A family update

Peter has had a great Summer and has just gone back to school into year 2. He has put up with a lot of change as one of us has been at the hospital with Russell most of the time, and has thrived with all the challenges that have come his way. He's getting stronger and fitter all the time - he now regularly runs 1km at our local running club, his confidence has increased: this Summer he's tried rock climbing for the first time and has climbed right to the top of the biggest climbing frame at any of our local playgrounds. He's taught himself to read, he's constantly experimenting and enquiring, his speech has improved, he loves imaginative play and he's developing a real sense of humour. He has a keen interest in butterflies so we've been providing him with resources, he can now identify 6 or 7 different species and will spend half an hour at a time sitting in the garden watching all the butterflies visit our buddleja. He's such a little character!

Russell has also started thriving since he became part of our family. When we first met him he was seven months old but like a newborn in terms of his development, except for his utter disinterest in whether anyone was with him or not. He's now 9 months old and about 3-4 months developmentally, but his whole demeanour is different - he's interested in us, wants our attention and is starting to demand it which is great. We've completed our training in his care and do everything for him whilst we're at the hospital. We're hoping to be able to take him on outings soon (accompanied by his ventilator and all his equipment!) and work up to day leave, overnight leave, and then hopefully he can be discharged home by November. We have a lot to prepare at home before he comes, and it will completely change our lives (again!), but we're looking forward to it. He's definitely worth it.

We were really pleased to receive an email from Belle's adoptive family recently, telling us how well she's doing, with some photos from their busy Summer. It's so lovely to see how happy they are and hear about their new life as a family of four, it sounds like Belle is keeping them on their toes and is making loads of progress!

We have more change on the way as we've decided to move house to give Russell a downstairs bedroom, Peter more space to play, and our dogs Lady and Nana a bigger garden to run around in! We're in the process of packing boxes, and since we're moving over county lines we're visiting new schools for Peter too. Our local authority accepts foster carers from neighbouring counties so we don't need to change fostering agencies thankfully.

It's a busy time but we're sure everything will settle down by Christmas... perhaps it will then be time for us to go back on the lists for a third placement!

Unexpected news

This morning we took down the photos of Alice from "her" bedroom door and have officially gone back on the duty boards as having a vacancy.

We were first approached to take Alice as a permanency placement in August last year. We agreed in principle, but despite lots of conversations back and forth between our social worker and hers, nothing ever happened. We found out in October that her current carer had decided to keep her permanently. In February 2015 we were approached again as Alice's carer had again decided she could no longer keep her, so they were looking for permanent carers. We spoke to her social worker, the team manager and Alice's OT came out to visit us, and we all agreed that we could provide an excellent home for her. Introductions were planned, and although we heard a rumour that her current carer had changed her mind, we were told the local authority were definitely moving her to us as the constant change of plans meant that the placement was no longer stable. We decorated her room, bought personalised bits and pieces, and purchased equipment we were told she needed but didn't have. We met Alice on the first day of introductions and fell in love with her. Permanent fostering is a step down from adoption but is similar in many ways - it's committing to a child until adulthood and beyond - they're part of your family. We had mentally welcomed Alice into our family, prepared Peter for her arrival and were looking forward to our future together watching them both grow up.

On the Monday of the week she was due to move in, we were told that her current carer had registered a surprise interest in adopting her so although the local authority didn't support their application, legally Alice cannot be moved until the assessment is complete. We don't know why this has happened. The carer had been given so many opportunities to express her interest to adopt, and she chose the first day of introductions after we had met Alice to do so.

The impact of this on our family has been huge as you can imagine, and we've had to grieve both for the little girl we'd been thinking of as our daughter, and for the life we won't have with her. We've lost our enthusiasm for permanent fostering for now as we'd emotionally invested so much into this match and are nervous about it happening again. This experience will change our approach to placements - there will be no assumptions and minimal preparations until the child walks through our door and the paperwork is signed.

Privacy

Fostering is definitely not a career to get into if you're a private person. The assessment process is long and intrusive, asking every detail about your life - including very personal matters such as past partners, health issues, IVF journey or miscarriages, reactions to traumatic events or bereavements, finances including any debts or bankruptcy, and if you're in a couple they will even cover your sex life. These are not matters anyone is used to discussing with someone they don't know well, and it can be very uncomfortable. Any skeletons in the closet will be uncovered and laid open, and although your social worker will be sensitive, it can be awkward at times.

You'd think this would be the end of the intrusion, but it's just the beginning!

With two children in placement and space for a third we barely have a week go by without a professional at our house. Our social worker Jane visits every 2-3 months, the children's social workers visit every 6 weeks, we have visits from health visitors, portage, dieticians, speech therapists, independent reviewing officers and court appointed guardians. Any of these can also bring a student at any time!

Contact is an intrusion on family life whether it occurs in the family home or not. We organise our lives around our children's contact sessions and are scrutinised by the birth parents and the contact supervisors on the clothes we send the children in, the car seat we've provided, the snacks we send for them, the information we choose to write in the contact book, even down to the brand of nappies and wipes.

We had a lady from portage come to see Belle recently. She arrived on a day when Peter was unwell and off school, and Peter and I were building a marble run together. The portage lady came into the living room, looked genuinely surprised, and said "oh it's lovely that you take an interest in the children." Excuse me? What on earth was she expecting?

Above all, there is the constant scrutiny and feeling of being judged by everyone - social workers, parents, health visitor, therapists, school, and even random people who know that the child is looked after. For some reason, when a child is looked after people feel that they have a right to comment on their upbringing as part of some sort of shared social responsibility. You wouldn't believe the questions and comments that are said to us with the children standing right there.

The good news is that local authorities have a policy that fostering shouldn't interfere with family life, as a stable family life is exactly what looked after children need. We are allowed to, and have, requested for meetings and contact sessions to be rearranged to fit in with family plans. We have a LAC review for Belle at our house this week and because it's half term, Peter will be present. We've warned everyone that we don't know how he will cope with having his living room full of strangers, and if it looks like it's having a negative effect on him we will end the meeting early and rearrange.

Having a lack of privacy is one thing for us as adults, but we still need to advocate for the children we care for and make sure that being in a fostering family and having our lives open for surveillance is not negatively affecting them.

You can pick your friends...

...but you can't pick your social worker!*

The longer we foster and the more social workers we meet, the more grateful we become of our wonderful supervising social worker Jane. We were really fortunate that Jane was also the social worker who assessed us, so she has known us since we first did our "Skills to Foster" training and has been alongside us right through our fostering journey. She does everything in her power to make sure we feel listened to and supported. She's patiently sat through many a rant and has always managed to stay sympathetic - quite an achievement! Of course she's limited by the policies and budgets of the local authority, but we understand that and are able to separate her support of us from the "no" she unfortunately has to say quite often.

For a short term placement we don't have much say in the matter - duty phones us, we discuss the child's needs and details, and we make a decision. We don't usually speak to or meet the child's social worker until the child is placed. It's a lottery - we definitely drew the short straw with Jack-Jack's social worker but have been extremely blessed with Belle's. She gets back to us quickly, is on the ball with organising things that Belle needs, and it's clear that she genuinely cares about her.

For long term/permanency placements we're able to be much more discerning as there are (should be!) multiple conversations and meetings with the child's social worker before the child is placed. This is a person that we will potentially have to work with for the next 15 years so it's important that we feel that they're going to do basic things like reply to messages quickly, work with us to provide things that the child needs, and that they really care about the child achieving and progressing. As we are planning to specialise as disability carers this is even more important as the child's needs are greater, their social worker is not a specialist in their condition, and children with additional needs typically stay with their carers until they're 24 rather than 18, so the relationship with the social worker can be even longer!

Some social workers are a bit like salesmen. We met with one recently about a potential permanent placement who has a disability. He stayed for nearly two hours, and by the end of this we didn't know any more about the child than the basic details we had found out over the phone from Jane. The conversation was peppered with "she's a lovely child", "she's beautiful inside and out", and "people are drawn to her". Any detailed questions we asked about her condition and how it affects her day to day were deflected - he clearly didn't know and hadn't taken the time to find out from her current carers. We've decided not to pursue the placement for several reasons, but this was definitely taken into consideration which is sad for the child as it's nothing to do with them and could get in the way of a great match with the right carer.

*Of course as a carer if you don't get on with your social worker you can request a different one, and if a child's social worker isn't doing their job correctly there is a complaints process that the child, parent or carer can follow.

Powerless

I'd just like to highlight how powerless and overlooked we feel as foster carers sometimes.

Although we live with them 24 hours a day and know them best, we don't have any parental responsibility for our foster children, this is shared between their parents and their social worker. We have what's known as delegated authority, so can make day to day decisions like when they have a haircut (although not a change of style), what they have for dinner, taking them to the doctor or deciding whether they can go on a school trip. We cannot sign consent forms for medical procedures, complete a passport application, change the child's name, take them out of the country without written permission, cancel a contact session with parents (even if the child is unwell - we have been appalled at the reluctance of duty social workers to cancel the contact of vomiting or infectious children) or authorise a change of school.

Peter's school is completely wrong for him and is not meeting his needs. We've known this since before the Summer and have put the relevant wheels in motion, yet we do not have the authority to remove him, nor to look at other schools to find a suitable alternative. The more we get to know him and understand the sources of his anxieties, the more we think that home education would be a good option for him, yet foster children are not allowed to be home educated.

Unfortunately as foster carers, our opinions are often not seen as having the same weight as either parents or professionals, we seem to be in limbo land in the middle. In a meeting with Jack-Jack's social worker, the health visitor was referring questions about his development to the social worker rather than us although the meeting was taking place in our living room with both of us present! We have experienced Peter's school phoning his social worker behind our backs to check up on us, and also assuming that as carers we wouldn't care about him and his achievements in the same way as parents. When he received an award for gymnastics, all the other parents of children in his group were phoned to attend the award assembly; we were not.

We understand that social workers have a full workload and although our foster children are a priority to us, they are one of many to their social worker, and if they are safe and the placement is not at risk of breaking down there are other children and other issues that must jump to the top of the list.

Peter won't be continuing at his school long term, but a decision that would have been made the same day by parents has already taken over 4 months since we first raised concerns, and may not be concluded before the end of the academic year. These frustrating elements of fostering certainly aren't explained during the assessment process!

Changing fostering agencies

We're thinking about moving house to be nearer to our extended family for support. As foster carers this can be a complicated business! We foster for our local authority, and their rules state that foster carers can live in our home county or any one of the neighbouring counties. This sounds good in principle, however whenever possible children must be placed within easy distance of their birth parents to make regular contact arrangements viable and to enable them to remain at their current school/nursery. In our local authority the majority of looked after children come from one end of the county and the majority of foster carers live at the other end which is already an issue. Would we get any placements if we moved out of county? It's a risk.

If we decide to change fostering agencies there are further complications - do we simply switch to the local authority of our new county or do we choose an independent fostering agency? There are positives and negatives to both, and there can be huge differences in finances, training and support even between two similar agencies.

Then there's the switching process which requires a new assessment and a new "Form F". Sometimes there is a fast tracking option which means we'd be assessed whilst still fostering for our current agency, and would just select a transfer date once approved. Some agencies don't allow this - they require a 6-8 month period without placements whilst the new assessment is completed, which of course would mean no income for us. Some agencies will negotiate foster carers being allowed to "keep" their current foster children when they transfer, and some won't. We've also considered using our experiences with Peter and Belle so far and becoming specialised carers in a disability fostering agency.

Of course we have Peter to consider too. We wouldn't consider him leaving us now so whatever we do the new agency will have to accept that!