Swine flu strikes...

I have not written anything for a while and that's a shame I have quite a lot to share.

At least some of that has, this last few days, been down to the arrival in my body of the dreaded swine flu. Normally, Flu I treat like an outbreak of Ebola and take to my bed claiming that death is about to take me.

But being objective, for those who might be fearful, it's nothing much to get excited about. yes the throat has been sore, the temperature has been high and the joints have ached.

But compared to the one last winter, this has been nothing.

Of course this has been helped by the fostering service and their interventions.

There I was in bed not very well and the phone called me.

So far so good.

It was my fostering worker and there were very important things to ask:

Ahh must be the details of young P returning to his mum after 7 years, errr no.

No, she needed to know about our preparations for swine flu.

Right.

what would happen if we both got swine flu and were unable to work?

Last winter we had both been very unwell and I had no recollection of anyone from fostering phoning and making sure we could cope.

Ah yes that was then and they did not have a form to fill in then, not quite the exact words but it became clear that was the issue.

As it happened I was in bed as she spoke and I thought I had the flu. Did she want to know if I needed help now.

shuffle shuffle she could not see a box for that on her form. Pause.

If I should get the flu, she repeated did I have someone who could go to the shops for me.

The concern, I said, was that if the flu became serious, large sectors of the population might not be in work and there might be shortages. Yes I did have a plan to increase our holdings of food and fuel in case this might occur.

Yes but would someone go to the shops for me if I was ill.

Tranport might be adversly affected but as it happens in a rural environment we would be better off than most.

Yes but could someone go to the shops for me if I was ill.

I was ill now.

Shuffle shuffle, no box for that.

If I became ill......

Anyway, more to the point, would the agency be happy for me to stockpile a weeks supply of paracetamol for each person in the house, that's a lot of paracetamol!

Shuffle shuffle.

If I became ill was there someone to go shoping for me.

Ohhhh for goodness sakes, if it keeps you quiet put yes, the relief was palpable.

Could we offer extra beds if they were needed?

Did they plan to use them then?

shuffle shuffle.....

I think it's an illustration of what needs to improve in social work today.

The form was all, it needed filling, good social work is making sure the box has a great big tick in it.

R

Stupid.........

To explain to those who are not stupid enough to be foster carers.

Every year a UK foster carer has a review of their performance, the things that went well, the things that went less well, the disasters, the calamities and out and out mayhems...

So anyway yesterday was the start of ours. Our link worker arrived and decided she was doing a health and safety review. Now, I do know a little about these things, "know a little" placed me 150 % ahead of the visiting social worker and thus gave me a source of innocent fun.

But the daft things they want to know; are the car keys locked away, of course not this is the country and anyway we would be bound to loose them. Only on place to keep car keys - in the car.

Of course that wasn't the best bit, no sir; are all electrical appliances safe? I didn't know I was supposed to be an engineer. The answer: howtheforkwouldIknow did not go down well.

But the best was yet to come. I had to undertake to prevent anyone who is a danger to children from having contact with the looked after children (my kids of course may be exposed to anyone). Oh what a merry dance we had, you see one of the looked after kids dad is a violent sex offender with a record of offences against women and children. Apparently it's OK for them to allow contact between such a person and children but of course if I do it, it's wrong. This was a real live proper giggle as their non joined up risk averse thinking unravelled.

Think about it, what do you know, as in really know, about everyone who has contact with your children?

Can you give a guarantee in absolute that none of them have harmful intent?

Quite

Then we moved on to training and assessing our training needs.

"Something else you are not qualified to do then", I quipped.

Oh look, a passable impersonation of a bulldog eating wasps I thought....

I did enjoy it, her manager is coming next time.

Watch this space.

I might even sell tickets.


R