one of those days part the one.

Fostering is an odd old game, most of the time you just blunder on doing your best. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it hopelessly wrong.

P is a relative success story , he came to us about 4 years ago as a young man of 7 . He was moved miles from Daycastle precisely because his mum stuck with him. The SW didn't like mum because she had Mental Health issues and was usually dirty and always lousy.

But the years have passed he has largely caught up in school and is showing himself to be a very bright lad.

Mum always said that when she recovers she will have him back and the day is rapidly approaching.

So anyway, the big plans are rumbling on. I should add this is not the first time he has returned home each time mum has had a relapse and he ended up back in care. The last time, the matter ended in court and the judge ordered that, before he would issue a care order, she needed support at home to see if she could manage with help. We will never know really since the various services amused themselves fighting over who paid for what and in the midst of this she failed again and P came into care.

Eventually he ended up with us and has really thrived.

But here comes the abuse inside the care system, P is really well settled here, has friends in the locality, is well liked and fits in well with his new family.

Really he needs to spend more time with his mum and continue to live here keep his friends keep his school - shared care.

That looks firmly off the agenda as his mum really wants him home. we could cope with that actually.

But of course there is more. Should he go home and it all go wrong he will not return here, in fact the plan is that he never comes back again. So four years is just a line drawn in the sand he has gone - forget him.

But of course there will be help for mum won't there, there needs to be something called a service level agreement before he leaves. Silence, ahh so there are no plans to help her, but I bet they won't forget to blame is she cannot cope. He is dumped in a new area with a new school and no we don't have him going back to his mum for a week initially no apparently that will be setting her up to fail.

So mum sinks or swims and either way this 11 year old gets ripped from the community he knows and understands and gets dropped back in a poorer part of daycastle.

Go's from modest affluence to poverty, goes from a safe rural house with it's own bike course to urban car ridden streets, from holidays in Brittany to no holidays at all.

No one would call that abuse would they......

R