"SOCIAL WORKER"? MORE LIKE "SUPER PAL"

 We've had a change of our Blue Sky social worker, a temporary change, but quite a lengthy one.

Maternity and all that! Congratulations to our regular social worker and her partner, and their new baby.

I struggle to find words that are adequate to praise the people that Blue Sky send out to help and support us.

So; while our regular SW was away we were provided with a new one.

A new SW can be a big change, your lifeline is hugely important. The person you get is a big part of your whole life, not merely your fostering.

There are many people who are 'thinking' about giving fostering a go.

I remember our trepidation about taking the plunge, but, as it was something I'd identified as being kind of on my bucket list, I overcame nerves and doubts and, one morning, sitting at our kitchen table, I googled 'fostering near me' and Blue Sky came up, so I picked up the cordless and dialed.

It was such a moment that I still have a flashbulb memory of all those years ago waiting for someone to pick up.

Now that I'm a grizzled veteran of this amazing profession, I feel the need to toot the horn of the social workers who have become the cornerstone of our lives - all of my family, not just me.

Fostering is, for most of us, a leap into the unknown. Not entirely unknown; most of us have experience of family life (it's not essential; singles are among the best fosterers I  know). Equally most of us  have had children of our own (again, not a deal-breaker; one of the most brilliant foster mums I've ever met had no kids). And on top of those experiences, every single one of us was once a child, and we can draw on that enormous experience to build understanding of the young people who arrive at our door.

But it's still a leap into the unknown.

Mind, so's taking a partner in life, having children of one's own. Buying a home, getting a job, going abroad. So many leaps, yet fostering seems a particularly big leap.

I'm sitting here wondering why?

Perhaps it's the responsibility. Also the fear of failure. Then maybe it's the concern that somebody in your circle will warn you off it, and you don't want to prove them right. Then you realise that there are countless smaller unknowns in fostering and you start wondering if you're stacking up endless problems for yourself and your home life.

Enter your social worker.

They pull no wool over anyone's eyes, they have the facts and the details, they also do one thing that blows all the uncertanties to one side. 

They believe in you.

There's not enough self-belief in many people (mind, there's too much self belief in some).

I've believed for a long time that the best parents are the ones who worry about whether they're any good as parents. The worst ones are the ones who think it's a piece of cake.

Well for what it's worth, I believe it's even more the case with fostering.

The best foster parents are the ones who worry if they're good enough.

And that's where your social worker steps in.

So; was our stand-in social worker up to it?

When it came to her last day with us, there were almost tears.

Delighted to get our long-standing person back - she's almost family, but never withour her understated professionalism.

But saying goodbye to yet another person we'd long for as a friend, a mentor, a guide, was borderline heartbreak.

So, what I'm saying is this; to anyone thinking about giving fostering a go, be clear that for all the ups and downs of it, there will always be one enormous up; the ever presence of the sort of person in your life you've only dreamed of.

Until you foster.

Read More

FIRST TRANS PM?

 When you foster a child who has a particular issue you tend to get involved in the issue yourself. 

How could you not?

If, say, your child has problems with authority you find yourself examining the authority, how it functions, and whether the child has a point.

I'll never forget being summoned to a school to discuss the behaviour of a teenager I was looking after.

The meeting was fixed for 9.00am.

On the dot I was sat, along with the girl ('K'), outside the head's office.

At about ten past nine the head showed up, went into her office and shut the door behind her. 

Another five minutes passed then she asked us in. She said that we were waiting for the head of department in charge of the girl, who'd been delayed.

Just before 9.30am the second staff member showed up and sat down.

"Now," began the head, "The first problem we must discuss is K's punctuality…"

I kid you not.

So, now that I have a child in my care who is transitioning from female to male, my learning curve is steep. My antenna are constantly twiching.

I'm not hugely political, except when it comes to fostering.

When I say "when it comes to fostering" I guess I mean that I look at the lives of the children in my care at any one time and compare their needs with what's on offer from politicians. Every little helps, and if policies and public opinion can help or hinder my children I'm interested.

I have a new child who is transitioning.

To be blunt, conservatism is hurting him, so because I'm for my boy, I'm against it.

I'm against the politics that instincively fights against any change without giving it the hard work of investigation and understanding. The type that bangs on about freedom and reducing the size of the state, but want to restrict the freedom to choose who you are, and if necessary send in the state to intervene.

I'm old enough and wise enought to have seen this conservatism over a couple of generations.

This is what my fine teenage foster son has in store;

Not long ago, women were absent from front line politics, conservatism quietly enshrined a men-only policy. Spool forward and conservatism now champions women leaders,

Not long ago sons and daughters of immigrants were sidelined by conservatives. Now they take their place on conservatism's front benches aplenty.

Not long ago the thing they called 'homosexuality' was illegal, and conservatism, standing for what they saw as 'common decency' and 'God's word' stood foresquare opposed to it. Now it has become a mere detail on the CV of many a right-minded thinker.

So.

It will be EXACTLY the same with trans folk.

Conservative thinking will abhor it as an abhorance, and rail against it, and campaign for legislation against it.

Spool forward a generation.

Britain's first trans Prime Minister is elected.

A conservative.

Go figure.

NB I'm deliberately avoiding labelling Conservatives as conservative on this issue. I'm agin the conservatism that makes my foster son despair. There are probably plenty of Conservatives who are as open minded, even more open-minded than most, after all we hear of plenty who have first hand experience of confusion over gender issues and matters of the heart too...

Meantime my boy is one of many in for a rocky ride, just like women, immigrants and gay people before them. 

Then maybe my boy'll choose a career in politics and go on to become the first...

Read More

BROTHERLY LOVE

 Our latest new foster child is in an okay place, and okay is great in fostering.

Apparently the Buddha said everyone who's ever lived has always had 83 problems apart from the person who tries to get rid of them all.

They have 84.

Latest addition is transitioning and going along well. It's his decision, his life. Maybe it's a mistake, maybe it isn't. People who get paid for their opinion, such as pundits and politicians, are piling in on the issue, often for their own benefit.

He gets on with the one thing everyone owns in a free country; being who he is.

When a foster child arrives the balance of the family home changes more than the average event, except obviously a birth or a death. Or redundancy. Or bankrupcy. Or prison. Or illness. Or mental health or dementia.

Come to think of it, fostering is barely a wrinkle.

And none of the aforementioned shock-horrors come with a guarenteed Social Worker at your side. 

On your case.

Someone who's got your back, someone who's (to use an Eastenders perennial) "Always there for you."

So; middle foster child has been in a grotty mood on and off since school broke up.

We ask if child is okay and just get grunts.

We're used to grunts. Our own kids could grunt for England.

Blue Sky's SW shows up regularly to make sure everything's okay.

The SW had a 10 minute chat alone with child.

Reported back to us what the child said, with professional discretion as ever.

So: child lent a friend £8 and is having trouble getting it back.

Child was not explicitly invited to a gathering at a house the child had previously been invited to for a previous gathering, but if, the child learned, IF they are invited they'd need to be able to offer transport (me) and give a car-load of others a ride there and a ride home - at midnight.

BTW, 'midnight' to teenagers translates as 1.45am.

Child is feeling not sufficiently loved.

The SW was brilliant. Told child it wasn't fair, that child deserved better, but hey; life's not fair and people let you down.

Told US we were doing a fantastic job.

I wondered out loud if the child was feeling sidelined by the new child who has just arrived and has high-profile needs. Social worker thought there was maybe something in that, but generally, the child told the SW, they had clicked and were feeling brotherly.

Wow.

Onwards and upwards!

Read More

YES, WOMEN HAVE TESTOSTERONE TOO

 When a new placement (the technical term for a child in care) is settling in it's important to make sure everyone else feels loved and wanted just as much as before, because a new placement (it's such a barren term isn't it?) can take up a disproportionate amount of your attention.

The foster mum or dad is busy trying to get handles on the new arrival. Trying to find out who they are, what makes them tick. What their flashpoints are. 

What they're like when their flashpoint is reached.

At the same time it's important to help them ease into a hugely challenging situation; they're in a stranger's house, they are suddenly part of a new family. They don't know anything about the parents or the other youngsters or how the home works. New place, new routines, new rules.

Yike.

As I've been explaining in the last few posts, our new placement - oh heck with that word - our new child is transitioning. As his foster mum I need to come up to speed not only on what he needs, but on the whole landscape of what's become a big issue worldwide.

The more I learn about him and what he's chosen to do, the more I'm saddened by the hostility he reads about every day on his phone. 

He's not being perstered or trolled by schoolmates or anything. The hostility towards him is in the news feeds he clicks on.

I'm not going to join up the dots on this young man, he deserves his privacy. But I can share some aspects of his situation which are common to most people who choose to transition.

First, and this is the biggest deal of all, he is male. But when he was born, as is the case worldwide and from the dawn of time, when he came out of the womb they took a quick glance between his legs and a decision was made for him; "It's a girl".

Not long ago, maybe three or four decades, being designated a girl meant that he would have to go through life wearing what he was supposed to wear, not what he wanted. He would have to wear his hair how he was expected to, not how he wanted. Play girl's games - which largely means staying away from the centre of the playground where the boys were crashing about and playing football. 

He'd feel sidelined, as a girl and later as a woman, for the rest of his life.

He may have found he liked girls in the same way many boys do. But girls having girlfriends and boys having boyfriends was simply not done. Adults who chose to make love to people of their choice used to be sent to prison, and in some countries still are. Or worse.

But the whole matter of love and romance and making love and making babies is, as far as the boy now in my care is concerned, peripheral.

He is an intelligent young man. He is well read and informed - believe me, he's researched the matter very thoroughly. He is a kind and gentle person, but immensely strong and courageous.

He has no side to him; he cares about everybody. He says he understands why some people are confused and even angry about transitioning, but saddened they don't mind causing him pain.

In a netshell; he's a good person. 

We need more people like the one I've just described.

We need fewer people who have more strident opinions than they have knowledge.

I realise now that only a few weeks ago, when this young person arrived, I had a hotch-potch of views about transitioning, even though I knew virtually nothing.

For example, he's been walking me through the effects of testosterone treatment which he hopes to undertake when he's old enough. I have to say I had almost no idea what the hormone was about, But I do now. 

I've met and known and worked with plenty of men. I was brought up among boys and men. I fell in love with, and married, a man. I've brought up boys, a couple of my own, the rest belonged to other people.

I know for an absolute fact, something I'm certainshaw burtonshaw about, that not a single one of them had or have the slightest clue about their testosterone. Ask them about it and they'll reel off a couple of sound bites they picked up in the playground or playing sport. They'll have an opinion too. Several even. Loud if necessary. Unshakable too, generally. Worth standing up for, maybe even fighting for.

Testosterone doesn't make people angry, it amplifies. I watched a lecture by a Harvard behavioural neurologist on how our behaviour is affected by our bodies, in particular neurotransmissions and hormones. It's a new field bringing science into understanding the human condition. 

I didn't know there was so much I didn't know. Now that I know more, I know I still need to know even more before I have a right to an opinion about somebody I'm not. 

(BTW I'm feeling a bat's sqeak of testosterone in my veins right now as I enjoy a flash of superiority over those who know less than me…there's a lot to be said for self-awareness).

See, it's the same with every other aspect of transitioning.

Everyone needs to know more.

But, bringing this back to fostering, I have a strategy in place to help him with the fact that half the world is going rabid about him and his fellow transitioners; I keep him away from news feeds, we don't watch the TV news and definitely not the opinion channels that call themselves news.

On a positive note, I gently probed as to whether he felt bullied or ridiculed at school. He said not. He added that if anything he's respected for standing up for himself. 

I worry about the adults of today. The youth of today are dandy.

Read More

A FRIEND GONE

Just when as a foster mum you think maybe you know as much as you need to know, along comes something.

Been at it donkey's years now. Ought to know a thing or three.

Then along comes transitioning.

Up to now, like most - if not almost everyone - I thought I knew a bit about it, from the news, from documentaries and dramas and articles In newspapers and magazines.

I can tell you for sure that nothing prepares a foster parent for the perfect storm of ignorance, prejudice and sometimes downright persecution that rains down mainly from people whose defining principle is something they call 'respectability'.

Nothing prepares you for having to listen to a young man quietly sobbing himself to sleep because, in this free country in which we live, where many have fought and died for so many freedoms, there remains an army of people who want to make someone feel bad, really awful, for reaching for the simple freedom of being who they really are.

I've even lost a close friend of many years because she believes I'm wrong to 'allow' it in my house.

She messaged me would I like to meet for coffee and a catch-up. 

When I arrived at the cafe she was sitting, still buttoned up and arms folded, and  only managed a weak hello.

Mind, she's had her health problems so I guessed she was merely under the weather.

We swapped "How are you?'', but didn't get beyond "And how's the family", becaue I mentioned I had a new placement and she said that she knew, she'd heard on the grapevine.

She hadn't. I don't allow anything to do with fostering to go near any grapevines.

What had happened was that her youngest daughter goes to the same school as my new placement and had seen me pick him up one afternoon. Apparently it's in the open at the school that he is transitioning, the school have been very supportive and professional.

My friend proceeded to lecture me on why it was wrong in every way. Wrong in the face of what the universe stood for, wrong for the child, their family, wrong for doctors and clinics who could be sued later for not stopping them.

She informed me that foster parents don't have the knowledge or the understanding to help transitioning young people and they should hand the child back to the system.

This from a friend who has no experience of fostering, or of transitioning, or what she calls 'the system'.

On it went, blimey.

I asked her what she knew about transitioning and she replied she knew all she needed to know, she said she was certain there wasn't anything out there she didn't know that would change her mind.

I had to sit and listen politely to a never ending diatribe of nonsense, ignorance, and something else.

It gradually began to seem to me that she was frightened of something. But the mood she'd worked herself into meant I dare not try to go deeper with her to get to the heart of her feelings. 

She told me once, many years ago, that she had been abused as a churchgoer by a man of the cloth. I know it had haunted her ever since. She believed her health problems were somehow connected to it.

I began to wonder if her prejudices were consciously or unconsciously driven by inner turmoil, but look; I'm a humble foster mum, my friend needed kindness and understanding, not analysis. But she wouldn't let it lie.

In the end I cited a pressing engagement elsewhere and got up to go, but she stayed with me. Walking along the High Street she was still banging away. I got to the car park entrance where my car was and said;

"Can I say...you seem a little obsessed."

She gave it a moment's thought. I would personally feel diminished to have someone wonder if I had any obsessions. They're not good things are they?

"Yes!" she suddenly barked "I am obsessed about this!"

And off she marched.

Her details are still in my Contacts, but she's going to be off my social scene for good, unless she turns around.

My new placement knows nothing of the dent in my friends network, and never will. He's got enough on his plate.

He also has an ally in me that is more on his side - much more on his side-  than I was before my ex-friend treated me to her two-pennorth of rubbish.

I'm quietly making sure he knows that much.

Read More

TRANSITIONING IN FOSTERING

 Been quiet on the blog, been busy on the fostering front.

We've taken a new pacement and he's wonderful. But it's complicated.

I use the word "he" because he is now a he.

But this issue is not why the placement is complicated.

It's complicated as these things often are by chaotic parenting and an awful home life.

The child was one of many in a house supported magnificently by Social Servies wher most of the children didn't know who their fathers were,

A house with one mum, a mum who is out of her depth as a mum.

The mum is a bright person but brittle in her dealings with people. 

The notes you get when a child is on their way can never paint the full picture, you get a variable amount of background depending on circumstances.

If the family have been on Social services radar for some time you get lots of information, all of it verified and outlined with professional discretion.

Other times the authorites have to act as soon as they go into a home, that's when support information is sketchy.

In this case the mum was well-known to be vulnerable and the children at risk, but Social Workers worked hard to keep them together if it was at all possible, as that's almost always what the family want, and with good supervision can be best for all, including the Local Authority's strained purse strings.

I'll call the child Billy, which is neither the name he grew up under, or the name he's chosen now that he wishes to be percieved as male.

Billy is tall and slight. He has a strong voice but speaks quietly. He is more than shy, he's frightened.

How could he not be?

We were informed that he was transitioning when we were asked to consider taking him, and replied that it wasn't something we knew a great deal about, but were prepapred to learn. Moreover we were no less prepapred to help than we would be with any child of any profile.

To us they are all kids in need of physical and emotional safety and attachments to caring adults.

Billy's not been with us long enough to present the normal challenges that foster children bring once they've got confidence that we won't hurt them or reject them. We've got that to come.

He's enjoyed coming out of his shell and talking (he's best one-on-one). He appreciates talking about his transitioning, which he's clearly proud of.

It's been agreed that we will help him maintain the self belief his journey is giving him, while also ensuring that he keeps hold of the many other qualities we believe he has that also deserve praise and celebration.

In other words, help him define himself in full, not just a person who has chosen to fight for his own true gender identification.

So far so good.

To be continued alright...

Read More

FOSTERING GIVES CONFIDENCE

 Blimey, 'gatherings' are ever-changing aren't they?

A 'gathering' is what used to be called a 'party' but our young discovered they could easier get the nod for a 'party' by calling it a 'gathering'.

Are us adults sufficiently gullible that we fall for things if they are blustered?

Yes. For a while. Ask the outgoing British Prime Minister. 

The gathering was the weekend after Westminster's latest round of chaos and general bile.

So; we agreed to a gathering to mark the end of the academic year of eldest foster child.

Interesting side-point; do you know why the UK academic year runs from September to July? With a 6 week summer break? 

Because going back 200 years they needed the kids to bring in the wheat.

Unbelievable we've never modernised.

Anyhoo; eldest wanted a gathering. We said yes. It's not his first, he's had two over the last four years, each different, due to eldest's development, but also down to changing times.

Our child's latest gathering happened last night.

It was a Saturday, the proper night for a knees-up.

When I remember teenage parties I remember mostly grotty events in people's parents' houses with a smattering of beer cans, some frantic dancing then an exodus to the privacy of the garden by those who had paired up.

I don't know if last night was typical in any way, but it was very different from my day.

First off, there was absolutley no 'Alpha male' posturing. Even one huge lad who arrived late after finishing his evening work shift and who's on course to sign up to be a paratrooper, and who, in a lazy moment, you might expect would bring a bit of boisterousness to the proceedings, sat next to two other earnest types and held a discussion about ethics and politics. And supped juice.

Another group formed cross-legged on our lawn and dicussed human relations and social interaction.

A smaller group formed on the landing, also quietly chatting.

There was alcohol. In moderation. There was no drunkeness, no one got unwell.

Nobody smoked tobacco and if anyine smoked anything else they must have done it beside the fire pit to camouflage any smell. But I don't think anyone did.

There was music. Loud enough too, thank goodness (otherwise it was more a conference than a party).

The finale to the music was a hearty rendition of Sweet Caroline.

I know. Neil Diamond. None of your rappers, your Bibby P or Gangsta G.

When it was midnight I asked everyone to come inside (for the neighbours) which they did in 30 seconds.

The head count was about 50% girls (that is to say people who presented as girls), 25% boys (same thing) and 25% people who were in various stages of transitioning.

A bit like the make-up of the next Parliament I would guess, although politicians aren't as good at being who they really are as our young people today. And anyway, they drink too much don't they (the politicians). And do drugs.

And come to think about it they probably spend less time discussing the issues that matter.

What I'm saying is; I'm confident the future is safe with the next generation.

Read More