"YOU"D BE A GOOD FOSTER MUM"

 Not long, as I write, before the end of the long summer school holidays here in the UK.

The TV commercials for school equipment, which used to depress my kids, don't depress children any more.

Why? Because kids don't watch that type of TV!

There are no "Back to school soon!" commercials on Disney.

And The Lion King is funny, heartwarming, and intelligent.

And…

…yes I let my foster kids watch TV in the daytime during summer holidays. 

The key word is "holiday".

The children are having a holiday from school. Schooldays are hard work for them, they've earned some R and R.

People often think that foster parents are drilled into running back-to-back wellbeing activities with their foster children. Not the case. The day-to-day running of a home means that sometimes you let them veg out.

Our home is their home and it's more imprtant than trips to the museum or the archeological dig.

I talked about the holidays with the mum on the till in my supermarket.  I asked her how she was. She replied;

"Only another week to school going back."

I got her point.

I asked her how many she had. She replied;

"Three. Two six year-old twins and a nine year-old."

How do households where both partners (if there are two..) who have to work handle school summer holidays?

Logistical nightmare.

She asked about mine.

"All pretty much grown up." I replied, adding;

"But we like kids so much we also foster."

The mum behind the till came back with a swerve;

"There's another customer who comes in here who fosters."

See, when you foster, you get reactions like that a lot. People don't know what to say next.

I was at a BBQ a couple of weeks back and got chatting to a slightly pompous retired man who announced he did a lot of charity work. He said he was on the board of the local theatre, and on the board of an organisation that supported orphans from third world countries. He added that it was funded by JK Rowling.

I replied that I had previously fostered an orphan from a third world country. I hoped he might respond by showing interest. That's how conversation works. Instead he went;

"But she hasn't been to any of our meetings yet."

People change the subject.

If only they grasped that fostering is normal. It's not estranged from the real world or mystical or even particularly special. 

You've got a spare bedroom? You lend it to a child who needs it.

End of.

Yes there are things you need to know about, that's how come you get social workers at your back.

And if the kids want to watch The Lion King 27 times during the ludicrously long summer holidays, fair play.

And have I given up on mentioning that I foster?

No. But the moment has to be right, I sensed that the mum behind the till was more interested than she wanted to let on. So I said:

"You'd be a good foster mum"

And left it there.

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LOO TIME

 Quick update on our newest foster child "Alicia".

She's transitioning, as per if you saw my posts around the time of her arrival.

I'm careful to respect her privacy and ensure she can't be identified.

But I think it's important to share stuff, after all that's the point of the Secret Foster Carer; to talk about the many joys and challenges of fostering.

Naturally our Blue Sky Social Worker is at our side with everything. Literally.

When Blue Sky paid for me to attend an all-day intensive course on gender, my Social Worker came too.

The main thing in Alicia's life is going well. The main thing; Alicia's physical and emotional wellbeing. Unfortunately she doesn't have the universal support of every member of her real family. One member in particular refuses to refer to her by her new name and is very vocal and active with her disapproval, voicing the view that Alicia is disrespecting her own mother, who gave her a different name, and arguing that Alicia's mother must be mortified that Alicia now calls herself by a different name. 

This person is also very disapproving of Alicia's foster mum - me - because I accept Alicia and respect her choices. The family member in question leads a similarly chaotic lifestyle to Alicia's immediate family, which is something that Alicia seems to be trying to escape from.

When one fosters one needs to be resilient against the occasional family member of the child who might feel understandably diminished by having a child removed.

Enough on that, I want to share something positive.

Not long after Alicia arrived I went to use the upstairs loo. I turned the handle to open the door, but it was locked from the inside. A voice said softly:

"Sorry".

"That's alright." I said, and went away, feeling strangely mortified.

Why was I mortified? It was the sort of small thing that happens in a normal household all the time.

Yet I seemed upset that I'd maybe intruded on Alicia during a private moment. I think that perhaps I had come to believe that Alicia had bigger privacy needs than most foster children.

Whether she does or doesn't is another matter, but I sat at the kitchen table trying to work out what to do to make sure I righted any wrong, however small and innocent.

Should I say to Alicia "Sorry I interrupted you earlier just then"?

No, that might only make it worse.

I had a freind who, if she was in the loo and heard someone approaching, would cough quietly to signal it was occupied. I decided against that tip. Alicia isn't forceful enough for it.

I realised that ordinary homes loos don't have the little locks on them that indicate "Vacant" or "Engaged" like public loos do.

So I bought one! Good old Google/Amazon!

I won't bore you with the details of what a right cob it was to install. Drilling, gouging chunks of wood to  join up the mechanism on both sides, cussing when we discovered we'd got the measurments wrong and had drilled a hole in the wrong place…

We got there in the end.

We all use it, and it's dandy. Every home should have one.

But unless you're a wizard at DIY, get someone in who knows what they're doing because they're a mare to install.

Meantime; back to Alicia.  I hope and believe she's starting to recognise that her foster family will always go the extra mile to make her feel as comfortable as possible.

                                                *    *    *

PS Last week Alicia said something to me that will stay with me forever, it's this:

"It's not important to be better than somebody else. It's important to be better than the person you used to be."

Her point, I think, is that everyone should be transitioning, one way or another.

Isn't fostering the bees knees?

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FOSTERING AND THE BIG PICTURE

 Sometimes in fostering you get so pre-occupied with the day-to-day stuff that the big picture disappears off your radar.

Luckily, in my case, our Blue Sky social worker shows up - once a month at the moment - and helps me re-focus.

So. What's the big picture?

Well, for example, a small picture is that your foster child chucks detrius under the bed. Y'know; empty crisp packets, apple cores, lone socks…

Another small picture is that your child is hopeless at being ready to leave for school at the agreed time, or resists the lovely steamed brocolli you've dusted with parmesan to make it taste less like brocolli and more like pizza...

Look, when I call these things "small", I know that they are biggish. They fill the moment and occupy our whole brain.

But this is the really BIG picture...

            ...a child has been taken away from their home and brought to a family of strangers.

Us. Us fostering folk.

This isn't merely big, it's MASSIVE.

When your social worker turns up they want to let us fostering folk have a moan about the small things; they know they're important. They listen, sympathise, maybe sometimes offer advice.

Then gently bring us back to the big picture.

Namely your foster child's situation. Their thing, their existence, their life.

If we want to do the job well it helps to share the child's big picture.

Many years ago, I remember this moment so well, I was fostering a lad called Raphael.

Naturally I tried to meet all his basic needs; food, warmth, and the other important things. 

I also did my best (as I still do) to provide some of the more complex needs, such as a sense of security, a sense of being cared for. A sense of belonging.

One day, not long after he arrived, Raphael was being challenging. Nothing major, he'd simply got out of bed on the wrong side. 

My efforts at distraction fell on deaf ears.

Me: "Raphael mate; spag boll or sausage and chips tonight"

Raphael; "I don't care."

Me: "Wanna watch the new Toy Story at the weekend?"

Raphael; "Toy Story sucks!"

I eventually got him into the car for the school run. Halfway there he started crying. 

It was that poignant sort of sobbing. Deep. From the heart.

Driving through the morning traffic I could only think about what I might add to the good things that Raphael was now getting; proper food, clean clothes, fresh bedding, respectful and attentive adults. I might have even felt a tiny bit peeved that for all my efforts he was inexplicably sad and angry.

Turned out he was neither sad nor angry.

He was frightened. Not for himself, but for someone else.

Through his tears he suddenly blurted these words, which I'll never forget:

"If you were a kid miles away from home, you'd worry that something had happened to your mother."

That was his big picture. 

His mother was in an abusive partnership, and Raphael was worried that without him being there she had nobody to protect her.

I kicked myself all the way home for not being on the ball.

Made up my mind never to forget their big picture.

A bigger picture than any Toy Story.

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WE GOT THIS ONE WRONG...

There's no time in fostering for regrets, but here's one I kick myself about…

The thing about school holidays is that your foster child's social life comes to the fore.

Their social life's always big, of course, but it's an issue that tends to stick out at weekends. And holidays.

Older kids, on Saturdays, they go off and chill at "Jasmine's" or "Aiden's", and we have to make judgements about the family home where they're "chillin' " at.

If it's the dreaded sleepover; we always contact the parents of our foster child's friend and touch base. They always get it and are pleased we care.

I say "dreaded" because we're inundated with requests for sleepovers at our house. Bottom line; once one understands they are not "Sleepovers" but "Stayawakers" you're halfway there. 5.00am and there's still two twelve-year-olds blearily talking dreamlike rubbish hoping to raise the trophy of "Last One to Go To Sleep".

Regrets.

We looked after a young child called Emerald, aged eight, who had been deprived of normal social company, her parents had hardly sent her to school, hardly allowed her to mix with kids her age.

She came to us late spring, and we got on with introducing her to school and friendships. Jeez, she found both concepts pretty shocking. Imagine; a roomfull of people same age as her. Crazy. A playground teeming with bullish-seeeming boys and closed groups of girls…HELP!

She stuck at it. It broke my heart to take her to school every day and see her in the playground every morning, standing alone, hoping for a friend.

Then summer loomed. Six weeks of pure fostering, no school. 

Exhausting, but hey, potential.

So, imagine; last week of term Emerald got invited to tea with a friend she knew from school.

The bond between them was rabbits. The friend had three, and Emerald was desperate to meet them. They lived in hutches but had mobile rabbit runs that got moved around the lawn every day.

Obviously, I "facilitated". 

Emerald and the friend, a gentle child called Angelica bonded.

Then this happened.

Social Services and various social workers got together and agreed that Emerald should be re-located to a school nearer us. There were reasons for this I won't bore you with, I can still see the logic. It was mainly to help Emerald build a social network, and also to cut down my drive (I was in the car making 4 journeys of half-an-hour each every day).

So. Emerald, aged eight, was removed from the first friend she'd ever had. For reasons too complex for her to comprehend.

And who had to mop it up?

Johnny foster carer.

Emerald was roughed up inside by the move. It took her a while to get a grip on the new school, and try to infiltrate the friendships groups there.

She spent the six weeks holiday in a bit of a mope.

I mopped up, I think, so I did. I hope.

Got her back to sort of on track.

But looking back, Emerald should have stayed put.

You live and learn...

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THE BEAUTY OF SCHOOL SUMMER HOLIDAYS

The joys of fostering are myriad, but you have to know where and how to look. 

It's August, it's hot (well today it's hot) and the school summer holidays are well under way.

A challenging six weeks for parents, and an interesting period for us foster parents.

Why?

All sorts of reasons, not least how to handle the getaway family holiday.

When our own kids were young it was a caravan on the Isle of Wight. When they were secondary school age is was Malaga. 

Now that we foster we take the foster children on holiday with us, wouldn't dream of leaving them behind, but everybody's different.

If you foster with an agency such as Blue Sky you get a dedicated social worker who helps and supports you with things like this.

I knew of foster parents who'd ask for their foster child to go into respite care while they went off. They felt they owed it to their own children to feel the exclusivity of their family unit. That approach is definitely not for us. I get a massive enjoyment from giving our foster child a proper seaside vacation. Some kids in care have never been on a beach before.

Yes, there are complications. Perhaps one's concerned about their swimming safety. They need a room to themselves, that adds to the complications and cost. What about insurance?

Foster children often dislike being singled out as being in care, but it tends to happen if you're going abroad, the reason often being down to security against people-trafficking. When officials notice that one of your flock has a different surname, they need to make sure it's above board. I carry a letter from social services authorising our travelling with the child. I have to say though, that the officials are always very kind and discreet.

Example; we were coming home from Spain and going through passport. I handed the officer our passports and I clocked him take a look at the child, who happened to be non-white, and then glance at me, who's white. He smiled and said "Did you have good weather?" I replied "Beautiful thanks". He gave us a two second up-and-down, smiled again and said "Welcome home. It's rained here since Wednesday." With that he handed back our passports and nodded us through.

I suspect he was checking me out to make sure I wasn't nervous or up to no good. Maybe he simply fancied a quick chat. I'm pretty sure it was the former. Clever eh?

With school summer holidays, whether it's six non-stop weeks at home or a break that's split by a trip away, fostering folk have to stay on their toes.

How soon before the cry goes up:

"I'm BORED!'

Usually on day two…

One of our first foster children was due to break up for the summer on a Thursday. Parents were invited to attend the 2.00pm end-of-year assembly, at which the deputy Head gave a silly speech saying "We've had to put up with them all year, now it's your turn to suffer…"

Daft words. She retired not long afterwards.

The child was full of enthusism for new-found freedom, fun and games, and bounded into the car.

She'd asked to play tennis. Wimbledon had just happened, I have it on all afternooon every day, part of my summer routine. The child had come home and watched, fascinated.

And, I realised later, the child was beguiled that the child was beguiled by the players.

She wanted to impress me.

On her instructions I'd booked a court for 3.00pm the afternoon school broke up. The child insisted on a full-size court. I'd bought her a tennis racket. Again, she'd insisted on an adult-sized one.

We went out onto the court and I under-armed her a gentle one from the other side of the net, right into her hitting zone, she didn't need to move.

She swung. And missed.

I tried again. Second time was a miss-hit off the rim.

Third time, she missed again.

We'd not been on the court sixty seconds and her red mist began to descend.

Now she's swinging huge, and missing or miss-hitting every time.

Then began the tears and cusses of frustration.

I suggested we take a break.

Nope, she was determined to carry on, sobbing all the while.

I suggested we come back another day after she'd practised at home.

Nope. On and on it went.

Other parents were walking their children past the courts and I swear some of them thought I was one of those dreadful tennis mums. The truth was the exact opposite, and I had to stand accused (or so it felt).

I gradually got to the bottom of the problem.

The child had watched Martina and Steffi and co. and assumed that a tennis racket was some kind of magic wand which, when waved in the direction of a ball would send it fizzing over the net and down the line for a winner.

I changed tactics. I said;

"I don't think your racket is any good. My fault. I must have picked out a duff one."

The child is six, by the way, but like a great many kids who need care, was brighter than any button. My new strategy hit the spot. She said:

"Yes. It's rubbish."

She knew I was helping her out and bought it.

On the way home I asked if she wanted to try again another time.

"Nah."

Then she asked;

"What are we going to do tomorrow?"

Me;

"I thought we'd take the dog to the meadow and try to fish for some sticklebacks in the stream."

That clicked. She;

"With a rod?"

"Nah, that's cruel. With a net on a bamboo pole, and a jam jar to keep them in until we release them back."

Her:

"What's for tea?"

Me:

"Well, it's a special day so we'll swing by the shops and pick up whatever you fancy."

And we were both back on the front foot.

It ended up pizza.

The afternoon could have been a disaster, but in fostering, like they say, when God gives you lemons...

Only another five and three-quarter weeks to go...

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AREN'T BEDTIMES TRICKY?

 Why foster? 

Because, generally speaking, it's the about the best thing you can do in life. At least, that's my view.

You get to take a vulnerable, innocent child under your wing and help them on their way.

The children don't always understand what you're doing for them, no matter. You do it.

They certainly don't understand two big things that are new to them when they come into your care.

They don't understand Contact or bedtimes.

"Contact" is where a child in care is taken to spend time with a significant family member, almost always a parent, usually once a week. The child doesn't understand why, if the parent has loused up their parenting, the child has to spend time with them in a neutral location, but then the child has to go home with the foster parent.

Contact is usually once a week.

Bedtime is every night…

Children coming into fostering often have had no experience of bedtime routines, so they struggle.

Avril came to us aged eleven, we'd not been fostering long so were on a steep learning curve.

We'd had children of our own and had experience of their resitance to getting ready for bed. The sequance of going upstairs, putting on pyjamas, staying upstairs and everything in between.

Avril opened our eyes. I've talked to a lot of foster parents who say the same; you have to learn to enjoy a new set of ideas about bedtime, but once you do it's happy days.

We tried to give Avril the same routine as our own children. So, at a set time it would be bathtime followed by pyjamas then a story then lights down.

With Avril that sequence always ended in tears at some point.

Together with our Blue Sky social worker we began to piece together the experience Avril had endured at 'bedtime'.

We talked to Avril about her previous 'bedtimes'.

Turned out that 'bedtime' in her house of chaos was fraught, frantic and frightening.

It was often preceded by the doorbell and her mother saying "There's a bloke I'm expecting, so get upstairs and put yourself to bed, and I don't want to hear a peep out of you unless I need you down here. Scram!"

We filed what she told us in our regular reports, and Blue Sky alerted the police that two things she told us amounted to disclosures of possible criminal acts that had not previously been picked up and required investigation.

Criminal.

And there we were saying "Hey ho, eight o'clock time to hop into the tub then snuggle down for a story."

Nightly bathtimes were ditched, as was any mention of 'bedtime'.

Avril now stayed fully clothed and lay next to me on the sofa while Eastenders eventually became News At Ten. She'd doze, in and out, but try to stay awake. Stay awake for historic reasons I can't betray.

My other half would ask every half hour "Is she gone?" By "gone" he meant solidly asleep.

Her house-clothes were pretty much approximately pyjamas, so I'd carry her up and lay her in bed. New underwear in the morning. 

In fostering one's encouraged to talk - discreetly - about fostering to close and trusted friends. I'm afraid my gang were unanimous that I was relinquishing control, failing to meet her sleep needs, and the rest.

But Blue Sky got what we were doing; soothing Avril's savage brow.

Avril was with us for 7 months, and we helped her on her way.

Our next placement had problems with…

Contact and bedtimes.

His problem with Contact was exactly like all the others.

His problems with bedtimes, like every foster child, were unique to him.

Game on all over again.

You're never bored in fostering...

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WHY DO WE FOSTER?

 How do people discover fostering? What do people who wonder if fostering might be for them, do next?

It's a question I need to start asking fellow foster parents, strangely I don't think I ever have. Yet.

So at the moment I've only got my own experience.

Way back I saw a TV programme, I was about 14 years old. A family were talking about their having a foster child. I'd never heard of "fostering" before. The family seemed pleasant and happy. I maybe made a mental note.

When I left school I was a bit aimless. Normal.

I caught a small ad in a newspaper inviting volunteers to go to the USA and work with kids in their Summer Camps. I applied, was accepted, and suddenly there I was on a Boeing jet heading for New York. 

The plane was full of students, all about to be dispersed to different camps, but none of us knew our ultimate destination, we were going to be told when we landed. I stayed in touch with one girl who ended up in a top-of-the-range camp where the kids did water ski-ing, horse riding and use the camp's helicopter to get to town to post cards.

I wasn't so lucky. Wait, I'm going to re-phrase that; I was even luckier. I got a charity camp.

Camp Caribou it was called. 90 miles north of New York, in the middle of proper nowhere. Forest for 100 miles in every direction.

It was owned and run by a decent, wealthy New York family who saw charity as their duty and did their bit.

The Camp cost them time and money. The money came from the father. His children and their friends did the day-to-day work, lived in the camp, never stopped smiling and supporting the kids.

The kids! 

They were all homeless one way or another. Some came from homes for "social orphans" (kids whose parents are alive but unable to function as parents). Many were living on wasteland, in disused factories, abandoned tenements, shop doorways; all that. 

The idea was to give the children a couple of weeks in the great outdoors. Each of us councillors had a wooden cabin out in the forest (yep, snakes and wolves) with 6 very basic beds; one for the councillor, the other for 5 kids. From day one, aged 18, I became a start-up "foster mum" of 5.

One of my many, many standout memories is that the entire camp sat down to eat together three times a day in the main building. Different cabins took their turn to lay the tables. The staff were really hot that every child's place had to be layed exactly right; a clean plate in the middle, cutlery exactamundo. Clean water jugs and sparkling glasses for all.

And a napkin. Each place had a neatly folded paper napkin, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Everone had to wash first, in the open air latrines.

One of the family said to me;

"It's important we respect them and encourage them to respect themselves."

Brilliant.

Then, I guess, is maybe when the seed of fostering was sown.

Fostering is a valuable career for almost anyone. The inkling to foster might suddenly blindside a person almost when they're thinking about something else.

BTW America was a fantastic life experience for myself. I'll never forget that the older kids were respectfully frisked when their rusty old bus brought them in. Knives and drugs were collected.

The councillors returned the weapons when they left, but kept the weed.

I often wondered how they disposed of it...

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