WHY IS CONTACT LIKE A TORCH?

 There are things to moan about in fostering but I try not to.

From time to time fostering is taxing, but you knuckle down and sort it.

There's always a Blue Sky social worker behind you.

On the whole fostering is grand.

Probably the one thing in fostering I'd change is "Contact".

I'd make Contact more elexible than the "once a week" dictat that almost always is a bit of a spanner in the works.

Not so much for me, but more importantly, the child. Children in care are, more often than not; mucked up by Contact, especially in the first weeks. Having to be taken to meet up with their 'significant others" is upsetting. By the time we get them back to our home they're edgy at best, often thoroughly mixed up.

"Contact", I looked it up, is enshrined in UK law as a well-meaning clause in the Childrens Act. It's perfectly well intened;d to help maintain a relationship between the child and the parents that we're supposed to be aiming to re-connect.

I can imagine the MPs and civil servants sitting in Committee nodding the idea through because it's seems to make sense. A good idea idea in principle. I'm sure they consulted social workers, maybe even fostering agencies. I'm equally sure they didn't listen to foster carers much, if at all. The Comntact law needs to be made more flexible, to freflect the needs of the individual child and their family.

Going back a few years I was required to take a child to have Contact with a family member who'd abused the child. The adult insisted and the lawyers agreed there was no getting away from it. I had to take the poor kid to sit with the adult for an hour, once every week. Then the Contact stopped. Why? Becaiuse tyhe adult went to prison for what they'd inflicted on the poor kid. The Contact law hads to be followed while the police and Crown Prosecution investagted allegations and set up a trial. It took a whole year.

Imagine any other victim (ok, in the eyes of the law 'alleged' victim) being forced to sit with the alleged perpetrator for an hour once a week? All the while trying to get their life on track? Madness.

I'm adamanent that the first few weeks in fostering are a bit raw for every child and the "significant others".  Contact was devised before mobile phones and Zoom which would do the job just as well and allow discreet supervision no problem.

Mind, I'm the last one to advocate technology because I'm a bit of a dinosaur myself when it comes to gizmos.

Example; I keep an old-fashioned torch (flashlight if you're American) in the drawer next to the bed. Why? In case of a power cut.

I lent the torch to one of our foster children who was going out Trick or Treating and it never came back.

So I bought a new one on Amazon.

I didn't expect what I got.

I got a torch, yes, but one that works like this:

You click the "On" button and it flashes. On/off, on/off…and so on until you click the button a second time. When you click the second time it starts to strobe. Like in an old-fashioned disco. The sort of strobing that has newsreaders warning people vulnerable to fits that "the following report contains flash photography."

Click the button a third time and you get what you want, namely a beam of light.

My kids tell me I don't need a torch as there's one on every mobile phone. But if there was a power cut I'd want to maintain as much battery life in my phone as possible. That's my argument anyway.

Why am I telling you this? And what's it got to do with Contact?

It's this; somewhere in China is a gigantic factory that makes torches. The people at the top sit around making decisions about what facilities their next brand of torch will have.

They probably decide that the harder they try to make the torch have all sorts of features, the more thay can justify pushing the price up.

So the customer has to buy a strobing, flashing torch.

Who ever in the whole wide world needed a torch that strobes?

Nobody.

Nobody ever.

Ever.

But, every torch you can buy will make you click it several times before you get to the only thing you want, which is a beam of light.

The guys who sat around deciding how their next torch should work probsably never needed to use one. Or else they'd know that you never need a torch that strobes.

These strobing torches (by the way, my new bike lights have the same 'feature' - they strobe) are madness.

So, my bedside torch is inconvenient, annoying and arguably dangerous, because I have to fiddle with it to make it work.

And when I get off my bike I have to switch the lights through the complete cycle of options.

Designed by people who have no experience with torch use, and who probably don't ride bikes after dark.

Exactly like how Contact came about...