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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