Slip.......

Many years ago, I worked with a girl called Diana, who told me her story. Sometimes we don’t realize what others go through and when we hear, we are shocked, but to them it is a way of life that is normal.

She had been fostered, that conjures up a lot of things to me, all negative. I’ve met a few foster parents in my time, and half of them I don’t rate highly, the other half that I’ve met are fantastic. But in every establishment, there is good and bad.

One family I met quite often years ago, treated the foster child in their care, differently to their own children, it was a clear case of favouritism. The mother of the home was a lovely person in herself, but I found it hard to like her, because of what I often saw, I was young myself and very shy, so I wouldn’t have said anything to anyone. It was just what I personally observed. Everything was different back then.

I also worked with a really lovely man who was a foster dad. He had worked with kids who had experienced extreme abuse, the place was hundreds of miles from my home and whenever I met him, he’d tell me snippets, but it was all SO disturbing for me, and I felt, that I needed counselling whenever he spoke about the child in question. Meeting him, have opened my eyes to cruelty, and I applaud him and all those who look after and help the children. I wouldn’t be strong enough to his job.         

The girl I worked with, had been given the chance to read about her life when she was little, but she chose not to, her Sister Janice who was brought up in the same foster home, chose to read about her life when she was little and the reasons why she was put into the foster system, and wished she hadn’t read it! She didn’t tell me, and I would never ask.