Three words - Languishing in Care

So, I'm minding my own business enjoying a little light reading when three words jump off the page and slap me out of my holiday stupor.

"languish in care'

I was shocked at my own visceral response to a few words, I was livid and sickened by such staid, lazy and harmful rhetoric. 

Languish in care? 

I thought of my friends painting the flat of the young woman they'd fostered two years earlier. She'd left their 'foster placement', her choice, after trashing their kitchen. Two years later they still invite her to family parties, to stay over at Christmas and support her in all kinds of ways including painting her first flat. 

Languish in care?

I think of the family that I support who give every waking moment and many through the night to the teenager girl they foster with Cerabral Palsy, how every member of their family works to include them in to their family life.

Languish in care?

My mind goes to the family that cares for the two sisters under 13 months old, feeding every two hours, supporting daily contact and refusing respite though exhausted because it's not in the girl's best interests. The foster carers that tonight will get an unexpected call to take a child, no details, no answers just a child in desperate need. Foster carers that advocate and support and put up with an unending stream of professionals through their front door. To describe the children that they care for as 'languishing in care' is just plain insulting. 

Of course you can fill up my comments section with examples to counter this, of this and that and I can assure you that I'm under no illusion that foster care and foster carers have their faults. If you want I can list them and give you some examples. But to talk about 'languishing in care' is lazy and reprehensible and when we accept such twaddle why are we surprised that we read headlines like 'foster care in crisis' claiming we need 9000 carers and what seems like every roundabout in my town being 'sponsored' by the LA's Fostering Team.

Children who fall into the care system are there for a reason that is almost universally negative. We place unfair measures on foster care, by definition  and thankfully it's reactive and to consider the outcomes in terms of GCSE results at 16 is a blunt tool. The experience of those children are the very worst that our society has to offer and to compare their 'outcomes' at 18 to those of the general population is plain stupid. If you come into foster care at 15 years old then sit your GCSE's then foster care still takes the rap for your results, good or bad,  feeding the politicians who talk about outcomes.  

I'm happy to debate the failings of the system but to describe children as 'languishing in care' is downright insulting and lazy. 

Anyway, I'm on my holidays and feel much better for getting that off my chest. Let's see if I can finish this book. 

With all that in mind I'm interested in the recently announced  National Fostering Stocktake - Call for Evidence. Lets see if we can't make it all better. 

Hurt: One Year On.

I can't believe that it's been a year to the week since I spilled my thoughts in to a blog post after a tricky few incidents with one of the kids. Hurt was a reaction to a ever escalating pattern of violence that had started years earlier with the lashing out of a toddler. In a big child it can be no longer brushed off or ignored. Things were starting to get broken people were starting to get hurt.

I posted on a Hurt on a Thursday evening and the response was genuinely shocking as though I was the first person to ever stick their head above the parapet and acknowledge a problem that is commonplace for many. I'm not the first and I fear I won't be the last. The offers of support and solidarity were touching and humbling as people spoke of their fears, concerns and guilt.

Since then we've had an 'interesting' year. I refuse to be held hostage and I refuse to give up. I spoke to my local adoption team and asked for supervision or to be allocated a Social Worker. They couldn't meet that requirement so I instigated my own virtual supervision by emailing concerns or specific events of violence to a LA Social Worker. I think she was a bit sick of me so I added the caveat that I expected and required no support but if they could kindly keep the email safe just as a formal record of events. We informed the local police and asked them to make a note in their records just incase they ever got an emergency call so that they were pre armed with some info. We tell all the professionals we can this key part of our narrative. In short we keep ourselves safe, we've built a narrative as a safety net for us all. A couple of those emails instigated an Initial Assessment* from the local child protection team. That was an interesting afternoon our second in less than a year the Social Worker was quite nice really but still a good lesson for my practice.

In truth though things have eased, we get the attitude but less physical. In part we are getting more savvy. I invited my local Post Adoption Support Team to carry out a formal assessment of our needs and they obliged and we got some NVR training, I'd already had it through work so MrsC and my mam went on it and it was much appreciated.

We work hard to not let it get to the point of fisty cuffs, very hard, we take a verbal beating rather than a physical one and we step aside, distract and use plain old trickery and bribery to avoid the worst.  Still, we've had some ugly stuff this year and none of us, winners or losers, feel particularly edified by any of it.

I'm sure that for as long as there are children who have experienced and witnessed violence or word and deed there will be parents who experience violence. I refuse to be held hostage, I refuse to give up and I hope we can bring it out of the shadows.

For now we as a family take it a day at a time.



*The initial assessment is a statutory short assessment of each child referred to Children's Services focusing on establishing whether the child is in need or whether there is reasonable cause to suspect that the child is suffering, or is likely to suffer significant harm

Hug a foster carer

I have an affinity with Foster Carers. This is mainly because I was one and that my day jobs means that I work with Foster Carers every day and am consistently reminded of the challenges of their  profession.

It doesn’t happen very often that I hear bad press or negative comments but when I do it usually gets my ire, especially from adopters. I’m not so naïve to think that they’re all saints, give exemplary care, act in the best interests of children or are universally fantastic. I know that the relationship between adopters and Foster Carers can be ‘interesting’ and sometimes for good reason, sometimes not though.*

My thoughts.

It’s not uncommon for adoptive parents to tell of the dramatic improvements that they’ve seen in little ‘Johnny’ since coming to live with them. Raised eyebrows and knowing nods when Foster Carers are mentioned, comments about lack of stimulation, poor diet and bedtime routines and missed development milestones. Talk of massive improvements and milestones rapidly being caught, new words, overdue first steps that sort of stuff. 

But Foster Carers often have immeasureably challenges set before them. They're handed this raw clay to shape, having to put in place new bedtimes, first routines and tentative steps to boundaries produces challenges. They face 21 hour shifts with a tormented baby that withdraws from who knows what. Malicious allegations just because they were an easy target. They suffer more Social Worker visits than you can imagine, being told how to care then the worker slinking off home at 5pm letting you peal the kids off the ceiling after a post contact meltdown because birth mum fed a 3 month old chocolate buttons at 5 pm before the taxi diver brought them home after a 45 minute car journey an you couldn’t get a vegetable into them if you were Jamie-bleeding-Oliver on steroids (Breathe!).

Then to bed, oh, they slept on the way back from contact so they’re buzzing, freaked out and high on chocolate buttons and they aren't sleeping for anyone. 

Forgive my hyperbole, you get my drift, normal isn't always possible.

So, they take this raw clay and start to shape and mould it. Of course there’s a way to go but somebody had to start the process. They pass little Johnny onto us and we've got it easy they've begun a process and taken some flack to get him this far. They may have been the arms of love in some of your child’s most difficult days. They might have been the first arms of love a child has ever known. But they move them on and its not because they don’t care or don’t have the capacity to love them too much it’s because they do care and love them.

They’re part of the jigsaw whether you like it or not. 

So, cut them some slack and go hug a Foster Carer today, or at least send them a letter or card and say thanks.

*I also know of many fantastic lifelong friendships between adopters and foster carers.