We've been fostering with Blue Sky for fifteen years now.
So something must be going right…
We'd originally started fostering twenty years before, but then our own children came along and we put fostering on hold.
Thinking back to then, what we thought was that we needed to put all our time and effort into out own kids.
On balance, we got that wrong.
A family can benefit from welcoming a foster child. An agency like Blue Sky works hard to find the right match, and supports the family. Big time.
Abigail is a child who was taken into care and Blue Sky were asked to help find her a foster home.
Abigail was taken in by a fostering family who had become friends of ours.
Friendship happens in fostering, you make new pals for life. We foster carers meet up in training sessions and coffee mornings and support groups and connect.
The family who took Abigail in had become friends of ours, as in curry evenings and days out.
Abigail turned out to be a child who wouldn't come out of her room.
Her carers had hard work to get her to school. She wouldn't go most mornings. There's not a lot one can do when the child simply digs in. You try all sorts of strategies, the social workers pitch in, but if a child won't get in the car what are you going to do?
Don't get the wrong impression, Abigail was unusual in her resistence. Look, no child really wants to go to school. I didn't. Did you? But I didn't stay up in my room refusing to budge. I knew there'd be consequences for me if I did, and anyway, I wasn't hugely anti-school, I simply felt that sometimes I'd sooner stay in bed…
Abigail would have none of it.
It began to become a defining issue. Local Authorities have ultimate duty of care for looked-after children and they have a zero-tolerance policy on looked after children and their schooling, namely; they have to go to school.
So. Abigail's foster parents, Ylena and Petre, had it all to do. They'd tried everything, but their Blue Sky social worker persevered with ever more strategies.
And eventually, one worked.
Their social worker asked the school Senco how many other children at the school were looked-after children. The answer was surprising. No less than seven!
Abigail had let it be known that one of her reasons for refusing school was her phobia about being singled out as a foster child. Her resistance was not to the book-learning, but to the chaos and anarchy of the playground.
The Blue Sky social worker and the Senco came up with a brainwave. They started a lunchtime club. For guys in care. It was done sensitively and with discretion, but the core credential was key.
They'd get together in a room that had previously been for spillover staff to drink coffee during breaks. It was personable; comfy armchairs, light and airy. The club members were politely requested not to use their phones. The Senco rigged a TV to show You Tube clips of moments from Toy Story, Shrek, and superheroes. She laid on a plate of biscuits (Hobnobs, obs) and there was juice.
The 'club' broached all age groups. The older pupils became parental about the younger ones. There's be informal competitions about whose background was worst. Club members started to go round to eavch others houses or meet up in town.
Bottom line; when those guys were in their 'club' they were all normal, for want of a better way of putting it. They had a common ground, namely that, through no fault of their own, they had a vulnerability and trepidation about those youngsters who like to poke fun.
To be fair, Abigail didn't turn around straight away, fostering isn't like that. You have to plug away.
But her resistance to going to school receded.
Job well done.
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