time to go home

"That sounds like the carer's car" says his Dad.
"I'll check!" he jumps up, rushes off top look out of the front room window. Reappears slowly and sits back down next to his Dad, picks up his lego car with the extra large extra pair of wheels in the middle for turning sharp corners, and says "Come on, lets carry on playing!"
"Was that the carer?" asks his Dad.
He says nothing. They both go to look out. "They're here!" His Dad calls.
I find the cardigan his carer has bought him, but he's back playing with the leggo. "Here's your cardigan?"
He shrinks back "Mum, when can I stay at home?" he says in a voice that gets quieter every time.
I help him put it on. "One day." Soon has been stretched too long for credibility.
"When?"
"It's up to social work" I say like a stuck record.
"Come on, give me a cuddle, a BIG one" says his Dad.

When he was asked, at school, long before social work put him in care, ('place of safety' they call it) where he felt safest in the whole world, he said "Sitting in the garden with my Dad on our deckchairs, with all the flowers and insects around."

When they let him see us unsupervised 5 times a week, he started cuddling us and smiling almost as much as before being taken away. His arms and legs wrapped round me tight as a baby monkey's round its mother, I said "Now you can have as many cuddles as you like!"
"No. When I'm at my carer's house I can only cuddle you in my head!"
When social work cut out one of those five days, saying only that we had no minimum visiting rights, he half whispered half cried, clinging onto me in the social work office "I've been managing and managing and managing SO LONG. Will I have to manage forever?"

Social work repeats whenever we question their treatment of our child that it is down to our lack of cooperation. When we ask what this means they just repeat it. If we ask again, they say they have "concerns about your attittude".

In the building where Children's Hearings are held, there is a poster which says "EVERY CHILD HAS THE RIGHT TO BE LOVED BY SOMEONE". The first Hearings we had attended we'd tried correcting social work when they said things such as that I was refusing to take anti depressants when infact my GP has repeatedly said I don't have depression, so has never prescribed them for me. But the Hearing Reports said we were being uncooperative and the pannel then said so long as we showed such hostility to social work they would not let us have our child back.
By the most recent Hearing we had been told so often that we were close to getting him back, if we just cooperated, that we did not complain when social work neglected to bring our child to the Hearing, as is required of them. Nor did we protest when, once again, he was denied a safeguarder to put his case. Later, our lack of protest was used as reason for pannel being justified in reaching its decision.
Despite none of the reasons for him being taken away having any base in reality, and now being ommitted from the grounds, social work still site them if it looks like things are not going their way. As social work smiled benignly the chairwoman said "Often what parents want is not what's best for their child".

His carer smiles encouragingly "Time to go home! Get that seatbelt sorted!"
Now, we do not cry as we put him into the carer's car. Usually, nor does he. It's more a silent hunched up coping. They are looking after him out of kindness - have not even been refunded the cost of the books the school nurse recommended they buy to help a child traumatised by being taken from his family without knowing why.

Being kind people, recently they took him to the zoo, with their child. The week before, he'd asked us "How do animals GET in zoos?" then his face fell as he thought "Do people just...come and take them away?"