HEROIC KIDS

 Fostering can easily drain your last drop of belief in humanity.

Sounds dramatic I suppose but hey, we foster parents always bounce back.

Blue Sky make sure we do, and we do.

But by Jimminy, sometimes you go pale at the gills.

Our middle foster child is a trojan. A finer kid you couldn't hope to meet. Bright, decent, resourceful - all those credentials. On top of the sterling stuff, the child has subtle kindness, care of others, and love deep down in a big heart.

We squared things when the child came; explained that fostering is temporary and the job is to bring the child's family back together so they can move forward.

The child bought in. The child decided to see being in care as a sort of holiday from the family nonsense.

Weeks turned into months, during which our Blue Sky social worker kept us posted on the progress being made by the child's family.

The stepfather had issues with the law; criminality, substance abuse, alcohol and domestic violence. He had a suspended prison sentence hanging over him, but he seemed hellbent on activating it, as he couldn't stay out of trouble.

The child's mother was almost equally aberrant.

The thing is this; in my experience all children in care want to be re-united with their real family - no matter how chaotic they are. There it is.  An amazing fact, yet I came to understand and accept it.

So.

Here's the thing.

The child's mother has decided to start a new life for herself. She's moving back to her grassroots in Lincolnshire. She's hoping to escape the child's stepfather. The child's real father has never been on the scene.

The child's Local Authority social worker visited us on Thursday to bring us up to speed. Our Blue Sky social worker made sure she showed up.

The news was devastating.

The mother has decided to go live with her elderly mother and father in a cramped farm workers terrace house where she was brought up. She hoped to disappear from her abusive partner. She felt she had benefitted from the peace of not having kids to look after. She wanted to look after herself.

So; she declared that she was unable and unwilling to care for her own children, didn't trust her ex-partner not to find them and cause danger. And didn't trust herself to mother them.

All the above boiled down to this;

Someone had the job of breaking the news to our lovely foster child.

"YOUR MOTHER DOESN'T WANT YOU"

Sister, go try that hat on, as my nan used to say.

Blue Sky's people crowded in on this one, my own personal social worker had the chair.

The news had to be passed on to the child, but how?

Blue Sky have a big thing about "age-appropriate" interactions.

There are ways of telling a 5 year-old that are different from the ways you'd tell the same thing to a 15 year-old.

The child in this scenario is 10, going on 27.

First up; Blue Sky offered to do it for me, break the news. But no, I wanted to tackle it head-on as I knew the child, and believed that by imparting the bad news I would at least retain the child's respect for the intimacy of the moment.

I called the child to the kitchen table (where we do 'stuff') and laid it on the line. I didn't diss his mum, maybe even sided with her about the stepdad, and how the real father had left her high and dry.

Know what? I think and hope the child got it. We talked about the fact that the child's mother needed a break from her life. Just like the child was having a break. And that one should 'never say never'.

Child was cool. 

Where do we get these amazing kids?

The mum is not my favourite person, the father and the stepfather definitely aren't.

But our new long-term kid?

A five star ocean going hero.