that she'd need to be on the phone about it all afternoon. So after ten minutes on that rivetting topic she felt obliged to ask  me what I was going to do that afternoon. I replied "Taking my foster child to Contact". She went a bit white, and came back with;

"A friend of my sister works in a Care Home." I kid you not.

What was I supposed to reply? "How fascinating. Tell me all about your sister's friend…"

Another. A woman who asked me in the supermarket queue about the party food in my trolley. She guessed; "A grandchild's birthday?" (cheeky so-and-so). Stung, I replied "No, my foster child's having a Batman party."

She wavered momentarily then came back with;

"Ah! Now, I know a single mum who'd be a wonderful foster parent."

Anything but ask about fostering.

One more, this one's probably my favourite. Some time back I was walking the dog across the field with a foster child in tow. The child was aged eight, great lad, of second-gen Caribbean parents. A woman's dog starting gallivanting with mine so we ended up speaking. All too quickly she asked if the child was mine. She'd seen a white middle-aged woman out and about with a black kid…she had to know what was going on.

Nosy.

I replied;

"He's my foster child."

There was a short pause while the woman processed this. I waited. Her response was pure gold;

"Do you know where I might get a template for a hare?'

Me; "A...hare?"

She; "Yes. A running hare, in full flow. I need one about an inch and a half."

Me; "I don't…"

She; "See, I make jewelry to raise funds for the animal sanctuary at Wendham. Do you know it?'

Me; "Heard of it..."

She; "They do wonderful work there…"

And she went on, telling me ALL about the wonderful work. 

The wonderful work SHE did for THEM. All about her jewelry and the sanctuary's gratitude, adding "I've only visted once, so distressing. However I own a jewelry company based in my home workshop so I offered to help and they bit my hand off…"

In other words she had a dead-end kitchen hobby, and hoped to shift some of her knick-knacks by pushing them as "For sick and injured animals." And make herself out to be Mother Theresa, all because she found herself in the company of…a foster mum.

Yawn.

I'm not yawning at whatever good the woman does, I'm yawning at the fact that she HAD to make me listen , purely to ensure I knew that I wasn't the only one out on the meadow that day who did their bit.

See, like I said at the start, fostering isn't a "bit". It's not something we do on a wet Wednesday afternoon, and it's not nothing at all which is people whose conribution is having social circle that includes an acquantance who's borderline useful.

In terms of hours it's even more than overworked NHS staff, teachers and police officers put in.

If your foster child starts crying at 2.00am, you can't turn over and go back to sleep arguing you've been "at it all day". Fostering folk are at it all day and often all night. Every day and night. It's why they call the alowance we are given an "allowance" rather than "payment", because if it constituted "payment" then stretched over a 24 hour shift it would amount to about one fifth the minimum wage.

Obviously we fostering folk aren't up all night every night, far from it. But many of us sleep in a track suit so we're good to go whatever might happen. We sleep a shallow sleep a lot of the time, alert to anything that might need us to go into action. I've spent countless lights sleeping, well not so much sleeping as dozing, on the landing on a bed made of pillows and cushions. Watched the sun come up while watching yet another Spongebob Squarepants. Once or twice waiting anxiously into the wee small hours while the police relayed their efforts to locate our teenaged foster child.

Fostering; that's proper full time work.

So, my advice to people who don't foster, and who find themselves talking to someone who does, just ask them; "Oh, may I ask you about it?" Sometimes we might agree, most times we'll defer. We can't go into details about any cases. Just to put people at their ease I have been known to say;

"Don't worry, I'm not recruiting."

But sometimes they say;

"Actually I've been giving some thought to fostering…"

Then we're off and away.