to be fusked off with people's perception of children in care?

[LoopyLoops]

Not a thread about a thread, but inspired by one, whereby it was suggested that foster children are a danger to others.

Children in care are vulnerable and by default disadvantaged in many ways. 35% of the population goes to uni, whereas only 3% (1% until recently) of care leavers do.

Attitudes towards fostered children range from sympathetic to contemptuous.

I'll give you an example. Drinking with a neighbour recently, talking about childhood. He stated "but I don't believe you LoopyLoops, you can't have been in care, you own a nice house and are married..." Now, he wasn't saying this in a "wow! aren't you great" way, but in a genuine "I don't believe you, you're making it up" way. So, I gather the assumption is that care leavers will never achieve, won't own their own homes and won't have happy family lives as adults.

AIBU that this pisses me off?

Loopyloops - am really interested in this thread. As a youth magistrate, I am frequently appalled by the disrupted educational history of children in care atm: often placed outside the 'home county' meaning disruption to friendships and schooling, changes of placement meaning changes of school/disrupted or non-existent social relationships/disrupted learning. I remember one young lad telling me that he had been due to sit 7 GCSE's but a sudden move due to a foster placement coming to an end meant that his next school sat him in a remedial class for a term to 'assess him'. I wonder if your eventual PH.d might look at the failures of CLA in the educational system and assess how much of that is down to the State's care of that child as opposed to that child's potential? I may have experience only of the more negative aspects of the care system, but I feel so ashamed that we are continuing to treat young people in this way.

Thanks LoopyLoops was secretly hoping someone would read my post and answer.

We are very serious about doing this but didnt want to make a fool of myself by phoning the LA before I had checked the ins and outs iykwim.

I got the information about the bedrooms from a lady I know who currently fosters for the LA although she did say that for certain things they will make exceptions if they think we are perfect otherwise - the problem is that we arent if they are looking for us to have a support unit.

I do have a few close friends here but not sure if that would be enough and I feel a bit awkward asking them if they mind being interviewed.

I'm keeping our plans under wraps for the moment but confided in my friend the other day. Her response was "wow, you would be fantastic at that" - really made my day!

BCBG - I have written four (!) different research proposals because there are so many aspects to this that I want to look at! One is comparing a group of LAC and young people not in the care system with identical grades, from year 12 to year 14. One of the many problems with this would be the matching of students, but that is the case with each of my proposals! I still haven't decided which one to submit, but I have been told that the focus needs to be fairly narrow. Do you feel that would be more worthwhile than looking at different systems already in place (ie. regional variances?) I really can't decide!

LoopyLoops - I completely agree with your general point on prejudice against looked after children. I think these children are let down massively by our society, in childhood and often throughout adulthood too.

I didn't agree with you on the original thread, though, and I don't agree with a few posts on here that seem to suggest that children in care are just like other children. I think anybody who goes into fostering or adoption (or employing a nanny who is also fostering) thinking it will be just like having birth children is extremely ill-advised. That doesn't mean we should assume they are damaged, but we know they have undergone trauma, and that individuals have varying degrees of resilience and some will have been damaged by their experiences. So to assume a foster child will be a nice playmate for your birth child, for example, may be a very risky assumption.

I also don't think it's fair to guilt-trip women who undergo fertility treatment and don't want to adopt. I have a birth child and an adopted child, who happen to be the two greatest children in the universe, and I always knew that I don't need to be biologically connected to a child to love them as my own. But many people don't feel that way, and that basic orientation is so deep I don't think it should be disrespected or argued away.

A support unit doesn't necessarily mean geographically close family. It also means people you can ring and moan to, or people you might go on holiday with. IT also means you live in a community in which you are happy to be involved, eg, if you are considering fostering toddlers, will you feel comfortable accessing toddler groups etc?

Also remember that there are fostering agencies as well as LA. People have quite strong feelings about these (generally the difference are: LAs outsource difficult to place children to agencies, which costs LAs more money, and can mean children with greater need, being placed miles from their family. Agency carers are usually paid better and better supported in terms of Social Workers etc.) Agencies have slightly different criteria.

I really don't think the bedroom thing will be the be-all and end all. Is your spare room on the ground floor? Or 2nd floor? Ground floor might not be very good for younger children, particularly girls, for safety reasons. Still worth enquiring though, they certainly won't laugh at you.

hester - my point on the other thread was that, just like looked after children, to assume any child will be a nice playmate for your birth child may be a very risky assumption. Just because a child is in the care system doesn't make them more dangerous. Any child has the potential to hurt others, surely? You can't begrudge the prejudice in one breath then reinforce it in the other, surely?

I didn't think I was guilt-tripping people into doing anything, or was I? If I offended anyone, I truly am sorry. I did try to make it clear that I didn't think this was the place to compare IVF with adoption and fostering.

Also, hester, sorry to be arsey, but I take offense at this:

"I don't agree with a few posts on here that seem to suggest that children in care are just like other children."

They are just like other children. Yes, they may have experienced severe trauma, but so may other children not in care (FFS). They look like other children, learn like other children, and play like other children. All children are different, why are children in care singled out like this? You are the one doing it, don't you see?

I can only speak from my own contact with LAC, but it is immediately obvious that young people who enter the system late due to family breakdown, or whose secure placements are delayed, then tend to have a disrupted pattern of socialisation and education which compounds feelings of isolation and loneliness. My impression is that few of those with significant disruption (more than one school every two years for example) will achieve their potential. Many of the most troubled children, through no fault of their own, may experience several moves within a single year especially if they are placed with a private operator of residential homes, and my understanding is that only recently has the Southwark Judgment been upheld meaning that children in need of care should be placed with the local authority that they originate in. As I said, I see only a segment and my view may be unfairly jaundiced . However, I would like to see someone look right across the country to see how many of these children have stable educational patterns, how many schools have protocols for RAPID assessment and integration of new CLA on the roll, and how many children without stable 16+ carers ever make it to further education?

BCBG - what do you think about proposals to offer public school boarding placements to children in care? I have mixed feelings. In many ways, I think it is a brilliant idea, I personally would have loved it (well into Mallory Towers, me!), but there are complications. What about holidays? What about all of the extras that children in public school tend to be able to afford?

Incidentally, I went to 26 different primary schools, 2 secondaries and 1 sixth form. Obviously I'm ma bit special , but it can be done!

my "need" wasn't genetic at all it was having a baby from birth the easiest way possible. No doubt that makes me shallow!

I'm sure no-one thinks you're shallow, Kew.

Can we get away from the IVF thingy please?

Thanks again LoopyLoops.

My bedroom is a loft conversion, I could swap with my DS but I'm not keen on children having access the en-suite when I cant hear them from the living room.

I have plenty of folk I could moan to!!! We have strong links with the local primary school, nursery and toddler group as well so maybe that would help as far as a support network goes.

Dont want to detract from your thread so will bow out now but you have certainly made me a bit more confident about the whole thing, will now pluck up the courage to phone the LA and do something about it!!!

Not the right person to ask, loopy as my older DCs are at/have gone through boarding school so I am pro . I definitely dont know enough to comment, but from a personal perspective I am sure that the care and structure that young people receive in the schools my dcs attend represent very good value for money when set against the cost of a child in the care system proper. It wont work for all, but it would work for some.

My point is that they start off like other children, sure, but have usually undergone experiences that most other children don't. Really hurtful, damaging experiences. Some individuals are amazingly resilient and come through; others get damaged. So potential adopters and foster carers need to both be aware of and anticipate any potential problems, while also not assuming them or treating children as 'damaged goods'.

An analogy would be people who have experienced war: we know some will be resilient, a signiicant minority will experience problems. There is no excuse, of course, for prejudging them as problematic, and there's no excuse for some of the disgustingly prejudiced behaviour we've heard about on this thread. But the poster on the other thread, whose nanny was applying to foster and telling her that would provide playmates for her dc, was not wrong to be concerned about this. Because these would often be children fresh from trauma, because they may well need lots of support and supervision, because the OP would be unable to make informed choices about them on an individual basis.

I'm sorry if I'm offending you. I think this thread is tending to deal in absolutes: either you see children in care as 'just like other children', or you see them as all psychological wrecks. They ARE individuals, of course, but that doesn't mean it's helpful to ignore the potential impact of their experiences. It's not always an easy line to tread: I'm walking it with my own child, getting on with parenting her as normally as possible while also being sensitive to any enduring impact her far-from-perfect start in life may have had. I hope I will get this right, and be more part of the solution than part of the problem. I would of course spit blood if acquaintances, neighbours etc treated her as 'different' or used her time in care as a label for belittling or ostracising her.

The problem with your war analogy, hester, is this.

Do you think it would cause offense to say that war veterans are "not like other people"? Of course it would.

"I'm sure no-one thinks you're shallow, Kew." really?! I'm quite sure they do (based on what they've told me).

Anyway, I do agree with both you and Hester - as a happy adult of course people are unreasonable to make value judgements of you now because you were in care and of course making a blanket assumption that children in care are always "damaged" or dangerous or whatever lable you want to apply. But I agree with Hester's comment "They ARE individuals, of course, but that doesn't mean it's helpful to ignore the potential impact of their experiences". My own experience is only in the adoption area which is only a very small percentage of children in care but you would be a very follish person indeed to go into the process not being very realistic about the issues you need to be equipped to deal with, because problems of various sorts are so common.

Surely not for that though Kew?

Hester and others do have a point, insofar as potential foster carers and adoptive parents must be made aware of any potential problems that their children may face. However, it is not constructive to lead everyone to believe that these problems will be the same for all, or necessarily faced by all. This is simply untrue, and very damaging to the children involved.

"Of course it would" - out of interest why do you think that? My ex is ex-Royal artillery and currently works for the Red cross in afganistan and has seen active service in both northern ireland and Bosnia and lost members of his troop. I think he does feel that he is not like otehr people and that the experience sets him apart from others in a way that you can only appreciate if you have been through it.

I feel the same way about adoption (as a parent) - adopters are a very cohesive group who are fiercely protective of each other even when they barely know each other because they have an experience of something which is not the norm which is is impossible to explain to otehrs.

"Surely not for that though Kew? " - yup exactly for that. Adoption may be deemed "a good thing" but if you don't adopt in a way people consider to be suitable its amazing how many people decide they need to share their opinion of your selfishness with you.

OK, it's late and I may not be being careful enough with how I'm wording my points. I do largely agree with you, Loopy, and your overall argument is way more important than my need to defend my analogies, so I'm not going to!

It's actually a lot about context and purpose, isn't it? There are some people who need to be aware of what children in care may have experienced and how it may have affected them - like foster parents, very obviously. But for the vast majority of people - the other mums at the school gate, the potential employer etc - it is none of their business and absolutely not their place to project their stereotypes onto individuals and then, even worse, to treat them badly as a result.

I do agree that rehabilitating the image of children in care in teh eyes of the general public (if such a thing were possible) is a different issue to educating foster carers and prospective adoptive parents.

and now I see I've pretty much x-posted with both you and Kew. Definitely time for bed.

If we're talking about general perceptions I'd like to boot into touch one of my bugbears. DS is not "lucky" I adopted him. Lucky would have ben stayng with his birht family in health, safety and properity. I wonder how many people who said that to me would feel their children would have been lucky to have everything taken aay form them and placed with complete (albeit nice) strangers. Yeah bet they'd feel really blessed!

It may not be offensive to your ex, but I am sure to most it would be. It is saying that they are not human in the same way that others are, and that the others are all the same. It excludes, and is offensive.

It is like saying "I don't agree with a few posts on here that seem to suggest that ginger children are just like other children"

or

"I don't agree with a few posts on here that seem to suggest that men with beards are just like other men".

or

"I don't agree with a few posts on here that seem to suggest that lesbians are just like other women"

OK hester and Kewcumber, I think we're all pretty much in the same place anyway! Good night, sleep well. :)