Reflections on Foster Care

I have a little time to myself today while Angel is at access with his birth family. Well… I say that because he was picked up by a worker to be transported to our local Department of Human Services (DHS) office about 45 minutes away, but as his family hadn’t confirmed, they may not turn up so he’ll probably be home fairly soon.

His family have access with Angel three times a week in their own home, so this access at the DHS rooms rarely occurs. For a while he wasn’t collected unless they rang to confirm, but often they’d turn up anyway and he wouldn’t be there, so now he goes most weeks and is returned soon after – an hour and a half in the car, often with him screaming, for no good purpose. I’ve asked for this Thursday DHS access to be scrapped, but we’ll have to wait till it goes to court this week for any decision on that.

I have concerns for Angel’s situation. He is transported to supervised access three or four times a week. Sometimes he is picked up by one worker, supervised by another, then returned home by yet a third. Today, at least, the one worker was doing the whole access and both trips, and even informed me she’d be doing all of tomorrow’s visit too. That’s a plus.

I just wish she was a worker he already knew, but this is her first time with Angel. It didn’t stop him going to her readily, and I can see he is getting used to going to all these strangers without any anxiety. Yet just two months ago he was a typical securely attached eleven month old, preferring to be with mum and reluctant to go to the arms of unfamiliar people. He still looks out for me, and will come to me first for comfort and attention, but that readiness to go with other people worries me quite a bit.

DHS and my foster care agency are both aware of this less than ideal arrangement of supervised access for all their infants, not just for Angel. They’ve even held a few forums for carers and workers to discuss the issues and try to work out some more appropriate policies around infant supervised access. A shortage of case support workers means they cannot usually manage to assign the same worker to every access, and juggling so many children’s access visits generally results in some split shifts with a changeover that results in a second worker transporting home.

It’s good if the carer can also help with transporting, to reduce the number of strangers that the child has contact with. I now regularly pick up Angel from his birth family’s house one day a week. As well as easing the demand for workers it gives me a chance to interact with Angel’s Grandma, who will soon have custody.

The first week didn’t go so well and I came away feeling a little apprehensive about how I was to develop a rapport with her. But the next week we started talking and she suddenly realised I was Angel’s carer and became a lot more talkative. Obviously the week before she had thought I was yet another new worker doing transport, although she may have been puzzled to see Angel straining to get out of the stroller to get to me.

The last couple of weeks I have arrived about twenty minutes before it’s time for Angel to leave and Grandma and I sit on the couch, talking as best we can about Angel’s routine and playing little games with him. Her English is fairly limited and I can’t speak Vietnamese at all, but with body language and hand gestures we’re doing OK. Angel goes happily between the two of us, playing peekaboo games and being chased and tickled, and there’s lots of laughter, so I hope he is sensing a growing relationship between us that will give him a feeling of connection when he has to leave me to go live with her.

This week is Angel’s court date. It is almost certain he will return home but we don’t know yet how long the reunification plan will be. I hope the magistrate is not so insensitive as to send him home immediately as I don’t feel he’s ready yet. The visits home still overwhelm him and he very much needs me in his life to help him feel secure. A month or more to increase access times and introduce a few overnight visits will work in his favour and help him to build up a little resiliency to draw upon after he’s left our family altogether.

This is the most difficult stage in a placement – the child leaving our family. I don’t give it any emotional space yet, except to prepare Angel himself (as much as you can prepare an infant just past his first birthday) and the other children, Seth and Portia.

When he’s gone I will have plenty of alone time to hopefully see my way past his going, to deal with the family’s grief and prepare for the next child to join our home. I’ve done it before, but each child is different, and how I feel each time, is different. I just know it’s never easy.

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I was lucky enough to attend a one day seminar on therapeutic foster care recently, presented by Kate Cairns, a long time foster carer and social worker from the UK. What an engaging speaker she was.

Much of what she had to say focused on the effects that an unsatisfactory or disrupted attachment has on a baby’s development. None of this is new to me (I’m an avid attendee at seminars and conferences, and love to read parenting and fostering “text” books) but she had a very personal way of describing the process which really brought home to me how an attuned baby engages with his caregiver.

This engagement lays down patterns in the brain to ensure that they develop all those important life skills like how to form a trusting relationship with another person, how to self-regulate and to curb impulses and control rage, how to recognise and acknowledge their feelings and those of others.

Any foster carer can look at a child and see the behaviours that indicate “this child’s brain did not form the necessary templates in that first year or so of life”. The child very obviously demonstrates the consequences of this deficit: is unable to trust others or rely on them for help and comfort, needs to control everything and everyone around them, hasn’t learnt to check their impulses or control their rage, and shows no awareness of their own feelings and certainly is unable to show empathy for others.

I look at my own daughter Portia, who has been with us for all but the first year or so of her thirteen years of life and recognise that these behaviors still form a noticeable part of her personality. Her need to control members of her family, particularly her little brother and her dad, drive them both to distraction. She tells them what they should be doing, or how they should be doing it, with utter confidence in her own infallibility.

Luckily, she’s doesn’t get into a rage very often (although plenty of those hissy-fits that teenage girls seem particularly prone to) but she still has a great deal of difficulty curbing her impulses. Despite the guidance she’s had at home and school with the mantra “stop, think, do” we’ve yet to see that being consistently used although she’s not in trouble for scrapes, damage and breakages as much as a few years ago.

But I’m happy to say that Portia is learning how to recognise how others are feeling and to change her behaviour accordingly. At nine or ten she often had social problems at school and most of it stemmed from her own tactless comments and actions. It seemed at that stage that the only way to boost her shaky self-esteem was to put down everyone else and build up her own accomplishments with lots of bragging and showing off. I’d say she’s come a long way since then.

Certainly I now see a quieter and more genuine awareness of her own strengths. She doesn’t need to brag or compete as much as she used to, and when she makes a derogatory comment about someone she’ll catch herself and try to explain why it is she feels that way, which opens up the opportunity for a bit of a learning discussion on why people behave as they do.

When she came to us as a quiet, timid, undemanding, slow-developing one year old, I didn’t know about the effects of neglect and trauma as described by Daniel Hughes and Bruce Perry. I knew nothing about therapeutic fostering and reparenting, but I knew from parenting my own babies that this little girl and I needed to bond. So I did what came naturally, treating her as if she was a much younger baby, which wasn’t at all hard because she was a tiny little thing and nowhere near walking yet.

I wrapped her in a cosy bunny rug and snuggled her into my body as I rocked and sang to her (even though she seemed to never need soothing or to be settled to sleep). I carried her around in a baby pouch on my chest despite her legs dangling down past my waist and making it very difficult to go upstairs or climb up hills and rocks when bushwalking.

Eventually I transferred her to a hip sling which didn’t keep her quite so close but was a great deal more convenient. When giving her milk I always held the bottle and snuggled her on my lap. I would not let her hold the bottle, which she was used to. She needed to rely on me for that warm soothing milk, and trust me to provide it.

I managed to keep that routine going till she was over two, despite her little foster brother arriving in the meantime who also needed constant feeding and soothing. I played baby games with her at a time when most kids have moved on to more sophisticated pastimes. Lots of patty-cake and peek-a-boo games, riding horse on my crossed legs whilst facing me as I sang to her, silly rhymes that babies love, with tickling and blurting on bellies and pressing of noses. All attempts to regain what she’d missed in her first year of life: attunement with a caregiver.

Unfortunately for Portia and I this process of attachment was often interrupted over the next two years, mostly by failed attempts at reunification with her birth mum. This would sometime take Portia away from our family for days, weeks, and at one point three months. Also, as I mentioned before, baby Seth joined our family when Portia was not yet two and his withdrawal from alcohol in those early months of his life took a lot of my time and energy.  I guess that Portia, while getting plenty of care and attention, may not have been getting the intensive mothering that her early neglect demanded.

But of course attachment is an ongoing process. Over the years I made extra effort to pull her in closer to me. It wasn’t always easy as through her toddler and preschool years that the quiet, mousy little baby was replaced by a willful, controlling, angry child. I always felt she was distant and detached from me. Even her younger foster brother Seth, who was with us from five weeks of age, developed a very normal secure attachment to me.

It’s sad but true that the more horrible your child’s behaviour, the more you want to distance yourself from them, and the more frustrated and discouraged you feel. Unfortunately this is exactly when you need to be spending more intensive time with the child to bring them in closer again.

Over the years I noticed a cycle. Portia’s problem behaviours would escalate and I would be forever scolding her, feeling cross and annoyed with her and would crave distance, retreating from the intensity of the frustration and stress. Then I’d recognise where I was in the cycle and realise it was time for some very significant bonding.

A child psychologist who saw Portia when she was five for just a few visits, helped me to realise how, when I was overwhelmed by her behaviours, I would pull back emotionally from her and she gave me a few ideas on how to regain some closeness. She encouraged me to simply spend more time with Portia, doing stuff she enjoyed showing her she was worthy of my attention. Playing simple board games, colouring and making things together, singing and dancing to a music CD, cooking yummy sweet things to eat together, standing outside watching her ride her bike up and down the footpath, sharing stories and making up our own.

It amazed me how much time I could find to spend with her once I’d changed my attitude. I concentrated on softening my tone with her, making sure I met her advances with a smile instead of a frown, decreasing my scolding and nagging and replacing them with encouragement and joy in her accomplishments. It felt so good to begin liking her again, and that was made easier by the fact that her horrible behaviour quite noticeably decreased and she did become more likable by everyone else in the family too. Extra bonus – they weren’t always yelling at her and sending her away from them anymore either. Everyone was happier.

This relationship and behaviour cycle continued over the years. Even now I sometimes feel myself slipping and I have to remind myself to seek out Portia’s company and conversation a bit more – a bit more difficult now she’s a teen who naturally tends to spend more time alone in her room with her homework or reading or just listening to loud music. But it’s still worthwhile working on strengthening that still shaky attachment and the rewards are gleaned by seeing a corresponding shift in her behaviour and attitude.

Nowadays the activities are a little different. Watching her play basketball or skate or dive with lots of encouraging words and gestures, inviting her to help me with cooking, or asking her to make her famous choc fudge cake for afternoon tea. It’s sharing funny things on TV or YouTube or reading an article out loud from a newspaper that I know she’ll be interested in (or listening to something she wants to read out, even though it’s not really that interesting to me) or telling her something funny that I think she’ll appreciate. Sometimes it’s just showing her that I am keeping her in mind, that she is important to me.

I sometimes wonder when Portia’s behaviour reverts a little to that impulsive, oppositional, tantrum throwing four year old that she was, could it have been different? Maybe if we’d managed to do more, known better or tried a little harder, focused just on her and not continued fostering (but then we wouldn’t have our sweet son Seth). Or should we just look at the long way she’s come and promise ourselves to never let up or give in, but keep working hard to make sure this kid stays connected to family and community, feels strong and worthy, has focus in her life (thank goodness for all those sports she loves) and do our best to get her through the teenage years unscathed, to successful adulthood.

Well, that’s certainly an outcome worth a bit of hard work!

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In my last post I talked about our difficulties in getting a diagnosis for Seth.

In Australia there is no real recognition of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). We have no diagnostic teams who understand the problem. We have to flounder around, making appointments here and there for hearing tests, sight tests, blood tests, genetics consultations, IQ tests… and at the end of it all, months after starting, we were no closer to understanding the big picture.

Until a lucky break.

An organisation in my home city, ARBIAS, who deal with adults suffering brain injury from the effects of drug and alcohol use, realised that children suffered this problem too and launched the first Australian clinic to look at FASD. No team approach, just one neuropsych assessment, but I had my referral in within days of finding out about the clinic, and Seth was booked in for mid December. I was ecstatic, not just for us but for all those other foster families I knew who suspected their kids were alcohol effected.

Seth was reluctant to submit to yet another assessment, but I explained to him that this time we would be looking at his brain and how it works, and even how it doesn’t always work properly, and that with this information we’d be better able to know the best ways for him to learn. At this point in time, having given up on the home schooling, he had been attending a small private community school half an hour from our home with small classes (only ten in his class) and individual work programs, and he seemed quite settled and happy. He had just the day before completed grade five, and after the long summer break, would enter his final year of primary school.

It was a long day for Seth, who is easily fatigued by cognitive activities, but my discussion with the neoropsychologist at the end of the day left me optimistic that this time Seth’s real problem (brain damage from fetal alcohol) was being acknowledged and the final report would be a major stepping stone to acquiring the services he would need to be educated to the best of his ability over the forthcoming years.

I was maybe a bit too optimistic, but a month later I finally did get that report, and as I mentioned, it did tell me what I’ve been waiting to know. What is more the detailed results of all the testing gave us an accurate profile of Seth’s cognitive abilities, including attention and memory, executive and adaptive functioning, auditory and visual reasoning, language comprehension, reading and maths levels. I was confident as I read the report (although it occasionally brought tears to my eyes as I realised the extent of damage my little boy’s brain had suffered) that it would be of great assistance to his teacher in the school year ahead.

What was a disappointment was the news that the organisation, after barely six months, was closing the FASD clinic. Apparently they’d overreached themselves, and could not actually afford to provide these services to children. Although we were one of the lucky families to receive a diagnosis, it meant there were no further services offered, as had previously been promised. We were on our own again.

So here we are with a seven page assessment outlining Seth’s neuropsychological abilities and impairments.  I need to work harder at being an advocate for Seth, but I’m not sure how to go about it. I feel too emotional and passionate sometimes to present as cool and logical. I need someone else to be able to come to the school and talk on Seth’s behalf about his disability. Unable to find anyone knowledgeable about FASD except the neoropsychologist who did the original assessment and with whom I sometimes have phone and email contact, I am ringing around organisations that provide services for children with acquired brain injuries and I’m hopeful they may have some services to offer Seth. I have also contacted an educational psychologist who seems sympathetic to Seth’s needs and claims some understanding of FAS, and she is willing to come work with the school (but that will be at quite some cost to us).

I can’t be the first Aussie mum to have a child with a FASD but I feel like it. I know of no other child with a diagnosis (but have my suspicions of a few children in foster care who show quite definite symptoms). I’m hoping someone might read my blog (or a few someones) and maybe one day I can get a support group going. The only support organisation I’m aware of in Australia is NOFASARD. That’s in another state (South Australia), but at least they provide some information, and are a lobby group for families living with FASD in Australia. Anyone else in this country who suspects their child has fetal alcohol damage would find this a good starting point for information.

For now I need to look at my son and determine his immediate needs and how we can meet them.

Of course, it’s not all about FASD, but when it comes to his school experience somehow it always comes back to concerns about his behaviours and learning difficulties. At home it’s easier just to see the sweet and active boy he is. He loves riding his bike, learning tricks on his skateboard and mastering his inline skates (actually his big sister’s but I’m hoping she’s actually passed them on to him). He is delightful with his little foster brother (who he’ll so miss when he has to leave our family) and is totally obsessed with the computer game RuneScape which he loves to play on line with Portia and their friends. He is an interesting conversationalist, often branching off on some illogical but fascinating tangents, and makes for good company when he has to stay home from school (which happens quite regularly) and we’re forced to spend the day together.

People tell us how lucky it was for him to be placed in our family all those years ago, but despite the hard work and heart ache, he’s a joy and we’re the lucky ones.

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Just a couple of months ago I received the neuropsychologist’s report from the assessment she did on eleven year old Seth late last year.

Six pages into the report which detailed the assorted cognitive areas she tested I read the words I’ve been expecting for years….

Seth’s profile can be most explained by alcohol related neurodevelopmental disorder [ARND]….

Apparently a definitive diagnosis cannot be given without confirmation of maternal substance abuse. Although there is no doubt his mother drank heavily throughout the pregnancy, we don’t have written evidence of this.

But here at last is an explanation for all the difficulties Seth has experienced throughout his school years and hopefully I can now say to teachers and any others who have contact with my son, “this child has fetal alcohol brain damage, this is how it has effected him, and this is what you need to do to ensure he has the best opportunity to learn” (and hope they will listen to me).

When Seth entered our lives barely six weeks old and less than seven pounds, despite being born pretty close to full term, we had no idea of the distress and joy this little boy would bring to our family. It started as a one week voluntary placement by parents both suffering from alcohol dependency who were unable to deal with the constant crying of their baby suffering from alcohol withdrawal. One week turned to two, then Human Services became involved as the parents weren’t attending access visits or responding to the social worker’s calls. Weeks turned to months and Seth saw his family only twice after entering care. They eventually faded out of his life altogether. I have had some written correspondence with his mother. I think she is glad her little boy is in a safe, loving home away from the alcoholism and domestic violence that would otherwise have been his experience.

I was the one to take baby Seth to the Children’s Hospital to test for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). The geneticist who performed the examination reported that although he didn’t feel that Seth had the facial appearance consistent with FAS, his small size and the history of alcohol exposure were very suggestive of it. Six months later a pediatrician’s report stated that Seth was

at moderate to high risk of having some difficulties associated with FAS/E [Fetal Alcohol Syndrome/Effects].

By this stage Seth’s early distress and dysregulation had abated and he was now a sweet, happy almost one year old who had a special spot in our family. We applied for Permanent Care so he could remain in our family forever. Whatever the future brought, we would be there for him.

During his infancy and preschool years Seth demonstrated timely development in most areas with a few problems around speech and, later, fine motor control. As we accessed services to help him in these areas I continually questioned the possibility of fetal alcohol effects, but the professionals did not seem to know their stuff too well. Replies were usually like “but he doesn’t have the FAS look” or “He’s bright enough, he has a normal IQ” and at age four and a half he did fall within the average cognitive range when tested with the WPPSI-R (a common preschool IQ test). We continued to attend to individual difficulties as they arose.

Preschool and the early years of primary school went along smoothly enough. Seth was always a little behind his peers in any academic areas, but he was a sweet responsive boy who caused no trouble in school so he didn’t attract attention. I noticed he was harder to engage in reading and word games, number puzzles and suchlike than the older kids had been. But he was an active boy who loved bike riding and climbing and performing handstands and cartwheels along the footpath, so his resistance to anything requiring brain power just seemed part of his personality.

By the time he was eight or nine however, we started to notice some puzzling aspects about Seth. Not only was he not learning to tell the time, he didn’t even seem very aware of the time throughout the day, unsure whether it had been lunchtime yet, or when it was time to come inside at the end of the day. Even the seasons and months of the year seemed to baffle him. Time spent on simple maths facts and times tables while walking to school or driving in the car were repeated day after day, with no sense of him getting it. What is more he was less cooperative about spending time on these activities and sought ways to avoid them. At school his teacher found him reluctant to try new activities, hard to motivate and hard to keep on task.

We organised for an educational assessment to be done when Seth was nine and a half and at the end of third grade. It indicated his IQ was in the low average range and that he had some specific learning difficulties in reading and spelling with poor visual memory and weak processing speed. The report concluded with a number of recommendations and suggested classroom strategies which I was able to take back to the teacher. Over the following school year some individual intervention in phonic based reading was provided at school and at home I put him through a similar phoneme based program called Phono-graphix. We did see a little improvement but by the end of grade four Seth had slipped even further behind his peers in all academic areas.

At this point I was really starting to feel concerned for my little boy, now ten and a half years old. Not just because he was doing poorly academically, but I could see his self esteem falling too, and he was often frustrated and confused in the classroom. Some behaviour problems were also starting to emerge in that Seth was becoming a little defiant at school and would sometimes run off from teachers when they were disciplining him. I had a few discussions with the Principal but felt that the school was not able to meet his needs. But then I wasn’t really sure what his needs were.

As Seth started fifth grade I felt trepidation for the coming year. He seemed unsettled, complained about not being able to do the work, told me he was dumber than the other kids and chose to work at home with me regularly (over the years we had often had the occasional ‘home schooling’ day to give him a bit of a break from the daily grind of school) . After an interview with his teacher, who had taught him the previous two years and was really concerned for how difficult he was finding school and how much he was dragging behind his peers, I made the decision to withdraw him from school for a while to try full time home schooling, and pursue a diagnosis of a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) in the hope of finding some answers to the difficulties he was experiencing.

That was one year ago. Home schooling was not completely successful. Seth changed his mind so many times. He would remember the fun times, break times out in the playground with his friends, socialising in class, friends that helped him with his work and he’d forget how discouraged and frustrated he’d been.

Sometimes he would beg me to let him go back to school. He would nag and nag all day, completely unable to focus on any activity, fall apart in my arms, but I knew returning to the state school was not the answer. Their overworked teachers, large classes of 28 kids and lack of interventionist resources meant they could not meet Seth’s needs. If he let me, I knew we could be successful with home schooling, but he resisted most days. He was difficult to motivate, needed my constant attention to get a task completed, refused to get involved with local home schooling groups and hated all the assessments the paediatrician was putting him through in our attempt to gain a diagnosis.

We were starting to doubt whether this was going to lead us anywhere but we stumbled upon a service that we hoped might give us the answers we were looking for. I’ll talk about this more in my next post.

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So Angel wasn’t sent home at a moment’s notice – lucky, as I hadn’t packed all his clothes and toys.

In my heart I couldn’t believe the Magistrate would really do that to this little boy; just rip him from the family he knows and loves, to return to a Grandma who has become almost a stranger having barely seen him each month. He’s been given the one thing needed if this reunification attempt is not to traumatise him – time. We are now speaking in months. The next court case is scheduled for early June.

In the meantime regular, more frequent access has been court-ordered for Grandma. Next week she has two visits, each of two hours, three visits the following week, then increasing to four the week after that. One a week will be held at DHS and I have been invited to attend a part of that, which I willcertainly do. It can only help Angel to see me with Grandma, and I want to impart a little of his routine and his needs to her if I can. The other access visits will be at her place which will enable Angel to become familiar with the home he left almost nine months ago and the other members of the family. This includes his mum and two older sibs so there are many people to get used to again.

At the end of four weeks the transition will be reviewed to make sure Grandma is abiding by the guidelines and demonstrating her commitment to her grandson. I guess if she doesn’t seem to be complying the plan for reunification will be reassessed. I hope she comes through with flying colours. I need her to, to be able to believe that going home is in Angel’s best interests.

All kids belong with their family, and if that family doesn’t meet my ideals of the very best family for that child, who am I to judge? I did have a little dream, when Angel’s birth family moved off the scene for a bit, of him moving on to a loving “permanent care family”. Whenever he was at his most charming and cute (and he’s very good at that) I imagined how delighted his new mum and dad would be adding him to their family. I’ve participated in transitions to adoptive and permanent families in the past.  Although it’s always difficult farewelling a child who’s been yours for so long, the outcomes for both the child and families have always been excellent, and I look back at all of them very positively.

Angel returning home means a shift in my projective thoughts. I can do that (well I hardly have a choice do I; I’m the foster mum). Not knowing the family at all makes it more difficult, so I’ll be pushing for more contact over the next month, and hope I can develop some rapport with Grandma, even though we don’t speak the same language.

I don’t anticipate having contact with the family after reunification (as I still do with one little girl who left my care five years ago, but still regularly stays with us, and is truly still my little girl) but I would like to have a positive image of Angel within his home and family to help me cope with him going.

Angel’s family have been given their chance. I’m on the sidelines watching, hoping they do a good job of it, so my heart is easier when the day finally comes when I have to hand my sweet little boy back to them.

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Or should I say, insufficient plans for Angel’s reunification with his birth family.

There is a strong possibility that Angel will be returned to his grandmother’s custody this week. At present she is only seeing him every few weeks for a one hour supervised access along with other family members. With the possibility of him returning to her care it was suggested to her that access be arranged on a daily basis leading up to the court case, so if the decision is made to send him home at least she will be a little more familiar to him. But she refused, on the basis that she cared for him his first three months, has been seeing him since, and knows him. But how can he know her?

For the last eight and a half months Angel has been in my care and, as would be expected, has formed a strong attachment with me. For the last few months the feeling at his care plan meetings was that there was a strong likelihood he would not be moving back to family and that we should be pushing for permanency plans to be made. His birth mum showed no signs of overcoming her dependency, and Angel’s grandmother was not wanting custody of the baby, being more than busy enough with his older siblings. Neither were taking full advantage of the scheduled twice weekly access visits; in fact sometimes four or five weeks went by between visits. Our concerns were to move Angel’s case plan from family reunification to Permanent Care, but each time it went to Court the outcome was yet another three week Interim Accommodation Order, even though D.H.S. (Department of Human Services) were pushing for a Custody Order.

Until just two weeks ago when the Magistrate refused to roll over the Interim Accommodation Order, claiming that Angel should not be in foster care as there was no significant risk to him at home. The Magistrate directed that we send him home that day. Fortunately the D.H.S. worker managed to convince her that it wasn’t in Angel’s best interests to be returned home with no transition, having not even seen Grandma for almost two months, so we were granted till the next scheduled Court hearing to make plans for his reunification.

D.H.S. workers are trying to make these plans believing if we end up with the same Magistrate she’ll send Angel home the very same day. But Grandma obviously doesn’t have a great understanding of how attachment works (most people don’t) and doesn’t seem keen to learn. What is more she has never worked well with D.H.S. workers so they haven’t had much chance to explain to her how important it is for Angel to have time to begin attaching to her while he’s still secure in his placement with me. Being of a different culture and language with little understanding of English doesn’t help communication efforts either.

I had planned to attend some of those extra access visits too so Angel could see me interacting with Grandma, maybe talking and laughing with her, the two of us playing with him together, so the little guy could see that I approved of and liked Grandma. Then when he found himself living with her, and no sign of me anywhere, he’d hopefully feel ok to love her, because he somehow remembered the two of us together in a positive way.

Now those plans have to be set aside.

Who’s to say Grandma will bother to come to any access now until the Court hearing. Meanwhile I just keep on caring for Angel, giving him all the love he needs, hoping that the last eight months in our care has built up his resilience to help him through this difficult time ahead for him.

I can hardly blame the Grandmother – she just wants her grandson back – but I hope the Court’s guiding principle of acting “in the best interests of the child” win out and we can make a gentle transition for him back to his family. I can’t make myself feel ok about Angel returning home, but I would at least like the opportunity to make such a big change for him happen the best way it can.

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With my oldest son’s birthday recently, and oldest daughter’s just a few days later, I tried to organise a time we could all get together to celebrate and share a cake. With three grown up children all leading busy social lives it wasn’t that easy, but we settled on Sunday brunch, giving everyone the opportunity to spend the afternoon as they pleased.

Portia wanted to make her famous all-time favourite gooey chocolate cake, but I suggested she bake a cinnamon tea cake instead, more suitable to finish off a morning meal. She’s really becoming great at this cake-baking! The rest was easy – hubby cooked sausages, bacon, onions and mushrooms on the barbecue, whilst I did grilled tomatoes and poached eggs in the kitchen, and grabbed an apprentice to make lots of toast. While all that was under way we ate warm ham and cheese croissants with orange juice for an appetiser. Breakfast was enjoyed by all, and there was plenty of time afterwards to just hang out together.

When we manage to have all the kids (and partners) together for a meal like this, it really reminds me how great it is being a mum to kids of all ages. Sometimes I get pretty bogged down in Portia’s and Seth’s needs and issues and the constancy of caring for a baby, so it’s a nice change to have all the big kids around the kitchen table, chatting about their jobs and studies, homes, pets, hobbies and holidays, comparing movies and books, and catching up on family gossip. I look at these adult children of ours and see how happy they are in their lives, how close they are to each other, how much we all enjoy each other’s company, and I feel amazingly fortunate.

I recall that is why I started fostering in the first place, sixteen years ago – to share my family’s good fortune.

My older kids have taken on different roles with the young foster kids who have been in our family. Portia and Seth are lucky to have three older siblings (and now their partners too) as mentors and positive role models. I watch now as the two of them come and go, not prepared to sit all morning chatting like the adults of the family, but pausing on their way through the kitchen to tell a big brother or sister the latest news of school or basketball, scrapes or friendships. Little Angel crawls about at everyone’s feet, but every few moments someone picks him up for a bit of a play, or to share a tidbit with him. Seth grabs him to chuck him in the air and makes him chortle gleefully.

I’ve been a mum now for twenty-seven years and fostering for more than half that time. There are no happier times for me than having all the family around. I am a lucky woman.

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Portia was suspended from school for the day.

Not a “stay at home” suspension, but a “stay in the office and work alone” suspension. As the teacher explained to me on the phone, even though her behaviour was not acceptable and had to be followed up with consequences, her intentions had been honourable.

“So why did you punch that boy?” I asked her later that evening when we were discussing the issue. Well, apparently that boy had been teasing one of her friends all day, and Portia had warned him that if he continued, she’d punch him. He did, so she did! This daughter of mine has principles.

We had the usual discussion (all parents of impulsive kids know the one I mean) reiterating the “violence solves nothing” and “how do we resolve conflict in our family?” but Portia showed no noticeable remorse. “Like, he wasn’t even hurt”, she said.

At thirteen Portia weighs in under 40 kgs and isn’t quite 150 cms tall, and I’m not sure she’d know how to throw a punch so she’s probably right. I think she felt like a champion of the underdog and an in-school detention was well worth the glory.

The image left in my mind after our discussion – of Portia all fired up with flashing eyes and gritted teeth, aiming a punch at the side of this kid’s head – left me a little dismayed but all things considered I’m not sure I should be too worried.

In over eight years of schooling, Portia has never been suspended before. I must say, in all their school years, none of my three older children were either, but then life was pretty secure and easy for them. Portia, on the other hand had a rocky start to life.

She spent the first twelve months of babyhood with her intellectually disabled birth mum who dressed her baby girl in pretty pink dresses, kept her clean, warm and safe by leaving her in her cot all day, but had no idea of the essential interactions between mother and baby to create a warm and secure attachment.

When Portia came into our care a few days after her first birthday she was a placid, quiet little baby who would just sit on the floor in a pile of toys never saying boo, or lay quietly in her cot, not bothering to sit up till someone lifted her out.

The next two years were unpredictable and disruptive for Portia. She was in and out of care for many months as her birth mum was given numerous opportunities to learn to look after her baby. Portia went to and fro between her mum’s home and ours, never seeming to care who she was with or who was taking her.

She appeared to have no attachment to her own mum, and little chance to attach to me as she was tossed back and forth in the attempt to give her birth mum every chance at reunification. Access was four times a week when she was actually living with us. Other times she spent the week with her mum, but in childcare every week day and weekends in our home.

Her birth mum was invited to spend the days at the childcare centre, learning how to interact with Portia, but usually just visited for an hour or so, sitting on a chair to watch her little girl play. She loved her daughter dearly but seemed incapable of effective parenting.

It didn’t stop the courts trying, however.

The two of them also had a number of stays in assorted family units in an attempt to teach mum to parent. We always stayed available for Portia to come back to us – she’d had a number of respite or emergency placements in her first year of life. We wanted her to have as much stability as was possible, even with all the to-ing and fro-ing. At age two and a half, one final gigantic effort was made. Despite mine and the foster agency’s protests, Portia left our home for three months to live in a family unit where it was hoped her mum could finally learn to parent her adequately enough to have her back home.

It didn’t work. At the end of three months Portia returned to our home, and never left again ( although it was almost another three years before guardianship was bestowed on us). She returned to us angry, defiant, insecure, frustrated and with the ability to throw our family into chaos.

She screamed at the big kids, got into their stuff and lost or broke things, interfered with their games and annoyed their friends. Her frequent meltdowns spoiled family outings and made her older siblings cringe with embarrassment. She tyrannised one year old Seth, pushing and hitting him when she thought they were alone, then patting him in a sisterly fashion when I arrived, explaining sympathetically how he’d fallen over (eventually he learnt to talk and put an end to that clever little act).

Despite all this, when the time came to call a family meeting to discuss the possibility of four year old Portia remaining permanently with us, it was unanimously agreed that, even though she was a little demon, her place was in our home and in our family. Even eleven year old Emily, who seemed to be the one who was most intolerant of Portia’s antics, didn’t hesitate to answer “Of course we should” when we asked the question.

The following years were never easy. Building up an attachment with this prickly child was an all consuming effort. It didn’t come naturally, and we sought professional help on a few occasions in an effort to ease the burden just a little.

At one stage she was diagnosed with ODD and attachment difficulties, and then a little later with ADHD and possible Tourette’s. We educated ourselves, managed behaviours as they arose, advocated for her at school, tried to think of creative ways to discipline her: to stop her stealing money, to stop her lying, to stop her provoking her little brother, to get her to do her homework. We encouraged her sports, her music, her friendships; gave her opportunities to feel good about herself. Sometimes we despaired, we often felt weary… but we always felt joy in her amazing energy and enthusiasm for everything she did.

After years of liaising with the schools on how to manage Portia’s behaviour (appropriate consequences and achievable reward systems usually worked) and receiving numerous phone calls that often began “We had a bit of trouble with Portia today….” I was actually a little surprised to get that call from school this week. It has been many months since we’ve had any complaints and what I’ve been hearing from the teachers has been really positive. In fact I’ve really been pleased with Portia’s progress over the past six months, even during the long summer holidays. After years of struggle and occasional despair, I feel as if maybe we’ve reached still waters and I’m enjoying the present calm.

Portia’s suspension has come and gone. She told me she actually enjoyed the day, and got up to date with her homework and started on her science project. So many kids I know are continually suspended from school (mostly kids like mine who were or still are in foster care).

Should I be worried that this might just be the first of many for Portia as she enters stormy adolescence? I don’t feel anxious. In fact, if anything, it’s made me reflect on the great improvements we’ve seen this past year that friends and family have commented on too.

Portia seems more thoughtful and considered in her actions, less impulsive than she used to be, and more appropriate too. She’s more helpful and reliable and even a bit more organised (she’ll always have a messy room, I guess) and occasionally I feel like we’re having a real conversation – that she’s not just talking over the top of me.

And what’s nice is that she’s recognising these changes in herself, and appears to enjoy the calmer, more mature girl that she’s becoming. Of course she’s still the active, sporty, tomboyish kid she’s always been, still refusing to wear a dress (even to her sister’s engagement party), always sticking her nose in everyone else’s business, and always knows best (she is a teenager after all) but who of us is perfect?

If she just keeps her fists to herself, I reckon I’d be pretty happy.

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I looked after a friend’s foster baby over the weekend.

Liam is around four months old and quite a calm, responsive baby. He fed well every three hours, and slept ten hours at night. Between times he was happy to be held or to play on the floor or in his reclining chair with toys hanging about him.

So that was fine, but juggling his quite simple needs with those of Angel, now almost ten months old, was quite difficult. Sometimes I had to leave one discontent whilst tending to the other and that doesn’t fit my philosophy of baby rearing.

Luckily, being the weekend, at least one other person was around at all times, either hubby or one of the kids. I was constantly calling upon someone to hold/ play with /soothe a baby, whilst I bathed/ fed/ dressed/ changed the other.

For some blissful moments they were both awake and happy giving me time to sit on the floor and just play with them – one on each side of me so Angel wouldn’t sit on or grab the face of his smaller friend.

They didn’t share any daytime naps, but at least they both went to bed around eight and I had a few quiet hours with the rest of the family before Angel woke. He’s not a great sleeper and a runny nose and persistent cough is waking him even more at the moment ( while Liam managed his ten hour stretch!).

Although little Liam was quite delightful all weekend, it was a relief when his foster mum picked him up around six. The rest of us headed out to tea at my son Ben’s place (luckily, as I’m not sure I’d have found time to cook) where I relaxed with just one baby to watch, feed, change and settle.

Only two other times in my fostering career have I had two babies at once. In the first case they were eleven month old twins, a two week emergency placement. They were relatively easy. Being older babies, and maybe accustomed to waiting for each other, they were happy to play and interact with each other during the feeding and dressing times and would snuggle up against me, one each side, to take a bottle.

On the other hand an overlap of placements a few years ago gave me a two month old, an eight month old and a toddler – and none of them sleeping well at night. I constantly felt one of those babies was missing out, and never felt the contentment I experience when parenting just one baby.

It’s experiences like this that prevent me ever accepting two babies at the one time on a long term basis, but others do.

With a scarcity of available carers desperate workers will often ring an experienced foster mum and ask her to take a second baby. It may initially be short term, but we all know how that pans out. I don’t doubt these babies are adequately cared for. A foster mum will put home and family on hold to make sure she meets the needs of the littlest ones she’s caring for, but to whose detriment?

We need to remember that all babies coming into care have suffered trauma. Maybe from a drug or alcohol effected pregnancy, possibly neglect within the birth family, even physical abuse. If nothing else the child has suffered trauma by being removed from a parent.

So when these babies come into care they need more holding, more soothing, more immediate attention to their needs than a secure, untraumatised baby. Placing two or more babies together makes this difficult for a carer to achieve. But where else do these babies go?

More available carers would certainly help. I know in Victoria, the state in which I live, foster carer numbers are gradually decreasing. On one particular day in 2006 there were 985 carers actively providing placements for 1,5o9 children, and it’s estimated a further 900 new carers are required to allow for good matching of new children coming into care.

Our own agency is struggling at present when a new placement comes in as there are so many factors involved in making a good match. They would like to have a number of families to choose from suited to the age, gender, length of placement and behaviours of the child; not just relying on “who has a spare bed?”

I am involved with a state wide initiative that is looking at the equally important issues of recruiting and retaining foster carers. One of the conclusions I’ve drawn from my involvement is that lots of little projects are as effective as one big one, and easier for agencies to implement.

Ideas like:

• Billboards in strategic places;
• Regular media coverage to promote foster care as a worthwhile occupation;
• Personal talks by carers to take the information to work places, clubs, schools, churches;
• websites that make it easy for possible recruits to get all the information they need, quickly;
• Targeting specific groups like particular cultures or the Gay community.

A guest speaker from a marketing organisation being employed to help us promote foster care, stated that only around 6% of the population are ever likely to consider fostering. Somehow we need a profile of that small group so we can specifically target each and every one, and not waste time and energy on the other uninterested 94%.

Maybe more research into why people foster, and why they continue when others drop out, will assist us. Apparently that is what this organisation intends to do, so I’ll be interested in the results.

In the meantime, we also have to retain the carers we have for more than the average two to five years. I personally think that the new models of foster care that I’ve seen introduced recently will help. They are giving carers what we’ve asked for:

• Partnership in a professional team caring for the child.
• Being acknowledged and respected for our role in the child’s life.
• Involvement in case management, including decision making when possible.
• Good communication between all parties.
• Reasonable reimbursements.

I think if you add peer support to this list, plus agency support and legal assistance when a family has an allegation made against them, then you’re a fair way towards ensuring that you don’t lose any committed carers for avoidable reasons.

Personally, I began fostering sixteen years ago when my youngest child started school, with the intention of giving it a go whilst my own children were still young and I was a mum at home. If I’m busy parenting three, I thought, why not four or five?

I figured once they were older and more independent I would be ready to move on too, maybe to further study or working. Well, they grew up but I didn’t move on. I think fostering has become my calling.

Seth and Portia still need very active parenting and I’m in the enviable position of being able to stay at home, so fitting an extra young child or two into our family is quite manageable – and so very rewarding. Despite all the everyday annoyances and frustrations and the tedious chores that go with being at home, I love the actual time spent interacting and caring for the kids, and I just know there is nothing more worthwhile that I would want to be doing.

While I’m in such a positive mood I think I’d better go recruit those 900 odd extra carers we need so I’m never asked to take two babies at a time!

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Seven year old Jaimee spent the weekend with us, as she does each month. I first met this little girl when she was an active and demanding toddler having occasional foster care with a friend of mine. When, due to personal circumstances, Jaimee required full-time care, my friend offered to provide that even though she already had a pretty full house. She had developed a supportive relationship with Jaimee’s single mum and really wanted to help this little family stay together.

Unfortunately, Jaimee’s aggressive behaviour caused great difficulties with the placement, especially as there was a younger child in the family who was constantly being bullied by this tiny, angry two year old. A decision was made to move her but, as so often happens, a suitable family in the area wasn’t readily available. Our family happened to be between placements – we had only taken babies in the previous few years. This seemed to suit the new dynamics of our family as Portia and Seth settled into being in their ‘forever’ family. As they were now aged nine and seven, I thought a nearly three year old could suit us. But I was wrong.

Over the next six months our family lived with almost constant chaos. Little Jaimee had significant emotional problems. Her rigidity and defiance, her frequent melt downs with shrill screaming , hitting and kicking meant she was constantly the centre of my attention and energy. Portia responded to the situation by regressing to her own “toddler” behaviour, and little Seth, who needed his environment to be calm and predictable, responded with tears and anger at all these people disturbing his peace. The six weeks of the summer school holidays were particularly difficult to manage, despite seeing some progress in Jaimee’s behaviour, as I tried to parent her with strategies gleaned from my training in therapeutic foster care. Our worker, although very supportive, agreed with our family that it might be better that three year old Jaimee be placed with a new family. In time (we didn’t hurry the process) a new but keen foster family with no other children at home accepted little Jaimee, and four years later she is doing really well in her long-term foster home.

We felt quite guilty at having to disrupt a placement, as foster carers often do. However, seeing Jaimee gradually adjust to her new home and build up an attachment with her new Mum eased my conscious somewhat. The relief felt by all the family when Jaimee left and the work I could put in with Portia and Seth to “mend the bridges” reinforced the rightness of disrupting this placement. But I felt an ongoing commitment to little Jaimee, and we have continued to have her back with us for regular respite (even though we don’t usually do respite foster care).

The advantages are felt by everyone. This little girl has a second family with whom she feels comfortable. A weekend is manageable. With a lot of hard work, and knowing we only have to sustain our efforts for 48 hours, the family stays relatively calm. This has become significantly easier as Jaimee has responded to a stable long term family and supportive therapeutic care from a number of professionals (she was put into an intense fostering program a few years ago) and her behaviours have become so much easier to manage. We have gained a lot of satisfaction from seeing this little girl grow and settle, and from being important in her life. We provide a stimulating family environment with slightly older and younger children to interact with, contrasting to her own home, where she is the only child. I am proud of Portia and Seth who, despite sometimes groaning when I announce it is our turn to have Jaimee, go out of their way to play with her and accommodate her in their busy weekends. And I know Jaimee’s foster parents appreciate the time they have ‘child-free’ knowing their little girl is happy and secure in one of her other families (my friend who first had Jaimee in her care, also offers regular respite). In fact, I would go so far as to state that regular respite is essential for the continuing success of Jaimee’s long term placement.

Most importantly, for Jaimee, it means that the three separate placements in foster care that she has had are still all connected, as with an extended family. Her life story book has no photos of strangers, of placements forgotten. Even if she doesn’t really remember living in our home for that six months during which she turned three , she feels like she does, because the photos of that time are filled with familiar people, pets and places – all of whom she still sees regularly. If for no other reason we will continue to have Jaimee for regular respite, so she retains that sense of continuity, and so that as she grows to adulthood, she still has someone of whom she can ask “… what was I like when I was just two years old?” and we will happily tell her.

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