Fermenting festering part one of two....

Really to get the point of our current situation you need to go back a few years.

We fostered a 12 year old girl who was perceived as being in danger of ending up in the bus station with the old men, the ones we are told do not wash a lot.

We went through quite a party with our big V, big V to tell her apart from the other and altogether littler V (about whom I could write another tale as bad as what is to follow). Well, years passed, loads of S&&& came our way and we stuck in there and ended up with a daughter of whom we were enormously proud.

By 16 this was turning into a serious success story, she was in school, had never been arrested, was virtually unknown to the local law and holding down a weekend job locally where she was well respected.

Of course then came something really traumatic and life changing. She turned 16. Now as traumas go being 16 is not too bad, well unless you are a child on a care order held by Daycastle. The leaving care worker came down the drive and things unraveled.

It would of course be so much easier to meet her needs if she lived in Daycastle and so she was seduced back to the big city.

This was her GCSE year and pretty soon it was clear that she could not be forced to go to school... Errr excuse me, no one ever forced her here either, we just EXPECTED that she did. She could not be forced to go to work, no we didn't force her either, we had an EXPECTATION that she get a job. You name it, from getting out of bed in the morning to paying the rent, there was a huge list of things she had a right not to do....

Funny thing was this "freedom" did not seem to make her happy.

There were good times though, we got an invite to one of her many "new" flats and there was a real pride in her place and a cake obviously bought in specially for the day. That flame of progress she had lit in her life was not out - yet.

But she could only ever hold it together for so long, and when she wasn't coping she needed someone to be there alongside her, have faith in her and sometimes even say "no you don't do that". What she got though was not positive mentoring but someone who supported her right not to do things and only expected her to fail.

It was impossible for us to do much from 100 miles away, especially since the agency would not help us in any way and could not understand why we would want to.

On one occasion we dropped everything, drove to collect her from hospital at midnight, a job the leaving care team should have picked up, they wouldn't even pay our petrol. And their job is to support the child and help them maintain their social networks??

That's another thing not joined up about foster care. We are expected to treat these children as ours, then pass them on like a library book. You know, even when you read a book you often go back to it in the future.

Proper foster care is about stability, trust and care. Care is not a switch to be turned on and off at will.

So anyway we got another phone call this time a solicitor. Would we take her on bail, she had no where to live and was currently in jail. Leaving care phoned next, would we take her, of course we could have anything we needed except money no petrol money never mind something for her food.

That would be fine, if she moved in here she had a job waiting for her. Embarrassed silence at the other end of the phone.

Now at this stage I told leaving care this all smacked of good practice and continuity for looked after children, or put another way I could not see the toilet checking service going for it quite the opposite in fact.

So I went to court, faced judge Jeffries and she got banged up some more.

Then came closer the time she would have been released and the toilet checkers decided a risk assessment was needed. Now there was plenty of time for this it could all have been done in time.

My fear was, that I would go to court to collect her and the TC's would decide on the day the answer was no.

Now, telling someone for months that this is going to happen, then on the day saying "No actually you are homeless" Falls a wee bit short of best practice in social work in my book. Make that person someone who is already a vulnerable service user, and phrases like "professional malpractice" spring to mind.

It's funny though everyone was quite adamant that this was not on the cards. Leaving care were saying she was coming to us and the toilet inspectors were saying nothing.

So anyway, the day before the court case, at 5 PM in the afternoon to be precise, we had the chief toilet inspector on the phone and she was adamant. They had done a risk assessment and Big V was not to come here. About a week too late to say that replied the MD, then things took a turn for the sinister. Go get big V and they would come and get the other looked after children. Good old fashioned oppressive practice aka Emotional Blackmail, we thought.

Ahh but there was more, in terms of giving reasons they were blissfully vague. They simply would not say. Since then we have managed to work out by our own research, they had information that might indicate she was a risk to children.

Now let's recap the situation here there are 7 children in this house, had they removed 3 to keep them safe they would also have been putting 4 children at risk.

Further more for the Rumpoles out there, the UK law has changed, confidentiality and data protection do not apply, they had a legal duty to share and an offence was committed when they did not.

You do not have to know the Children's Act backwards or to be able to recite the Codes of Practice for Social Work by heart to end up with a fairly full page of things that really should be shared with the Care Council if not some old chap in a wig.

Ahh yes talking chaps with a wig, next morning the phone rang, it was big V's solicitor. He was about to spring her and where was she to go. So I brought him up to speed. He went off to phone leaving care and probation, who knowing that a vulnerable young adult was about to become homeless decided to do the sensible thing - hide.

To this day, if leaving care were asked I do not know where she is. Despite promising to keep us informed as to where she went and to try to let us help them engage with her in a meaningful constructive way.

It's OK though, we have her phone number. We know that with their help and support she was back in jail within three months.

You could almost print this off and hand it to social work students and run a competition to see who could come up with the most points of bad practice...

You certainly could not make it up...

Oh but the caption says part one of two.

There must be more to come.....

Actually, I could make that three, or four, or five....

R