Summer.

Summer this year was a very interesting time.

Historically everyone says we are on holiday but taking children often with complex needs to a different country can hardly be described as time off.

We have had kids run off, kids have psychotic breakdowns, violence you name it we might well have seen it.

I remember once being hauled in by the tax man, I had written the holiday costs into the accounts and in full. Every meal out, every limonade every camping bill the lot.

This guy was of course an accountant, used to the tricks of the self employed.

To help him decide how much of our "holiday" was work and how much "holiday".

I gave him a precis of C the nicker nobbin terrier todgerer who "liked" little boys.

Who of course had gone with us.

The guy was shaken:

"I can only allow you 100 percent", he said

As if left to his own devices he would have given us more!!

That said, there is a terrible temptation to regard these looked after children (and was there ever an inaccurate phrase) as demons with whom nothing can be done and therefore it's not worth trying.

LAC have taught me so much of the human condition and the possibility for heroic and stoic survival.

It's a shame really that we do not read the research that individual high level trauma is really survivable.

But the serial low level stress of a life in care, the SW who for good reason does not phone.

The trip that because the bean counter has spent the money on the public concert cannot afford to send you on the rugby tour.

Is the stuff of lifetime damage.

Yet your parents doing the same was grounds for care order.

The system that records your weakness and failures and pays attention to them more than your successes.

I could go on.

That so many don't get to their potential early is hardly surprising.

LAC are very often a bunch of heroes.

We should view them as heroic survivor's of a system which with the best intentions manages to herald their failures and far too often not seek out their strengths and successes.

And I am writing that not as a critique of what we do but rather to remind us all what we should be doing.

And sorry that's a bit heavy for a Saturday morning.

I wrote most of it last night with the assistance of a few glasses of wine, wanted to read it first before I stuck it on here. I hope there are a few good people in SW reading this and taking it as a reminder.

I am off shopping.