More fermenting festering.

One thing I left out in the previous, was what happened between V's 12th and her 16th.

At 12 as I said she was about to end up seeing to the needs of old men who do not wash a lot.

She was not an easy girl to like. Her early life had left her finding it very hard to be loved. If the people who love you hurt you, you have to defend yourself. Especially if you are a child. If the people you love and who love you are not predictable then you have to defend yourself. If the person you love choses someone who is hateful and hurtful to you, you do the same.

You build a great big wall around yourself, a big high one, with wire on the top. You defend yourself by creating hate, you know others dislike for you keeps them out, keeps you safe. To let them see the lovely person you are is to let them in and once in they can hurt you.

I'm not putting any of that up as an explanation, she is the expert on her, but I reckon this tree I am barking up is not far from the right one...

Over the years, we did not a lot, people who parent are in the position of handing the child the lego, thats all you can do. Hand them the lego and they either build a castle or throw the set out of the window. Foster carers go out into the garden, pick up the bits and take them back into the house to try again. It's what we do.

She went through crashing cycles where she would build and build and build then break it all down.

Thing was though she had her social worker.

A rock, a firm foundation, quite something else.

When she "decided" she was not "doing school" any more. SW could have talked about rights, she could have said we cannot make her. Nope, she said: "get on the bus and get into school".

Without lots of rights explainers to tell her she didn't have to, she did what was right for her.

Sometimes we adults forget that we are, the adults that is.

Every right carries a responsibility in it's back pack.

If I exercise a right I have responsibility for what happens if it all goes wrong. And if I am not mature enough to take the responsibility, giving me the right is a form of abuse. It is setting me up to fail.

Yes of course give kids rights when they have no understanding of responsibility, why not give babies guns while we are at it.

This was one of the best bits about her Social Worker, she was person centered.

Just as it says in the job specification.

When mum threw out the abusive boyfriend, Social worker didn't just do her job, fill in a referral form for the domestic violence team and forget about it; she went round the house and helped mum do what was needed, herself.

That's proper outside the tick box person centered social work.

V matured in ways that frequently delighted management and me.

When her school were off doing their outward bound and they got completly blisteringly lost. She was the calm voice that took charge and got them out of there. A born leader opened her wings and flew.

When she was 15 she said she wanted to be a foster carer, the calm maturity, the diligence, the caring person she had allowed herself to become was someone I thought I would be really happy to leave my own kids with.

This was the complete opposite of the child who arrived three years before and who is today, three years after.

Which makes it the more distressing for us, we didn't raise her to do what she has done now.

We handed her into the care of leaving care only to discover they didn't and between them and the toilet checkers they would try and stop us from caring too.

Being actively prevented from caring is abusive I reckon.

But as the toilet checker said "she only wanted to do her job and do what she was told".

I have a few things I would like to tell her, I am not sure she would not perceive them as abuse....

R