Think Time

Children are forever asking questions where we have to stop and think carefully how to answer. 

We have just had 7 days abroad, we took one of our foster children, the holiday was timed to coincide with the other two having a joint spell away from us.

I'm sitting at the table on an apartment balcony killing half an hour while partner traipses to the Supermercado for bread and milk, playing poker dice with the child, like you do, but don't tell social services, they'd have to pretend they'd disapprove.

Then she says "Why do you love me?"

Get out of that without moving then, as they used to say in the playground when they had you in a headlock.

Thing is, I can't ever remember saying "I love you" to the child. Not that I don't, in some way or other, it's just that it's a sixty-four thousand dollar phrase and you keep it under lock and key.

I remember saying "Lots of love" more than once at bedtime, at the end of the ritual
"Night night"
"Night night"
"See you in the..."
"Morning."
"Lots of love"
And if you got "Lots of love" back, you felt you were making good progress with their attachment and emotional intelligence.

As for answering the question "Why do you love me?", blimey, what do you say?

"Well," I said "Because you are a great kid, and kind and funny and generous."

Okay you can see what I'm doing here, I expect the child can too. I'm flanneling.

"And, you know, when you get to know somebody, who lives in your house and kind of becomes part of the family, well you get a really good type of feeling going where you put up with the other person's bad times. So I put up with yours and you put up with mine."

She could sense I was trying to get somewhere.

"It's called unconditional love."

"Un,,, what love?"

"Unconditional love. It's when you care about someone and understand they are human and you care about them no matter what."

Short pause then she said;

"Your throw."

When you have to show passports with a fostered child you get given a letter by Social Services stating that the child is in your care. The woman at the airline gate at Gatwick wasn't up to much. She made a thing about it. 

"Yes, I noticed the names on the passport were different."

Bully for you.

"So who are you then darling, are you a foster child?"

WHAT! In a queue of a hundred people this uniformed twerp is showboating her Sherlock Holmes? 

Then:

"Are these people your foster carers?"

The child looked down like she'd been rumbled for being a lesser person; and mumbled "Don't know..."

Then the woman says "Don't worry darling, all you have to do is say Yes I'm their foster child okay?"

Then she looks up at us and says "It's difficult for us, you know, you get grandparents with different names, even parents on their second marriages and that."

I smiled while mentally writing a letter to the airline. I understand the value of vigilance against children being trafficked. It looks to me the airlines go through the motions to satisfy some guideline or other, regardless of the pain it causes the child. The child didn't answer, looked shaken, the letter could have been easily forged. The woman didn't apply any nous, she banked we were kosher, she just wanted a bit of interest and interaction in her otherwise mind-numbing job. It didn't cross her tiny mind her crassness would knot up a child's insides.

But maybe it was that little unpleasant episode, or another similar moment of awkwardness (fostered children are exposed to so many moments when they are made to feel different by bozo jobsworths) that made her feel loved by us. Or want to be loved by us.

She is loved by us, even though I've never said it, although the day may come when it's right to say it. Right for her, not us, right for her.

If I do write a letter it'll be to ask how much good their watching out for children with different surnames has achieved. How many kidnaps they've intercepted. Compared to how many children they've upset. 

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When They Go Home

Two went yesterday.

It's always a strange time in the house, depending on the circumstances.

It's six in the morning I'm writing this, just been downstairs to make a cup of tea. Their bedroom door is half open, the beds made, silent and empty.

A fostering friend had a ten year old boy who was severely emotionally damaged. A very angry mixed up child, physically huge for his age. He'd had four placements break down.  It was her first placement, and she and her partner were learning as they fostered. They tried everything, but the downward spiral was speeding up. The boy stayed with me a couple of times to give my friend respite. It was clear that the boy needed lots of help, and his helpers would soon need protection. He was removed from my friend and is now in residential care. My friend is now doing a great job with another placement, she's a great carer. But my point is that when the boy left she didn't know what to feel.

Blue Sky's chief psychotherapist is adamant that we carers begin offering attachment from the day a child arrives, even if they may not be with you for long. I agree, and all the good carers I know try to do the same. He refuses to call us "Foster Carers", he says we are "Foster Parents" because the child needs a parent. I don't always agree with everything the "psyches" say - I've never met one who's ever fostered - but as far as this bit of advice goes; spot on.

My friend felt guilt at feeling relieved, she felt discomfort that maybe she failed. She struggled to feel proud of the good she had done, the unending care she had poured into the child. She and her partner came round to our house a few times in the aftermath and we talked about the boy most of the time. They used to go to see him in his high security residential unit. My partner and I felt they had formed an attachment with the boy, even if they couldn't define it themselves.

How can you not form an attachment with a child who has suffered enough to be taken  into care? 

I have to stop myself from trying to find out how each and every single one of the children who've been with us are doing.  Most social workers are the same. You can ring up the social worker of a child who was with you years back and they grill you for every bit of news about the child.  One child we had spoke to me about a previous social worker in great glowing terms, so I rang her up and told her, and she almost cried with a mix of joy and relief. She'd been the worker who had taken the child from her real parents. She remembered having to prise the child's fingers from around the banister to carry her into her car.

The two who are gone, no-one had to have to prise any fingers from around any banister. They were prepared and proud. Blue Sky, the children, their social workers, and us the foster parents, laid out the programme from day one, all boxes ticked. Forward planning done; fallbacks in case of future problems all agreed.

But emotions don't have tick boxes do they?

These two were only with us for six months, and here I am marking their departure with the same sign of respect I used when our flesh and blood children left home: their bedroom door exactly half open. Not closed, not wide open, exactly half.

Is that because I care about them as if they were my own? Or is it because my own children have got their room available again if they want to come and stay?

It's a strange time in the house when they go.

It's a strange time in the heart too.

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Rough and Tumble

Play is so important to all of us. We are never happier than when we're off the clock and having a laugh, browsing the internet, watching some rubbish telly, or best of all joshing with friends. The cut and thrust of the gabbling is not just about laughter, it's about strengthening important bonds, even the slightly competitive edge to the yak is good for camaraderie.

This is ten times more true for children. And twenty times truer for fostered children.

I went to a fantastic Blue Sky training session recently, on Play.

The instructor made us play games, and the thing I noticed was how important it got for me not to screw up when it was my turn to pass the balloon from between my knees to the carer on my left. Oh yes, everyone was laughing, and I enjoyed my moment in the spotlight when the room was looking at my efforts, but I even got a few nerves as my turn got close. At the end of the day we all bustled off smiling. But I'd been reminded how important "play" is when you're little.

In fact, there's no such thing as "play". It's learning for life. Learning self-esteem, social skills, dealing with ups and downs, finding out about other people.

I used to feel a bit unusual in that I know I learned far more in the playground than the classroom. Now I'm sure it's true for almost everyone.

With your own children it's a straightforward business, playing with them. Rough and tumble games, when they're small, are fantastic. The tactile element  is a bonding thing, letting them experiment with their strength and agility is great for self-esteem, especially if you let them win the right amount of times. There's a lot of laughter and excitement. Later on this develops into a quest for triumphs such as cycling without stabilisers, swimming, and the other sports. You may care to know I can strike a football, toe down, with both feet. I understand several millionaires in the Premier League still can't do that yet, har har.

It's not quite so straightforward when you foster. You have to abide by very sensible guidelines concerning physical contact with other people's children, quite rightly. It's not unlike the things teachers are trained in, except teachers don't get challenged to a play-wrestle very often.

Each time any type of contact-play comes up you do a quick check; what's the age-appropriateness of the game? What kind of contact will be involved? Is it danger-free? 

Obviously, a child will get to be too old or big for rough and tumble, but you can always back out anytime  saying "You're a bit too old/grown-up/big/heavy/strong/quick for me these days". Or "Not with my back/shoulder/wrist/knee".

You try hard not to betray to the child that you are avoiding any activity that could, in a bad old world, end up as being misinterpreted as inappropriate. And this is one reason why we keep our written records.

In the meantime if everything is right, I stick to games we played and perfected with our children that are also safe. Running away and being chased is great, so long as the "tag" is just a tap on the back.

The all time favourite is "Rhino Derby". You go down on all fours, as does your opponent. You put your heads down so your upper backs are pressing against each other. And push. You keep your head well out of the way. There's an element of rough and tumble, but it's safe, as long as you concentrate and stay alert to any dangers. It's got (safe) contact, competitiveness, and if you play "Best of three" you are out and defeated 2-1 with no danger of bruises, pulled muscles or a build up of anxiety.

Unlike the rough and tumble of adulthood if you're a foster carer, which usually sees us posting a lower score than we wanted, with a well bruised ego.

And as for freedom from anxiety, if that's what you're after, stick to gardening.

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GUILT AND FOSTERING

A NICE MAN

I know a man whose son hasn't spoken to him for 15 years, must be awful.

Especially as the son lives with them.

He's a nice man, as far as I can tell, he's the sort who'll always toot and wave as he drives past. He's the man who flits around at parties with a bottle of red in one hand and white in the other, refreshing people's glasses. Then he disappears into the kitchen to help keep the sink moving.

He's not the sort who wants to stop and talk.

However I found myself cornered with him back at a Jubilee Street Party of 2012, asked about his children, and it came out.

The boy is 19. He elected not to speak to his father from the age of 4. There are other aspects to his mental health issues, but he is one of those people who can conceal their condition. What I'm saying is you'd never guess.

The dad is filled with guilt that maybe it was something he said or did, or maybe his son just doesn't want to be here, wasn't asked in the first place, and blames his dad.

Guilt can be a terrible burden.

HOW TO AVOID GUILT

Mind you, guilt doesn't seem to be a problem for the parents of children who are taken into care. They don't seem to bother with it. Either they are oblivious of guilt, or they are too busy making everyone else feel guilty, in my experience.

This is their world:

The children are guilty, of making life impossible. According to such parents, everything was fine until the children came along. The eldest child gets the brunt of this. The parent works really hard to make sure the child knows it's all their fault.

Social workers are guilty; they were inept and invisible when the problems were obvious, then suddenly they take the kids away for no reason except to keep themselves in work.

The benefits system is guilty, incompetent at best, at worst it conspires to rob them of their just desserts.

The police are bent, courts are biased. Their partners are all short tempered and untrustworthy, their wider family are all wierdos, their friends are dodgepots.

The government is guilty of letting all them foreigners in, that's why they can't get a job.

Actually they couldn't work anyway because they've got an undiagnosed illness or injury or disability. Doctors are useless.

As for foster carers, they think they are so goody-two shoes, well they aren't. They don't know how to bring up children properly, look at the state of the kids when they turn up to contact. Foster carers are failed parents you see, trying to make up for their mistakes with their own children. They're only in it for the money.

VICTIM SYNDROME

The real parents of foster children are free from the burden of guilt because they are protected by something quite delicious, namely victim syndrome. They believe that if it wasn't for everybody else, and by that I mean everybody on planet earth, they would be flying along. Everybody else is criminally incompetent or corrupt in the extreme, and everybody else is the guilty party. They are a hapless Victim.

I know a family of a looked-after child, about a dozen people in all, who are involved in a bizarre competition with each other, to be the biggest victim. They are in constant contact by text to stake their claim. One boasts underage pregnancy, another is a rape victim, another is texting from Accident and Emergency. Another believes her boyfriend has designs on her underage daughter. Another has had three failed suicide attempts this year. Another has had her children unfairly taken into care...

They share their updated victim status with each other the minute they have another feather in their cap, even though none of their family seems to offer sympathy or help.

CYNICAL

I hope I don't sound bitter. In my defence, I know I can be a bit like them. We all do denial, and try to shift blame from time to time.

But I think the parents hunger to be blameless is the biggest common problem in fostering, because it means they won't change. And if we foster carers work our socks off, and get the golden call, that the children and their parents are ready to be re-united, we often fear for the worst, because we have little or no reason to believe the same mistakes won't be made again, if only to prove they did nothing wrong in the first place.

Meanwhile the poor man with the 19 year old son, goes about his business, with a quiet nobility.

He'd be a good foster parent.

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"Actually, I lie..."

I woke up at 1.40am this Sunday morning, don't know why, possibly partner creeping upstairs after coming in from a Beach Boys tribute concert. Whenever one of us is going to be dead late home or getting up, one of us sleeps in the spare bedroom, if there is one free. Partner went with pals but without me because one of our current foster children is not yet able to be babysat. Maybe she is maybe she isn't but in fostering you always minimise risk. 
When I wake up suddenly  that's when I remember the dream.

We're spending a lot of time with therapists recently, they work with the child, but also talk to us. They're helping the child with her life story, so she can get a picture of who she is. It's not healing the child yet, because there's a lot of anger to come out first. But the therapists explain the way the mind works and it makes sense.

It makes us think about our own minds too.

In the dream, I was back in the house I was brought up in as a child, but I was an adult, and my dad, who is 10 years dead, was alive and sitting in his armchair. The foster child was giving us all some ID badges  she'd made, the kind of things you wear round your neck with a length of ribbon, and a plastic card saying "Visitor", when you visit a big building.

In the dream, she had clearly painstakingly made the necklaces out of those pop-together little toy beads you used to get, but don't see anymore. She was helping my dad put his over his head. I was just about to look at what she'd written on mine, and try to sneak a peek at the one she'd made for herself, when I woke up. I never saw what she'd written, but somehow knew that the cards gave us all the same status.

When I woke up later with the sun in the bedroom, after checking partner was okay and making a cup of tea I found myself wondering about the dream, before its memory faded, as dreams do.

The therapists talk to the child about her nightmares and night terrors, so I've picked up some titbits of how they interpret them.

In the dream I felt proud of the child, for being clever enough to make something like identity cards out of stuff lying around. And chuffed she had made one for my dad, who often used to think he was left out of things.  As always I was curious about what lay behind the child's activity, what its real meaning could be.

It was obvious I had dreamed the activity because I wanted her to feel part of the family, and in my head there was no more powerful image of her being one of us, than for her to be giving out identical official identity cards and putting them round the neck of my dead dad, like a garland.

It was a useful dream.

Not as good as the dreams of one of the Blue Sky team who is a big football fan, and last year dreamed the exact result of several matches, and I know this for a fact because I got the predictions as a ps on the emails that fly between foster carers and the Blue Sky offices.

Actually, I lie, it was the best possible dream, assuming I understand it right.

I understand partner right for sure, and the slightly heavy footed trip to the bathroom I've just heard is French for "Any chance of a cup of tea?"

So I'm off downstairs to brew, and hear a quick report on how wonderful the fake Beach Boys are complete with compulsory "I really wish you'd been there, I missed you....etc etc", followed quickly by my story about the dream, then a very quick whispered chat about whether I tell the child or not. 

Our stairs creak you see, and foster children are all usually very light sleepers. 

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When they ask "What's the point?"

Looked-after children are usually acutely aware that their lives are worse than most other children.

Many foster children have given up trying before they come into care. Their parents have let them down; neglected or abused them, they have no reliable extended family, no dependable siblings, no solid friendships. Their teachers and schools have often admitted defeat. They don't trust the police or social workers.

Then the day dawns when they are standing in your hallway with a bag of tattered clothes and a few broken toys.

They don't have any broken dreams, because they've never risked having any dreams, knowing they would have ended up being broken.

So when we try to persuade them to get up and get to school on time, or to complete their homework, or try a bit harder with their maths or English, we can't invoke the pledge which my generation was told when we were at school, which went something like this:

Work hard at school, get the best exams results you can, and you'll be rewarded with a good job, which will in turn help you to be happy.

Just while we're on the subject, I'm not sure there are many children of any background who believe it nowadays. I am sure it cuts no ice with the average looked-after child.

So, let me ask you, reading these words, how did you tell your children what the point of living is?

And if you foster, or are thinking of fostering, what would you say to someone else's child?

To be honest it's not a question any child has asked me outright. But one suspects it's in their mind a lot.

Myself and a number of other carers I've spoken to agree that looked-after children are curious about how a functioning family works. Of course, no-one's family feels like it's functioning to its members, but if you have a foster child in your home, believe me, they'll think they've landed in with The Waltons.

I make sure I'm honest with them, and if sometimes my partner and I get on each others nerves we are not ashamed to say so, then make up and laugh about it ten minutes later. We never raise our voices in front of them, or let disagreements last. But we also are honest about the fact that we love each other and that love, plus our love for our children, is the biggest thing in our lives.

We let them know we have to work at it. If they ask we admit we split up once for a few years, before our children were born, but patched it up.

So I guess if we hint there is a point to life, it's love.

From now on I'm going to finish any such conversation with them by playing the game where people have to think of song titles with "Love" in them and substitute "Hove"

Hove Is A Many Splendoured Thing

All You Need Is Hove

I'll Do Anything For Hove (But I Won't Do That)

Crazy Little Thing Called Hove

A World Without Hove...

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School Dinners and Fostering

Every so often the business of school dinners comes up.

Sometimes it's TV chefs banging on about them, sometimes it's an official pronouncement of some sort. Recently there have been calls to ban packed lunches because too many parents make rubbish ones.

Foster carers have to be massively tuned in to their children's food needs, and I suspect I speak for every one of us in stating that the more options the better.

We only have to summon up memories of our own school dinners to take the view the child should be able to eat what they prefer in the middle of the day, it's our job to guide them towards a good diet, not private  caterers and the dinner ladies (or dinner persons if that's correct).

THE EXPERTS NEVER, EVER, ACKNOWLEDGE THAT FOR MANY CHILDREN FOOD IS NOT ABOUT NUTRITION IT'S ABOUT EMOTION.

What, they don't know it? They don't know that many young children get nervous, scared, terrified of meal times not knowing what horrors are in store?

Blue Sky often throw gatherings for carers and their looked-after children. The first thing you notice about the children is that most are underweight, underdeveloped. A high proportion of them wear spectacles.

They've often not been fed enough, and the things they were given to eat were a narrow range of cheap convenience food.

Foster carers work hard to understand and develop the eating habits of looked after children. Our school packed lunches are a bond between us and the child. I don't always enjoy the daily task of coming up with an attractive, balanced box of snacky food, but each afternoon when I check the box to see what went down well, I get a kick from knowing that they ate all the cherry tomatoes, and the quartered apple (cored and wrapped in clingfilm) as well as the Hula Hoops and the mini-sausage roll.

I get a kick from knowing that in the middle of the school day, I played a part in helping them, that maybe they were reminded that somebody cares enough to know they are currently off prawn cocktail flavour.

That somebody cared enough to wash out the little tupperware tub that smelled mildly of yesterday's strawberries, and is going to have cucumber today. That somebody didn't bang on that they didn't eat the cheese thing in a plastic tube, but instead made a mental note they don't like the cheese thing in a plastic tube.

There is a lot of love in a packed lunch, even if there isn't always 100% nutritional needs. 

One child we look after had to be taken to Contact with her mother once a week. The woman had been advised by Social Services to bring some food for the child to eat during Contact, it's a standard suggestion. A bonding exercise. So what did the woman do? She racked her brains to remember what the child's favourite food was, then on the morning of Contact she would lovingly prepare it in her kitchen, assembling and arranging a mouthwatering package of tasty, nutritious, attractive fare which would gladden the child's heart.

No she did not.

She called into the cheapo off licence-come-corner-shop en route to Contact and bought a £1 sandwich consisting of bargain white bread, a smear of fish paste and a couple of thin bits of cucumber, sealed in plastic. And a stick of bubble gum. She gave it to the child in the shop's flimsy carrier bag. 

It was her way of reminding the child how worthless the mother thought the child was. How little she cared. 

If that's the best the woman could do under scrutiny, when her actions are being examined, when she's on her best behaviour, is it any surprise you could see the child's blue veins criss-crossing her pencil-thin legs beneath her translucent skin?

You'll be pleased to know the mother is not getting the child back, though not because of  her starving the child. There was other stuff that would make you feel faint.

The child now enjoys her packed lunch so much she doesn't eat it. 

Yes, she prefers to nibble a few bits of it at lunchtime, then spend the rest of the day knowing food is available to her, food she owns and likes. Her private stash. She eats a good breakfast so she's fine to do this, I've been through this with Blue Sky and her school; she's free to use her food to satisfy something that runs deeper than feeling peckish. I sometimes wonder if she is subconsciously resisting destroying something that symbolises her new found security and freedom, because the minute she gets in the car to come home, she opens her lunch and finishes it. And the minute we get home, she asks for something to eat.

So let's keep options open please, let parents be free to meet their children's needs.

Above all, let children be free to use food to meet needs that the well-meaning Jamie Oliver and the nutritionists can't get their heads round. 

The Secret Foster Carer

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