Respite

It's with much intrigue I've watched the debate about the professionalisation/unionisation of Foster carers unfold. Articles, news items and twitter scraps have ensued and such is the nature of the argument I'm having with Queenie it's been moved to the list of topics that we must never speak of again.

I'm intrigued by the binary nature of the conversations, locked into positions that are poles apart. I've listened to adult care leavers passionately describing the impact of issues like respite had on them as  children and young people, then foster carers giving accounts of the systemic challenges they face as they try to care for young people. 

I was rather amused listening to a rather bullish man on the radio who was being assessed as a foster carer denounce any carer who didn’t do it for purely altruistic motivations. He went on to refuse to accept better pay and conditions for FCs. I chastised myself as I thought ‘yeah, come back on the radio a year after you’ve been approved and we’ll see what you say’. I can be quite harsh when I’m in the car alone listening to the radio.

This issue of unionising foster care has been floating around and the one point that has piqued my interest is that of respite.

Basically, listening to the debate their appears to be only two positions, the first being that respite is good for carers and respite is very bad for children.

The other says that foster carers are not parents plus, they often care for the most challenging of children in the most challenging of circumstances. I quote lived and professional experience here.
One that says in the best interests of the child they should have stability and consistency of home and carer, I quote research and best practice here.

Are the two positions ever able to be reconciled? Is it an oversimplification to even state them like this.

I know many foster families and carers that go above and beyond, way beyond and put their own physical and mental health on the line in the care of ‘their’ children. They prioritise the needs of these children again and again and when they ask me for two nights off or a week away to recharge or a special occasion then I will not stand in their way or begrudge them some time away. They go out of their way to ensure the welfare of the children during this break and do everything in their powers to ensure that any potential harm is minimised.

Of course, there are bad examples but from my experience they are the minority.

As a parent I seek respite, of course that’s not what I’d call it. But every year the Good MrsC take at least a night and day away and we do all the stuff to ensure that it’s a positive and enjoyable experience for our children staying at home. In fact we’ve just come home from a holiday for four, MrsC, me and two children. We left four children behind, most of them because they’re young adults and they’re living their lives. But not all of them, some of them just don’t fare well out of routine in different countries with different food etc.

I mean really don’t fare well in an apocalyptic, days of freefall dysregulation, furniture biting kind of way.

So, what do you do? Do we live to the lowest common denominator? Well we don’t.

We reframe, explain, contain and get my big girl and mam to come along and replicate the safe standard routine with a few perks, the child left behind is pampered and enjoys free reign with the remote and being treat like an only child. And we get to play nice like those families we see on the telly, spontaneous stay up late, throw away routine sort of fun.

Is that not selective respite, it’s not what I’d call it but that’s what it is. My children don’t see it as a rejection or slur but as a fact of their lives that sometimes their needs have to be put aside to allow us to have time together. It’s not easy and it’s arranged to the nth degree. We bring in trusted and safe people, we make it a positive.

Fostering isn’t ‘standard’ parenting, the expectations and scrutiny that Foster Carers are put under adds pressure; the unique systems and requirement of fostering add pressure; the impacts of loss, separation and trauma adds pressure. 

The articles I read didn’t seem to acknowledge this and as heartfelt as some of the arguments against respite were they didn’t highlight the high needs that some children have and the high toll that it exacts. Speaking to a good friend this week, a foster carer and Social Worker, he explained the model they use. They build a 'family' around the children they care for, a community of adults and families that welcome their fostered children for babysitting and respite. It sound like family, like community like what almost every parent does because it is a family. There are innovative models of fostering that build these families around children because the cliche is true it takes a village to raise a child and as Helen Oakwater adds 'it takes a city to raise a traumatised child'.

Adoption Breakdown

I was brought over all funny by the Post Adoption Support Fund Survey that came through the post. I knew it was coming and I've answered enough of this type of Strengths and Difficulties forms over the years so I'm a dab hand at it all by now.

I have to take a deep breadth as I usually have an existential crisis over the nuances and philosophical differences between 'agree' and 'strongly agree'. I can get a little Fawlty Dad over the issue but I try to be a grown up.

Anyway, I was rattling through the form and passed the tricky bit and was into the final section.

On a scale of 1 to 10 

Do you find it difficult to care for you child then? 

Followed by........

Do you feel your child responds to you attempts to help them?

Finally.............

Do you feel there's a risk of your adoption breaking down?

That question just stopped me in my tracks, like a slap. All the others I had to think about and then give a considered answer, weighing up the evidence and analysing the facts.
All the others questions I was prepared to give some headspace too, not that one though.

I was really shocked, then I was surprised at being shocked. I know adoptions breakdown happens but it is a taboo and we're not meant to talk about taboos. It seemed odd to see it written down I felt a little offended that I'd even been asked.

'Adoption breaking down'

A simple phrase that encapsulates a cataclysmic and prolonged disaster in a families lives. I can't imagine the events, circumstances that lead to it. The stats say about 3% of adoptions breakdown but up to a third struggle. I'm not sure about what struggle means, we struggle but the leap from struggle to breakdown is a big one. Also, having I've had a daughter move out before 18. That was surrounded by difficult circumstances but in no way was it an adoption breakdown. I have unending empathy for those that have experienced a breakdown.

I'm not happy with the phrase it's a big blunt phrase that encapsulates a whole range of circumstance, systemic and personal failings, heartbreak and broken dreams. I'm really searching this week to make sense of what point I'm trying to make, I'm not even sure that I've got a point. I'm just dancing around this phrase and event that some families experience. The feeling that I got lingers and I'm not sure why.

Anyway, I just put a 'one', I have no idea what the future holds.

Unresolved narrative

It's been a hard week for a load of different and mainly external reasons. Of course it goes without saying that I can't say what, when, who, how or why. Of course I can confirm that they're all related directly to the early lives my children and their route to my door. I'm not down or depressed. I just am.

I was speaking to a friend about something or other and he noted that some folks he knew struggled with what I wrote sometimes as there was, as he said it, 'an unresolved narrative'.

Well if it makes you feel any better so do I.

I write what happens, what I see and what I think. Of course I filter and edit it but it's an account of our lives from my perspective. Other perspectives are available of course but I feel that I'm fairly representative of a large number of parents who care for children who have experienced trauma, loss, separation and have travelled through the care system.

I write to make me feel better, to get the dirty water off my chest. I'd love to write about all the warm hugs and beautiful moments that blossom out of difficult experiences. Perhaps I do but in different less obvious ways, I think I find hope.

Today as Mrs C and I returned from our recent sessions with one of the massive's therapist I confessed that I didn't know how all of this is going to turn out for us as a family. Not the immediate but the long term. Not depressed just pragmatic, what does the future hold? I never thought that we'd retire to the seaside, see the grandkids once a week for a slice of Battenberg cake and a Wurthers Original, crikey no.  But I'm not sure how in the medium to long term some of my children's adult lives are going to play out. Our journey so far indicates that for some it will be ok but for some it's not so clear,  so our narrative is unresolved, but can anyone's be resolved?

This week my heart skipped as I walked through the shops, Lotty's 10 year old hand took hold of mine and we walked and talked. Her hand felt small but it was just so natural with an easy familiarity that was precious. Big deal, you say but I'm her dad and I'm the proudest dad in the world because she loves me. I also know that in 5 years this time holding hands will not happen.

Sometimes I hold onto that second in time when my hand is held because in that moment my narrative actually feels pretty much resolved.

Challenging Behaviour Top Trumps

I like conferences and training. Though the conference and trainy bit can be hit and miss, ranging from excellent to dire, it's meeting other people on a similar path that feels the most rewarding. Chewing the fat, crying on shoulders and sharing tips and tricks.

Of course, you meet at least one person who you can't help wonder how they managed to get approved as adopters and one person on the edge of firebombing their local adoption office.

One of my favourite bits is when we all play 'Challenging behaviour top trumps' in the breaks. There's always someone who starts with a relatively modest,

'Oh, we have challenging bedtimes, sometimes I have to get really firm'. 

Sensing an easy victory another will come in.

'Well, I must tell you that Tarquin spontaneously combusts at the mere thought of bedtime'

Not to be outdone a bystander will add.

'Combusts? Once when we tried to get Petula to bed she held a three day rooftop protest that had to be quelled by the local branch of the territorial army'

And so it goes on, the anecdotes slowly getting more extreme, we laugh and our mouths are agog at the scale and scope of the challenging behaviour. Of course someone wins, my friends true story of having cement poured down their toilet usually wins.
But all the losers walk away feeling much better and thinking 'Crickey, I thought I had it bad, little Franella seems quite tame by comparison'. In fact it was quite productive for the losers and they can pick up tips, tricks and the number of the local TA.

Of course there are other break time activities including my personal favourite, 'Stupid and Insulting things my Social Worker Said Snap'.

The best bit being that we're in environment where we can use shorthand, not have to start at the beginning and can share our fears, joys and journey with people who get it. The 'games' are a therapeutic and  important part for all the above reasons. Of course, everywhere parents meet, playgrounds and playgroups, similar games are played. It's a parent thing.

So, in light of this I wish all of you at the Adoption UK conference a smashing day and next year they should formalise the games and give out awards.

White noise

I was a cookie cutter kid and I just drifted through school the top end of average at all but English where I was strangely significantly below average. Or as I reflect now plain lazy and a slow writer. I had the wherewithal to manage the usual issues at comprehensive and was socially able enough to not be bullied or ostracised. The world of education has changed since the early 80’s. My parents were more than pleased that I didn’t follow in my brother’s footsteps. He had a flamboyant and quite remarkable distain for the requirements of the schooling system and infamously skipped one of his final exams to go and see the Rolling Stones. By comparison I was probably just white noise to most of my teachers, neither ‘nowt nor summat’.

This is not going to be the case for Flossy. She is many things but she is not white noise in a school environment especially a comprehensive school she definitely a Rolling Stones kind of pupil.

In relation to Flossy’s education my attitude stinks. She can get her GCSE’s anytime between now and the end of her life. But she only gets one pass at adolescence. She’s going into year 6 in September and that gives us a year to find a ‘safe’ comprehensive. Mrs C and I decided in May that Mrs C that we were going to give no consideration to the looming issue of school til we’d moved house. As we know you should never open a European land war on two fronts.

So, we’ve moved house and now is the time to start to think about the future schooling shenanigans. We want a safe place, Flossy needs a safe place. On a most fundamental level what can she learn in a scary place? Her feeder comprehensive, or Stalag Luft VII as I affectionately renamed it, is exclusively for ‘cookie cutter kids’* or so Ofsted concludes. Our preferred choice, a Catholic school Sarah and Gracie went to, is unfortunately in a ‘no go’ area for a range of reasons geographic/family reasons. So, we are plotting and scheming, consulting a range of professionals and casting our net further afield to locate more nurturing and sympathetic environment. We get ones pass at this and the increasingly punitive education system, or so it seems, needs to be negotiated with the least trauma possible for Flossy. We’ll travel if we have to and we’ll go where we have to and do what ever we have to do.

What do I aspire to for six years from now? To be the father of a child that feels included and welcome in society rather than excluded and alienated. Doesn’t seem like much but I’m taking nothing for granted.

*Clearly there’s no such thing.

Jigsaw

I have to say that my views on contact have shifted slowly from a position of indifference, duty and obedience to my Social Workers instructions to where I am now.

As a new adopter, and a young opinionated man, I was a little callous to the plight of my children’s birth family, after all weren’t they the reason that my children had to journey through the looked after system. They were the root cause of many of my children’s challenges and struggles and they had reaped what they’d sown. Perhaps I was a little insecure.

I dutifully applied the dogmatic method of contact and its rationale given to me by my Social Worker that birth parents were not a positive influence and we should be careful. We did, actually Mrs C did, what we were instructed to do as previously documented in my post on letterbox contact. A couple of bits of information came back through the system, very limited though.

Slowly my views changed.

As a member of an Adoption Panel I read a multitude of Child Protection Reports (CPR). The vast majority documented tragedy and abuse layered on the misfortune, vulnerability, tragedy and the historic abuse of birth parents. One piece of the jigsaw.

As a student I worked with a small charity that supported the families of children in the care system. I read and saw enough to make me ask hard some questions of myself and the system, to look closer and think harder. Another piece of the jigsaw in place.

Again as a student I spent six months in a children’s services office and I saw that what had seemed so black and white was never so. Always the stories were nuanced, impacted by services and finances, complex family dynamics and a range of factors often beyond the control of the protagonists. The jigsaw picture began to take form.

Almost every day on Twitter and Facebook I see the frustrations and questions of adopters to their Social Workers that get them re framed as problem families. I see Social Workers failing adopters; miscommunication by adopters; misinterpretation of behaviour and words leading to difficult questions being asked. I can’t help but think of birth families negotiating the Child Protection system, nowhere near as user friendly as the adoption system. The picture is almost clear in my mind now.

But, as I write this I feel hackles rising, and I agree many adults have committed unspeakable cruelty, neglect and worse acts on their children. That they lose contact and rights over their children is without question. I see many children and young people so traumatised that they cannot even consider contact with the perpetrators of their pain, but that is not the picture I see.

I see that families are complex but I cannot believe in a system that by default considers all fathers, mothers cousins, brothers, sisters, half brothers, half sisters, grandparents, uncles and aunts as harmful to children.

Of course real life is complex, messy and refuses to be boxed by generalisations. I hope that a system of the future could consider a range of models for contact with a range of family members. Not just the dogmatic letterbox once a year to parents. But a dynamic, flexible channel that serves the best interests of the children not just adoptive parents or Social Service teams. 

For us we are now trying to help rebuild positive links to my children’s family.

Thinking back now I would have fought for another way of reaching my children’s family, of finding men and women who may not have been able to care for my children and their family but loved them none the less. Men and women of peace and love.

Yesterday we had the last BBQ in our old house we sat with men and women of peace and laughed and cried and delicately and sensitively started to work out how to share the young adults that we both love.