JOHN LENNON WAS RIGHT...

 I bumped into one of our neighbours in the high street recently.

She's not someone I'm particularly connected to, but our paths cross and we have an occasional chat, usually a gossip about things going on in our road.

I asked her if she was busy and she told me all about how she and Chris were settling into retirement and finding things to do. Eventually she asked: "And you? What are you up to these days?"

"Oh," I replied "Fostering."

"Goodness!" she floundered; curiously at a loss; "Are you STILL fostering?"

Her use of the word STILL annoyed me a bit, to be honest. The way she said it.

What did she mean? Am I getting a bit old for it? Haven't I got it out of my system yet? When am I going to start acting normal?"

I thought about it all day.

I ruminated away…the woman is a bit older than me. Would I say to her "Oh, are you STILL alive?"

I dropped it into the conversation next time my Blue Sky social worker came over for one of her lovely visits.

She reminded me how huge is the need for more foster parents. One organisation reports there are 60,000 children in care, and 90,000 who need care. 

The two of us got to wondering whether the neighbour, recently retired, and her husband, also recently retired, have been considering applying to foster.

Maybe they just need a nudge, maybe they find the prospect daunting.

Maybe she's fearful of being told she's too old to foster.

She ain't.

I had an idea; I asked my Blue Sky social worker if they had some cards I could keep in my bag to give to people who I thought might be interested.

She's getting back to me with the idea. I hope it kicks in, I've always wanted to announce; "My card!"

Getting started in fostering isn't a huge leap, it's a series of baby steps which one takes with strong supporting hands guarding the would-be foster parent along the journey. They won't let you fall.

They want you to succeed.

My experience with Blue Sky was as follows; I phoned their office and after a friendly chat on the phone they sent someone to visit us. He'd been in the house for 5 minuites before announcing;

"Right! I've seen all I need to see! You're definitely worth taking to the next level. You can expect another call from Blue Sky."

Turned out he was 'Stage One". A quick shufti to make sure we had the basics; a normal family home with a spare bedroom and enough brain cells to do joined up thinking.

The next stage was a series of visits from a Blue Sky social worker to get some details about ourselves, our family, and our home. They even checked out our immediate family members and friends, simply to get a picture of how we might foster, how we might structure our fostering.

Blue Sky's discovery that we had a couple of difficult family members didn't put them off; if anything they were encouraged. Fostering needs carers who have experience of managing family people who think two and two make five...

Then came a formal review of our application to foster; a small roomful of kind but constructive people checking out that we measured up. It felt more like a massive pat on the back than a rigourous exam…

And then?

You're in!

It was the best piece of cake I've ever had!

Oh, and as I always tell people who ask, my abiding memory of the review happened when they announced that we had passed, and asked if I had any questions.

"Yes" I replied, turning to the man on the review board who was also a foster dad. I said:

"Do you have any advice?"

He thought for a moment then replied;

"All you need is LOVE…and a lot of it..."

Know what…?

He was spot on.

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A MOST UNUSUAL FOSTER HOME

 I often find myself reassuring people who are thinking about becoming foster parents about the lengths Blue Sky go to to ensure that each foster child is a good 'fit' for their carers' home life. This includes any foster children already in the home.

They call it 'matching'.

For example, a few years ago we made our family available for providing respite care; 'Respite' is where a foster child comes to stay with a fostering family for a short period of time in order, usually, to help out the child's regular foster parents.

Sometimes it's just for a weekend, sometimes a week, sometimes an indeterminate period depending on the exact circumstances. However long the period of respite lasts, it's temporary.

Yet despite it's short-termism, Blue Sky always go the extra mile to ensure a 'match'.

Here's a typical example.

We were asked to consider providing regular respite for a young teenage boy. We were flattered to be picked for consideration as the foster home he was with was over 100 miles from us. If it had gone ahead Blue Sky would've handled the transport.

The boy, 'Carlton', was a white Zimbabwean by heritage who needed respite care during school holidays. Both of his foster parents worked; one was full-time the other part-time, and arrangements had been agreed that there'd always be one of the parents on hand when he was home, but they couldn't give that guarantee during school holidays.

Our home was covered for school holidays as I was full-time fostering and always on hand.

Our house was almost like a youth club back then.

Blue Sky went to work collecting information about the lad, his story, his character, his likes and dislikes, his food preferences; the works.

One titbit about him caught the attention of our eagle-eyed social worker.

"Hmm…" she muttered. "I'm going to have to find out more about this…"

She'd spotted something in the boy's notes, namely the identity and profile of the family that had provided his respite care up until this point but were no longer able to do so.

Listen to this, it'll tickle you I think.

Our social worker came back to us armed with as much information as possible. She wasn't in possession of the names or address of the respite carers, but she was able to collect enough peripheral information.

They were…

... aristocracy!

Yep. I can't explain why I found that surprising and intriguing, but I did. 

They lived in a converted castle, on a country estate. Hundreds of acres of woodland and wheatfields, a river, a trout lake, deer, pheasants, a stable with horses (a couple of which were thoroughbreds they ocassionally sent to the races). 

Did I mention their castle had a moat and turrets? It had the remnants of kennels for forty hounds from when they used to lead the local hunt. 

Oh, yes. The thing that caught our social workers attention was this.

They had a gun room.

Ah. Good spot by her.

She made more inquiries.

Turned out the boy had learned to ride, fish in the river and…join in the shooting. All proper and above board of course; he wasn't allowed anywhere near the guns. But he worked as a general gopher; a pheasant-beater, a junior hound-master collecting the game that had been shot. The Lord (or Earl or whatever he was) regularly invited banking friends for weekends and Carlton would mix it with City-slicker Hedge Fund managers and the Wolves of Wall Street.

Carlton had become a part-time member of the hunting shooting and fishing fraternity with such enthusiasm that he'd put himself down to join the army at the earliest opportunity. Apparently his real family had fled Zimbabwe in the final days of the country being under minority white rule - partly because his stepfather had been a farmer and had been involved in the fighting, siding with the losing side. He was sought after by the incoming authorities.

No wonder Carlton's DNA felt at home on the country estate.

His local authority were a hundred per cent vigilant about keeping Carlton from so much as touching a shotgun, but he become enamoured of the lifestyle, and an enthusiastic advocate of controlling wildlife, and mixing it with enemy forces.

We had to decide whether Carlton would find respite life on a normal suburban estate a bit tepid. Blue Sky established that his permanent foster home was much like ours. They assured us that Carlton would benefit from our provision of something that the aristocrats didn't do so well, namely a bog-standard loving family.

But something niggled with us that it might be a shock to his system.

Then we got round to talking about how he'd fit with our family members, and that was when a penny dropped.

Our eldest foster child (at the time) was just starting to find his feet. Until this time he'd been painfully shy and lacking any confidence, but he'd started to hear his own voice. He took views on issues, and developed pride in his noble opinions.

Eldest was on the way to somewhere better.

Blue Sky and I sat around the kitchen table wondering about the impact of having Carlton for respite might have on our eldest foster child.

Carlton had reportedly grown into a strong character with clear views. For example he would argue for military action (by no means unusual thinking among teenage boys, but not prevalent in our house at the time). 

After much thought we said "Sorry but no" to having Carlton for respite care. Blue Sky totally understood and moved onto rustling up some other options. The very next offering was Nagwa. She was a "Yes" and it worked a dream.

And our eldest? 

He continued onwards and upwards, happily oblivious of the care everyone had taken to ensure that newcomers fit into every part of our wonderful family.

Sometime shortly after this, eldest announced he was vegetarian. And asked if he could attend a peace march.

His newfound commitment didn't last, but we laughed at how the conversations would have gone around the kitchen table if Carlton had arrived and started banging on about pheasant shoots and Afghanistan…

BTW we wish Carlton well and hope for his future, we never met him but he lived in our hearts and minds during an interesting period of our long and happy time in fostering.

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A CREAM CRACKER UNDER THE SOFA

 When I began fostering I went to great lengths to keep each foster child's bedroom neat and tidy.

As soon as I returned from the morning school run I'd poke my head round their door and collect up empty crisp packets and apple cores, pull back the bed to air it, pick up clothes from the floor and try to match odd socks lying everywhere.

All that palava.

I've had teenagers of my own, I know that untyidyness is a normal part of their journey. But for kids in care it began to seem to me that some of them took it to a new level.

Asking a teenager to tidy their room is like asking a baby not to cry. It's just impossible.

So, for a long time I fought fire with fire.

Their bedroom is a tip? In goes I with a bin liner and a Dyson.

War. Me versus rubbish.

To a large extent my efforts were in the best intererests of the kids. Basic cleanliness, good hygiene and self-respect are valuable lessons in life. Not only that; this was my house and I wanted it up to scratch.

On top of those motives; social workers need to check a foster child's home life, including a quick gander at their room. They don't go in with a magnifying glass and a dust meter. They can tell with a quick head round the door. Look; if social workers aren't up to speed on teenagers' untidyness, no-one is.

All the same, back in the early days of fostering I was often frustrated. The child would come home from school and go up to a neat and tidy bedroom and next morning it would look like, as the phrase goes, a bomb had gone off.

The sheer untidyness of some kids in care was almost a work of art.

The clutter! They seemed to think that the purpose of possessions was to chuck them everywhere!

Then, one day, I had to take Katy, a particularly untidy 14 year-old, back to her real home for a visit.

It was a revelation.

On the outside the house was a smart newbuild social housing home.

On the inside it was a tip.

Debris everywhere; in the hallway, the kitchen and the living room. Katy's mum had been watching daytime TV on a giant screen, the sound full on and subtitles. Katy ran up to her room to pack her stuff; clothes, personal music, make-up and suchlike.

I sat on the other end of the sofa from the mum. In between us was piles of detrius; an open packet of Marlboro and a plastic lighter, a half-empty bag of Doritos, a TV listings magazine, a pack of chocolate digestives, an inside-out pullover, a scattering of unopened brown envelopes etc etc…

In between the sofa and the TV was a sizeable glass coffee table piled high with an empty KFC box, a full ashtray, an opened can of full-fat Coke, a sock, several coffee mugs, a wine glass, a box of Kleenex, a corkscrew, a magazine of word puzzles etc etc...

Most disturbing was the large tub of Sudocrem with its top off.

Oh, and a jar of E45…

When I say "Most disturbing", those things fell back into second place when a one-eyed cat hopped onto mum's lap demanding attention. The cat somehow symbolised the tone that shop-soiled stuff was in charge of the home not the mum.

When my Blue Sky social worker dropped in a week or so later she wanted to know all about the visit.

We talked for an hour about the clutter, and Katy's untidyness.

A penny dropped. I bet you got there first dear reader…

Yep. Katy needed to re-create her home life in her foster home in order to feel safe.

Home from home.

So: with Katy I eased off the tidy-ups for the best possible motive. Only a bit, mind, I'm human after all…

Is that a cream cracker under the sofa…?

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