CHRISTMAS ALWAYS GIVES..IN THE END

 It's post-Christmas-time at the moment here in the UK.

The last few weeks if you foster are always…I'm going to say…interesting.

But however interesting it gets, the Christmas Holidays are one of the big rewards in fostering.

Our own families fill our lives more than usual, but if you foster your fortnight is filled with not only your own family, but other people's.

It's a Godsend that Blue Sky Social Workers are on the ball with this; mine starts talking in early December about how we're going to organise it, starting from the day they break-up until the day they go back.

Thing is; there are no Golden Rules. Every child is different, and every family they've been removed from is different. Correction, make that "Every family they've been removed from is VERY VERY different."

There are so many things to try to get right for the child's sake. Yet more often than not children in care like to present themselves as closed books. For whatever reason they clam up about their real home and asking them how they like to spend Christmas and the New Year tends to get a vacant shrug.

So, me and our social worker sit at the kitchen table for two hours hammering out how to make each child feel as secure, cared for and safe as possible. We work out how much contact there can bee between each child and their families, and how to courier presents in both directions. We have little more than educated guesswork to go on, but background notes and a bit of experience helps.

Example; It's known to us that the abuser of one of our children will contact the child and make pie-in-the-sky overtures about them getting back together and enjoying the good old days like before. It happens every year. Social media makes this sort of thing so easy. We've tried to pursuade the child to log off it during this time, but their X accounts, Instagram etc are their lifeblood. The child claims the abuser's efforts are water off a duck's back. 

Only we know different. So we plan for understandable mood changes. The child did a little self harming on Christmas Eve. It was a minor thing, but we did as we have been trained; showed enormous sympathy and care as we sterilised and bandaged the cut. Didn't admonish the child, quite the opposite. We even left the blade in the bedroom. Perhaps it was a cry for help, so we helped. We logged it in our records even though it was miniscule - definitely not an A and E job - and will debrief Blue Sky when our Social Worker's back in circulation. The point is that we were prepared and most importantly; we've been trained. Blue Sky runs a fascinating training session on self-harming where we learned the do's and don'ts. I was surprised that the advice is to leave the implement in the child's room, but the logic is that it shows you trust the child.

The trainer asked us to consider that the chid is reaching out for the love and support of their foster parents, so it's possible to see such events as opportunities.

The child had the most beautiful Christmas Day. We had a two-year old child of one of our guests and the two of them bonded. I will NEVER EVER forget the sight of the toddler and this dear brave child enjoying each other's company on the floor playing Marble Run. It literally brought a tear to both eyes. One of those moments you foster for.

What I'm saying is that we had the opportunity to demonstrate to the child how much we cared and the child returned to feeling safe and secure.

Everything else went pretty much to plan. The gifts were appreciated, even the slightly unusual ones from the children's real families. A £10 phone top-up token? A pull-toy clearly purchased from a charity shop? 

Phone calls were made to significant others - as agreed after discussions with our SW.

We allowed them to stay up until midnight on New Years. Mind, they wouldn't have got to sleep 'til 2.00am anyway what with thoughtless neighbours fireworks 'welcoming in the New Year'.

We took our decorations down on January 2nd, our way of moving on.

Another "Best Christmas Ever".