TURN OF THE SCREW

 Attended a Blue Sky training session last Saturday morning.

First Aid.

It was scheduled for a Saturday to fit some people's work commitments. Folk came from far and wide.

Always fascinating to meet other fostering folk you've never met before.

It was a beautiful mixed bag. Fostering takes all sorts; younger and older. One attendee was a smart woman, probably mid-fifties who hadn't even started fostering but was on her way.

ps I mention her age and that she was female only to underline that it's never too late to foster.

First Aid is a particukarly important one. Blue Sky arrange for their fostering folk to undertake a session once every 3 years (as I understand it).

Half of it's done online in advance. You go through the info on your laptop with a coffee at your elbow. 

The session  saw about a dozen of us in a room at one of Blue Sky's HQs, and it was great to see a member of their managment and one of their social workers there to take their own training.

Our instructor was a firefighter by trade, who undertook his responsibility to us with great seriousness, but we had a few laughs along the way.

Much of the session was devoted to CPR, the procedure to re-start a stopped heart.

Everyone had a go at heart massige using one of three dummies he provided.

Then we had a go with a defibrillator. It's an amazing machine. A robot voice inside it tells you what to do as you go along. The machines are increasingly available in high streets and communities, and although they're idiot-proof it's useful to have experience of rigging one onto someone's chest and pressing the button.

During a coffee break I had a natter with a Blue Sky manager who was doing the training alongside us carers. A really amazing bloke. Turned out he'd started life working with children in care homes before wanting a change of scene so he joined…

…the prison service! 

Remember "Porridge"? A UK sit-com about life in prison starring the one and only Ronnie Barker as a repeat offender, Norman Fletcher. My new Blue Sky chum was what Fletcher referred to as a "screw"!

This lovely bloke couldn't stop trying to help people make the best of their lives. 

He told me that one day, on the landing in his prison, a particularly large and serious looking inmate came up to him:

"I been after havin' a word wiv you," the prisoner said looking down from his full six foot four.

"Oh" replied our man.

"Yur. Only I fink I remember you."

"…oh…"

"Yur. When I was little I was put in a home. An' you was one of our carers."

"..oh.."

"Yeh. I jes wanted to shake your 'and. You was an alright geezer."

The exchange contributed to our man wanting to get back to helping children, which is the ethos that arcs over Blue Sky's place in the world. So he joined Blue Sky.

The morning took 2 hours.

The training session was 10/10.

The people experience 11/10.