TRIUMPH OF HOPE OVER EXPECTATION

I have a former foster child who stays in touch via Facebook.

It's her decision, she's an adult now, I've mentioned it to Blue Sky.

It's not something I generally do; staying in touch. The way I see it the whole point of fostering is to help the child get back to their own family and being in touch with their foster home could mess things up. The natural parents could understandably get het up about it.

A clean break is often best for all. 

Saying goodbye for ever is painful for the foster parents though, and tricky to maintain, as sheer curiosity kicks in big time.

I suspect that one of the commonest bonds between fostering folk of all shapes and sizes is that we would love to know how the kids turn out.

We get a pretty good picture of them, obviously, even if they're only in our home for a short time.

We can see the progress they make while they're with us, but we'll never know if they grow and flourish as adults.

Sometimes something will trigger a memory of one particular child or another, and I find myself saying out loud:

"I wonder how Barry's getting on?"

or

"Do you think Katie is ok?"

If my other half is in earshot he likes to make light and say things like;

"Still in prison."

or

"On her third baby."

This particular former child is still a bit all over the place.

Actually she's not really a foster child.

She came to us as a Mother in a Mother and Baby placement - which dates the placement because they're now called Parent and Child - it's not necessarily the Mum who needs help, and the child can be any age.

She was late teens and it was her second baby. The first had been removed from her before she had a chance to show if she could be a mother, so even though it was her second baby she didn't know anything about nappies or bottles so I had to do the mothering and teach her about it as I went along. 

The poor girl had never had any childhood of her own, so I'd often find her playing with the box of toys we kept for younger placements. She'd never heard a nursery rhyme. One summer's day we went to the beach and I'll never forget the child-like look on her face as she sat in the sand building a sandcastle for the first time ever.

As you're probably guessed, I became her surrogate mum, even though the fostering was primarily about the baby.

The baby was eventually removed from the mum's care and put up for adoption, and the girl went back into the outside world.

When you foster you get to know all about a child's history, and all about the child's day-to-day affairs while they're with you. Their backstories are painful, but at least you're spared any pain of finding out what the future holds for them.

However this girl is an exception. She remains suggestable; she's just had her third baby. She remains easily led; she let her uncle practice his new tattoo gun on her so she now sports a huge and badly drawn blue angel across her back.

She doesn't know we know, but a boyfriend of hers pursuaded her to tell him how to get into our house and we think he pilfered some of my (relatively worthless) jewellery. It's the only time in the whole of my fostering I've had anything stolen.

Plus, well after she left us we began to notice a stale pong in and around the bathroom. We had a poke around and found 15 used nappies stashed behind the immersion heater. Clearly she'd taken the baby's nappy off prior to bathtime, and simply couldn't be bothered to bring it downstairs.

Not much of a mum, not much of a citizen. 

But on Facebook she remains cheerful and chatty, and I say hello from time to time, just to help her feel she's got some sort of a mum in this world.

I mention her in connection with the thing I talked about a moment ago; not knowing how cruel or otherwise the world treats them when they leave.

I've just seen that the father of her third baby has learned that his father, from whom he was estranged, was killed in a shocking tractor accident. 

So sad, yet she's known so much pain and loss in her short life so far, what comes across on her page is that she's barely moved at all.

I suppose there's something to be said for that.

Sad though, to be so immune to sadness.

I'm not. I'm thinking of cutting my link with her, the odd thing being if I did; it would hurt me more than her.

I probably won't though.

There's always hope, without which we fostering folk would struggle.

That's why I always say; it's the best job in the world.

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BOB DYLAN WAS RIGHT

The times, they are a changing. Changing fast. Faster than ever before?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Old lag Bertrand Russell wrote over a hundred years ago:

"The average scullery maid now expects more excitment over one weekend than her grandmother sought in her whole lifetime."

But whether or not it's a fact, it feels as though things nowadays are changing faster than ever.

What got me thinking was this. I remembered the moment when I discovered there was such a thing as fostering. I was aged about 14. The TV was on, showing some sort of factual programme. The camera was inside a house, an ordinary house. The parents were both in attendance as were three children. The reporter said; "Mr and Mrs Smith have 2 children of their own, and a foster child."

"Eh?" said I to myself. As the programme went on I pieced together that if, for whatever reason, a child's own home couldn't look after them, they could go and live with another family who would "foster" them.

I put the idea of fostering in my back pocket and got on with being young. Years later it jumped up and bit me, and I'm SO glad it did.

But here's the thing; back then fostering was so unheard of I hadn't heard of it. Come to think of it, I'd never heard of a family breaking down. There were no children at any of the schools I went to whose parents had divorced. Divorce seemed only to happen to film stars. None of the children in my schools had any special needs. Or to be precise, the special needs those children had weren't recognised, never mind met.

Oh, I used to overhear gossip among parents; things like "the woman at the end of the road's too fond of gin". It was announced one morning in a school assembly that a pupil among the 600 at my secondary school was considered being referred to a specialist for counselling because he wouldn't stop bullying. 

But nowadays…

A relative of ours is a SENCO, a Special Educational Needs Coordinator. She's just told me that there are more children in her school have Special Needs than those that don't.

We've gone from virtually zero children detected to over 50%. And has it peaked? You bet not.

If you take an average assembly of 600, it's hard to imagine that a single one of the families represented don't have at least one backstory of broken relationships, bullying, serial incompetent bad decision-making, corruption, drug abuse, assaults, police interventions and so on. 

Is every house affected? Feels like it sometimes.

By the way, I didn't describe a school assembly back there. Nor when I mentioned 'house' did I mean a 3 bed semi. I was thinking the House of Commons. You know; the place where those chosen to lead us assemble every day...

Break-ups, breakdowns, broken dreams, broken homes.

The need for fostering has never been greater, and is set to grow even greater. Goodness only knows what the state of play will be in, say, ten years time.

I repeat my plea to anyone reading these blogs because they're considering giving fostering a go; get in touch asap.

There's a child out there who needs you.

I will always remember this moment; a tiny child joined us who'd had an awful time. A few weeks after she arrived she asked me why I hadn't come to rescue her sooner. I told her that if I had known what was happening to her I would have walked through hell and high water with a sledghammer to break open the door, sweep her up in my arms and take her to safety.

I would have too (well, metaphorically anyway).

Wouldn't you?

It's now something I do all day every day, and it's great.

You'll love it too, as will the kids you'll help.

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INDEPENDENCE DAY

 Apologies for my brief abscence; computer problem over, fingers crossed.

I suppose I could tax you with the details of the gradual decline of a laptop that had become a trusted friend. She knew me better than I did in some ways; she'd learned to anticipate my next move. Or so it seemed.

Then, just like so many poor people in our world today, she started being a bit slow, then a bit unpredictable, and finally downright difficult.

But, like so many people who stand by people who have begun that sad decline, I stuck by her as long as I could. Until, one morning I flipped her open only to be greeted by a symbol which was the equivilant of the road sign meaning "No Entry".

And that was her gone. 

The repair shop said she'd basically given up the ghost. They were able to retrieve some of the data on her - including, thank goodness, the Secret Foster Carer files. But as for the rest; a case of RIP old friend.

What I was able to do, though, which you can't do with loved ones, is buy a replacement.

And I'm on it now, finding it a bit tricky with it's shiny newness and facilities I don't know what to do with. But I'm not complaining.

It was one of those funny old days, the day my laptop died. 

Not only was my laptop dead, but so was the car. It struggled on the way back from the vet then, parked on our drive, wouldn't move an inch.

Not only that but our dog had to be kept in at the vet to be x-rayed because the operation they'd done on her back leg seems not to have taken and she's limping badly.

Not only that but I'm zonked on some bug or other. Headachy, stiff, sneezing, sore throat and can hardly keep my eyes open come 6.00pm! Tested negative for Covid and am due a flu jab soon, but deffo pretty rough.

So: 

Laptop         OUT

Car;             OUT

Dog:            OUT

Me:             OUT (Well, almost).

All on the same day. But y'know what? Nothing gets in the way of fostering when you foster…

Eldest came and talked to me. It was after midnight. There was a light tapping on our bedroom door. I knew that particular tap straight away, swung out of bed into my DG, and opened the door six inches.

I said "You OK?"

Eldest was standing there fully clothed and said:

"Can we have a chat?"

Now I don't mind telling you this made my day! (Or night, technically), because teenagers can be very monosyllablic if not downright non-speaking. So to get a request for a chat was heady stuff.

Turned out eldest wanted to buy and cook independently.

This would mean a budget for food, which eldest would buy in the shops, and there would have to be arrangements about who has dibs on the cooker, when and for how long.

This all might sound a bit drastic; a foster child shopping and cooking independently of the rest of the family, but I couild easily see what it was about and was happy to give it a green light.

See, children in care are even more enthusiastic about independence than other young people. How could they not be? Their birth family hasn't worked well, and they find themselves in with a family of strangers who - try as they might - will never be 'real' family. So their best bet seems to them to be to strike out on their own.

Obviously they can't set themselves up in accomodation and fend for themselves, not as minors.  But y'know what? A large part of our job with the older ones is getting them tooled up for the outside world. 

This was all a couple of days ago, so the plan is still alive. My guess is it will happen, but peter out after a few days. Young people often talk openly about their grand plans and get rewards from those who'll listen.

It can often end up with them almost feeling as if they've fulfilled their schemes by explaining what they are in advance. Once they've semi-experienced a pipe-dream they don't have any further need of it, so it's on to the next scheme.

I don't know when eldest thinks there's time for shopping and preparing and cooking and eating, followed by washing up and putting away. Not with all that Netflix to watch and homework and revision to squeeze in.

All that work will quickly be replaced by takeaways before the discovery that the budget simply doesn't stretch to Deliveroo more than twice a week. Then it'll be back to where we are now, with me as Head of Catering.

But. Eldest went off to bed one step nearer being independent. 

One step nearer being on control of creating a life that's well deserved and long overdue.

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Hi, sorry about this but my home computers have blown a gasket and I'm going to be out of communicado for a while.

Secret Foster Carer

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