Foster carers

[mamath]

what are mums' views on foster carers?

nymph how are you?

Foster carers do not remove children from their parents. Foster carers have very little say in what actually happens to the children placed in their care.
They are supposed to be advocates for the children but have no legal status or PR.

We fostered our son before we adopted him. We ARE family carers. I was utterly distressed at how little control we had over his life. We were at the mercy of ss. He was abused by the system which was NOT child centered in any way and seemed to revolve around ss seeming to pander to the birth mother. I say seeming because of course she had no REAL power but they wanted to keep her quiet. Ultimately DS suffered more than anyone.

I would like to see more children placed with family but there will always be a need for fcs.

I doubt anyone would argue that there are bad and indifferent fc but there are also many fc who are dedicated and do the very best they can for children who have been abused long before placement.

Foster care is NOT parenting, and should never be seen as such. There is a shortage of foster carers, and definitely a shortage of good foster carers, and there is an obvious need to pay them more, train them better, require more of them.

As for your point, that recruiting good quality foster carers will somehow act to pull more children away from innocent families, I completely disagree. You haven't been quite clear about who you are and where you're coming from, but I strongly question your assertion that children are being 'earmarked' and taken from 'by all accounts ordinary caring families'. By definition, that can't be true.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7049643.ece

women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article7050522.ece

hester
I wasn't suggesting that recruiting more foster carers would act exactly to pull children away from their rightful homes.

I am a UK mum and that's where I am coming from, with care and residency of my own offspring and compassion for other families.

I would be grateful to understand what you mean by by definition that can't be true; how so?

chegirlshadabloodynuff
I certainly wasn't saying that foster carers take children from their parents!

Although come to think of it, I do know one family closely where in fact that was the case.

Here we go - another "the state takes children from loving parents and dumps them in the care system" OP.

Yeah right!

I work with children in care every day and I categorically refute that they come from ordinary caring families.

They come from chaotic, incoherent, transient, poverty-stricken, struggling families- some are caring, some are not- what they are definitely not is ordinary.

mamath, you seem very bitter do you have personal experience?. There is a huge need to recruit more foster carers simply so that ss have a choice and can match the right carers to a childs individual needs. As foster carers are on call 24/7 I hardly think there can be many that do it simply for the money. Foster carers are expected to work in a professional manner with a range of other professionals. They undergo continuous training and work in often difficult and heartbreaking circumstances. In 15 years I have never seen a child removed from their family without very good reason. The stories heard in the media are always just the families opinion as ss cannot reveal the reasons children are removed. I agree you will sometimes find a carer who probably shouldn't be doing the job but on the whole most carers do a great job.

Well the problem with these articles is we only get one side of the story as the courts are closed etc.

I am not sure how those stories relate to foster carers though? If you believe those stories to be true then surely it's the authorities who are in error, nothing to do with foster carers

mamath how can a fc take a child from its parents?

They have no legal status in care proceedings and are not party to said proceedings?

They may apply to adopt a child in their care but the decision is not theirs and their application is likely to be refused.

BTW we can all have compassion for families. I certainly have compassion for ds's birth mother. Doesnt mean I think she should have been able to carry on doing what she was doing to him though.

I have no objection to abusive foster carers being weeded out and LAC being given the very best care possible.

But that would raise a question. If the fc had their own children what would happen to them if they were found to be unfit to care for LAC? Would those very fc then become the parents you are advocating for?

I am not sure why the word bitter has been attached to me for raising a discussion.

To pick up on one part of the thread
'A good foster parent is a professional. They are raising the children of those who can not take of them themselves.'

A good FC by definition does not mean that they have had child(ren) placed with them who are being abused. They may or may not have. Evidence based facts are being compiled across the UK. A bad FC may have children in need or children torn from loving homes placed with them. i.e. The virtue of the foster carer does not denote the neediness of the child. I am not aware of any correlation in this respect

Please check out the links, since both reports which serve only as an intro relate to concurrent planning style (Human Rights abuse), in at least one case babies earmarked whilst in the womb, first time mothers, mothers with fiances, no negative issues etc.

chegirlshadabloodynuff
re 'how can a FC take a child from parents, 'I'll try not to divulge too much detail.

An absent parent applies to the court to stop the resident birth parent from having custody. The absent parent is not available to care for the children. The absent applicant has links with local authority (LA) employee. The LA officer is a member of children's charity, takes children into the household, and abuses them. There is the offer to adopt but it is never taken up for the duration of the children's lives. The FC funds pay for larger mortgage. The fostered children are neglected financially and emotionally throughout.

Evidence based experiences.

chegirlshadabloodynuff
I do not advocate for people who abuse children.
The last comment, the account which chegirlshadabloodynuff asked about, the FC had own children - own childen were not abused, fostered children were.

That is not a rule.

We cannot generalise out all the time to avoid looking at problems.

This is merely turning a blind eye to children suffering injustice.

We know that some of the most severely abused children were seen over and over and over again by professionals, no lack of resources, lack of judgement maybe, or

something else is wrong.

Mamath.

I have advocated for families whose children have been removed. I am also a kinship carer who was involved in all aspects of my ds's case (although without any actual power). I got involved in my family member's case because I wanted her to have the best chance of getting her child back.

I have had very mixed experiences of SS and the care system in general.

I know of fc who IMO are not in it for the right reasons.

So I am not one for thinking all birth families are scum and kids should be removed willy nilly. I firmly believe that children should be kept with their birth families whenever possible.

But I really dont get your attitude towards foster carers. It doesnt make sense. Fcs are not in a position to dictate what happens to a LAC. They are employed to care for them. They have no say in why a child is placed with them or whether they come from a loving home or an abusive one. Its nothing to do with them.

Concurrent fostering is a whole different thing from general fc. Concurrent foster carers are prospective adopters whereas foster carers are not expected to adopt.

I cant quite work out why you seem to have such a dislike for fcs. All of them?

1 example, as opposed to the thousands of cases where children are removed from the neglectful or abusive homes of their parents.

Of course babies are earmarked in the womb- for example, you have a woman who is pg for the 8th time. Previously she has a child die and 6 others systematically bullied, beaten, and terrorised at the hands of her partner that she will not leave, her other children removed from their care, and placed into foster care, perhaps the youngest 1 or 2 adopted depending on the age they entered care. Should we as a society allow that embryonic child to have his life endangered?

I'm not sure what the point of this thread is?

Some children are wrongly taken from parents or some foster carers are bad?

I've only ever met one in my life and she seemed very nice, very competent, was a mother at tumble tots, but no word of a lie she had a converted shed thing that the children slept in, not sure if it was her own children or the FC in there, but it certainly seemed a case of stack em high.
And she told me that foster caring paid for her children's school fee's, which was a bit random.

I haven't said I have a dislike for foster carers
my second comment in the thread made a distinction as to my interest

I raised 2 issues

professional status and pay linked with accountability (context lack of accountability in the employing sector)

recruitment campaign (context children being taken from dedicated parents by force as yet not widely understood)

I appreciate the feedback in the discussion, although I feel that perhaps its uncomfortable to be facing up to tricky issues.

I am not so sure its about people being uncomfortable about tricky issues.

I think its more that you have not been as clear as you think you have.

You DO sound as if you dislike all foster carers. You DO sound as if you think they are in some sort of league with ss to remove happy children from loving homes.

Maybe you need to rethink how you start a debate? This is not really much of a discussion, more a series of posts trying to find out what you are getting at.

Haskell
I am not clear why using extreme examples to avoid talking about the questionable examples I raise in this thread (first time mothers, no issues, stable partners to be married etc).

There is no lack of consensus on the extreme exmaples,
except I add, that we have seen extremely abused children, seen over and over and over again by a host of professionals who did not act upon any perceptable discernment in their role.

When I started the thread, it was in the context of parents in despair from having obstacle after obstacle put in their way to have their children returned to them. None of these parents are guilty of any abuse. Meanwhile, in some of the cases the children are suffering vilence and neglect on foster care.
Then the news comes in in the midst of these discussions about raised status and pay for FCs. There is quite reasonable lack of enthusiam from parents who have had tehir children taken from them and watch their children deteriorate in state FC, whilst they themselves may have been accused of not having enough money, but whilst their children never went without in thier birth home.

I don't know about advice about starting a thread, since this discussion has opened up some areas from other's experiences, and I would hope that others could open their eyes to experience unfamiliar to themselves too.

I thought the open question opened up a range of poignant examples and opinions.

I'm not clear on either of these points:

professional status and pay linked with accountability (context lack of accountability in the employing sector) - do you think professional status and pay is a good thing or bad thing? Are you saying it will make foster carers more or less accountable than now?

recruitment campaign (context children being taken from dedicated parents by force as yet not widely understood) - what is the link between the recruitment of foster carers and children being taken wrongly from good enough homes? Are you saying that if more foster carers are recruited, this is an incentive for social services to take children away wrongly?