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 pheadsant-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 hoime 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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