I've just discovered there are two patronising "foster carers" writing for Harper Collins! Handily, they both work for the same agency, and write remarkably similar stories about the children they foster, which all seem to have remarkably happy (and sudden) endings...
A friend gave me a couple of Casey Watson novels as she knew I'm a foster carer and thought I'd like them. I read the first one thinking it was just co-incidentally similar to the Cathy Glass ones I'd read, then I read the second. Even though I don't actually believe a word Cathy Glass writes is true any longer, she does at least seem fairly inoffensive. Casey Watson however had me fuming throughout book number 2 - about a little girl who cared for her mum who was ill in hospital. On practically every page Casey reminds you that she and her husband are specialist carers, coping with kids that "normal" carers cannot handle. In neither book was there any behaviour that "normal" foster carers don't see every day!
She mentioned attachment training a couple of times, but barely seemed to notice that her foster children were displaying all signs of attachment problems. She didn't spot that the little girl she cared for had OCD until halfway through her stay, despite her showing all the classic signs. She leaves a clearly damaged little girl to play alone with her grandson, then is horrified that the little girl takes his nappy off...
I think I'd be less critical if I still believed that these books were written by genuine foster carers. As it is, someone is making a vast sum of money from stories that they are advertising as true.
A quick Google reveals that Cathy Glass now has 16, sixteen, books published! I barely have time to write a few posts on here in an evening! When do these specialist carers get to write a whole book??