NEXT PLACEMENT ON THEIR WAY

Phone call from Blue Sky; "Would you consider taking a Parent and Child who…"

Cue string music...

Look, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool hard-nosed foster mum now, it's what I do.

Fostering defines me, alongside being a loving partner, a conscientious mother, a family brick, a loyal friend and a reliable colleague. (er…that's the idea anyway…).

I recognise adrenaline when I get some.

My point here is that whatever stuff I've given this far to foster kids coming into my care, I've got stuff back in spades.

And every time I get the call I get goosebumps on my goosebumps.

Here's the news. If you happen to have read the previous couple of posts you'll know that a few possible Parents and Child placements haven't come my way. They've been placed elsewhere.

Well, a Parent and Child are coming. To us.

Blue Sky go the extra mile to provide us foster parents every scrap of information they can to help us decide if the placement is right for us, and, if it is, and the Local Authority agrees, then Blue Sky go round again to trawl EVERY scrap of background about the Parent and Child that could be helpful.

All that has happened. Got the green light an afternoon ago. The Local Authority have chosen me. Well, chosen us. That is: me, our family, our home, and Blue Sky.

May I tell you what I can about the Parent and Child? For a start, they're a mother and baby. She's mid-teens, the baby is 6 weeks old. The pair were removed from her family home after the birth because the mother's mother and the stepfather were judged to be unable to help her care for her baby. They lived in cramped, crowded and chaotic social housing: two adults and six children. It would have been seven children counting the baby.

The baby's father is unknown to the mother. The two of them connected through social media. Nobody knows anything of him, not even his name.

The mother, according to our information, is physically 16 years old, but emotionally 14, however her Local Authority social workers believe she wants to keep the baby and be a good mum.

Now, I've always believed that sometimes the more you learn the less you know.

I feel this way about the 'emotional age' bit of the profile of the young person.

I know I'll do everything I've learned to do through practicing and working on my fostering, and hopefully do it well enough. So I'll wait and see for myself what the young person is like, although every morsel passed on in advance helps.

When you've been round the fostering block a few times you get to be able to spot what needs to be spotted pretty quickly.

We once had a child come to us who was six years old but we were told had endured things that led to arrested emotional development. She was emotionally "less than six years old".

Wrong.

The child turned out to be six going on twenty-eight. Children who've endured neglect and/or abuse are sometimes very street-wise.

With people who need to be taken into care it's sometimes only the people who do the caring who get to see the full picture.

The girl and her baby arrive next week.

Wish them luck.

And me. Sorry, I meant; 

"And us".