by Casey Watson
It had certainly forced us to think about the future. And as soon as we’d sat down and considered our options, we realised the timing was right anyway. Not that we’d downsized. Though our own children had flown the nest (Kieron was settled with his girlfriend Lauren, and Riley and her partner David even had two little ones of their own) we’d moved house with children very much still in mind. Our new place was that little bit further out of town, that bit more open and leafy, that bit more suited to serving our fostering needs.
And now, I thought, as I looked around my two freshly painted bedrooms, the house itself was, as well. Now all I needed was a child to put in one of them.
‘So is there anything in the pipeline?’ Riley asked me, having admired both the makeovers. It was Tuesday lunchtime, and Levi, my eldest grandson, was back in nursery full time now, so she’d brought baby Jackson over for a sandwich and a natter before going to pick him up. It seemed impossible to me – almost like the blink of an eye – that my first grandson was three now, and that Jackson would be one year old next month.
Impossible but true. Where had all the time gone? I shook my head. ‘Not as yet,’ I told Riley. ‘Though when I spoke to John last week he seemed to think there might be another little boy coming up. With mainstream carers at the moment, but they’re apparently struggling to cope with him. Multiple issues,’ I went on. ‘And some really entrenched disturbing behaviours, by all accounts. John’s kind of put us on standby while they decide what to do.’
Riley laughed. ‘I bet your ears pricked up straight away,’ she commented. ‘Multiple issues … disturbed behaviours … Sounds right up your street, Mum.’
Which was true; it was exactly why I’d come into fostering. I’d already been thinking about it when I first saw the advertisement for the agency – back when I’d been working as a behaviour manager in a large comprehensive school. An ad seeking people who actively wanted to take on challenging children, the children the system was failing to cope with. ‘Fostering the unfosterable’ had been the slogan. And it had gripped me straight away. It was what I did at school. It was what I felt I was best at. Oh, yes, I thought, challenging was right up my street.
I nodded. ‘But that was last week,’ I said, as we headed back downstairs. ‘I thought I might have heard back by now. I might call him later, as it happens. See what the score is –’
Riley rolled her eyes. ‘You just can’t do it, Mum, can you?’
‘Do what?’ I asked her.
She burst out laughing. ‘Do nothing!’
I didn’t call John in the end. After all, if he had a child for us he’d have called me about them, wouldn’t he? But there was no denying I leapt for my mobile when I heard it buzzing at me the following afternoon. Riley was spot on. I was no good at doing nothing. And since I couldn’t take a job – that was a stipulation for our kind of intense fostering – without a child in, I’d soon be climbing all those freshly painted walls. There was only so much cushion plumping a woman can do and stay sane – even a clean freak like me.
And it wasn’t just through lack of an occupation that I was bored. Now we’d moved house, Mike, who was a warehouse manager, had a slightly longer journey to work and back every day, and with us new to the area, filling the day was itself a challenge. I needed to get out and about, make new friends and get to know the neighbours. But all of these things would take time.
It was also still winter, the days short and mostly murky, not really conducive yet to ambling round the neighbourhood, striking up conversations with strangers. And though our new garden was delighting me almost daily with tantalisingly unidentifiable green shoots, I’d never been much of a one for sitting around. I might be a grandma, but I was still only forty-four. A new challenge was exactly what I wanted.
I was in luck. I picked up my mobile to find John’s name on the display. ‘John,’ I said. ‘How very nice to hear from you. Are we on?’
‘Yes and no,’ he said, piquing my interest immediately. ‘Though, if you’re up for it, it’s going to be something of a change of plan.’
‘Oh?’ I asked, intrigued, pulling out a kitchen chair to sit down. He sounded a little tired and I wondered what he might have been up to. His wasn’t an everyday sort of job, for sure.
‘Well, if you and Mike are amenable, that is.’
‘You already said that,’ I said. ‘Which sounds ominous in itself.’
‘Not at all,’ he was quick to correct me. ‘Not in the way you probably mean, anyway. I mean as in we’re no longer planning on lining you up with that lad we talked about. Got something of an emergency situation on our hands. It’s a girl. Nine years old. Rather unusual scenario for us. I’ve spent most of the day at the General as it happens.’
‘The hospital?’
‘Yup. Got a call from social services first thing. The mother’s quite ill. She has multiple sclerosis –’
‘Oh, the poor thing.’
‘Yes, the whole situation’s pretty grim, frankly. Collapsed this morning, by all accounts, while out trying to buy her daughter a birthday present – she’s going to be ten soon. The little girl’s called Abigail, by the way – Abby – and she’s obviously terribly distraught. Looks like Mum’s going to have to be hospitalised for a period. And there is no other family, which means they have no choice but to –’
‘… take her into care?’ My heart went out to her. The poor child. Not to mention the poor mother. Having their lives ripped apart so suddenly like this. ‘No family at all?’ I asked.
‘Two second cousins, that’s all, both of whom live hundreds of miles away. And they’re not remotely close. Never even met the daughter, let alone know her. So it’s not workable. The last thing anyone wants is for little Abby to be dragged off somewhere, when Mum’s here in hospital, as you can imagine. So she’s had a social worker appointed – Bridget Conley. Have you come across her?’
The name was familiar, but I didn’t think our paths had yet crossed. But I was more interested in how Mike and I fitted into this. From what John was telling me this was a pretty straightforward scenario. A routine foster placement while a care package was presumably put in place for the mother so that they could both go home. Short term. Crisis management. Not the sort of thing Mike and I were needed for. Our speciality involved long-term placements and a defined behaviour-management programme, and was usually for kids who’d been in the care system a long time already and/or had come from profoundly damaging backgrounds. I said as much to John.
‘Ah, well, that’s where this isn’t quite what you might expect, Casey. The mum’s had MS for years. Periods of remission here and there, thankfully, but her condition is quite advanced. The fact that she made it into town at all was something of a miracle, apparently. She’s pretty much housebound and quite profoundly disabled –’
‘So how’s she been managing to look after her little girl, then? You say there’s no family –’
‘Not much of anything or anyone, really, it seems to me. Certainly no care or support in place. She’s mentioned a neighbour, but we’ve already had a clear impression that in terms of who’s looked after whom, it’s been the other way around. Little Abby’s been her carer, pretty much.’
Which was a sobering thought, but still didn’t fully answer my question. ‘But why us?’ I asked again. ‘I mean, we’re obviously happy to step in, you know that. But if it’s only going to be temporary …’
‘It’s not going to be that temporary,’ John corrected me. ‘That’s what we’ve been thrashing out today. The medics have given Mum a less than good prognosis, and there’s no way in the world they’re ever going to discharge a sick patient back to the care of a nine-year-old girl. Bottom line is that even if they manage to get her stable and home, and a package of medical support put in place for her, she’s clearly not going to be in a position to care for her daughter, which leaves social services with no choice but to take responsibility for Abby, doesn’t it? That’s the truth of it. Now the genie’s out of the bo
ttle, so to speak …’
And the cat out of the bag, come to that. John was right, of course. Now they knew about it, they couldn’t un-know it. Which left everyone concerned in the worst of all situations. ‘God,’ I said, as the enormity of it hit home for me. I tried to imagine being told I could no longer look after my own children. Having to watch them being taken away from me, when they needed me. It hardly bore thinking about. ‘Poor, poor woman,’ I said to John. ‘She must be beside herself …’
‘Completely distraught,’ John agreed. ‘As you can imagine. But not stupid. She knows there’s no other choice here.’
‘And the poor little girl … how on earth is she dealing with all this?’
‘Badly,’ John said. ‘Which is where you and Mike come in. Because now we’ve met her we don’t think she’s suitable for mainstream care, basically. We’ve had a long chat with Mum this afternoon, and she wants what’s best for her child, after all.’
‘Of course …’
‘And, well, we’re all of the opinion that Abby might be, well, how shall I put it? A little idiosyncratic. I must stress that this isn’t coming from Mum, before you ask. It’s just our assessment, based on what Bridget has seen, and from what we know of how the two of them have been living. I’m obviously not conversant with all the details, but the bottom line would seem to be that this particular nine-year-old is not like any normal nine-year-old. She’s been caring for her mum from a very young age, and has basically had no sort of childhood. I know it sounds daft and, yes, we could be over-dramatising this, but our feeling is that being with you and Mike, and doing the programme kind of back to front, if you like, would give her the best chance of getting back on track. You know, getting her used to living as a child again, basically.’
‘You’ve obviously met her,’ I said. ‘How did she seem to you?’
‘Odd, definitely. Twitchy. Has some pronounced – very obvious – tics. I think that’s how I’d describe it. Anxious. Incredibly anxious. Wound up about as tight as she can be, is my feeling. I mean she’s in a state of trauma right now, obviously, but, reading between the lines, there’s probably much more besides. So it seemed to us that the best thing would be to take this bull by the horns. Crazy to slot her into a mainstream placement only to have it break down again in a matter of days or weeks.’
‘Absolutely,’ I agreed, feeling that familiar surge of adrenalin that always accompanied the prospect of a new child. ‘Though I hope your faith in us isn’t going to be misplaced, John. We’re not psychiatrists …’
‘I know. Absolutely. And we’ll obviously be reviewing things as a matter of urgency. Counselling’s probably a must-do that needs flagging up right away. But I know you two can give her that something extra, in terms of structure, that she probably needs right now.’
‘I like to think so. We’ll certainly do our best. So. When do you want to schedule a meeting? Just name the day.’
‘Ah,’ said John. And it was a kind of ‘ah’ I’d heard from him before. ‘That’s the thing,’ he went on. ‘I was wondering if we could skip that part of the process.’
‘Ri-ight …’ I said.
‘Because I really think we need to bring her now.’
‘Ri-ight …’ I said again, waiting for the next part of this process. The one where not only did we skip an initial meeting, but also skipped the first ‘get to know you a little’ visit, which was included to be sure both parties felt happy to proceed. I was fairly confident about this because by now I knew John well.
And he didn’t let me down. ‘We were kind of hoping you’d agree to take her on right away. If you’re amenable, that is …’ he finished apologetically. ‘Are you? I know it’s a lot to ask.’
I smiled to myself, loving how John always observed all the little protocols, bless him. Because when you thought about it, it wasn’t a lot to ask, really, was it? It was the job we did and I couldn’t think of a single prior occasion when ‘the process’, as written in the foster carer’s bible, had ever actually happened by the book.
And who cared? Doing things by the book was boring anyway. ‘Of course we are,’ I reassured him. ‘Well, I am, at any rate, and so will Mike be, I’m sure, just as soon as I call and tell him. He’ll be glad, to be honest, because it’ll give me something else to think about besides all the home improvements he’s terrified I’m going to schedule for our already perfect house.’
John laughed. ‘So I’ve actually done him a favour then, have I? Okay, so, let me see … okay if we pitch up in something like an hour and a bit?’
I told him yes, and immediately mentally switched gears. Outside the sun was slinking away from overseeing another grey February day. But suddenly I couldn’t care less. I disconnected and immediately reconnected – this time to Mike. I couldn’t wait for him to get home. Our New Year had begun.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of the team at HarperCollins, the lovely Andrew Lownie, and my friend and mentor, Lynne. I’d also like to add a special thought to all those working within the care system.
CASEY WATSON
One woman determined to make a difference.
Read Casey’s poignant memoirs and be inspired.
Five-year-old Justin was desperate and helpless
Six years after being taken into care, Justin has had 20 failed placements. Casey and her family are his last hope.
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A damaged girl haunted by her past
Sophia pushes Casey to the limits, threatening the safety of the whole family. Can Casey make a difference in time?
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Abused siblings who do not know what it means to be loved
With new found security and trust, Casey helps Ashton and Olivia to rebuild their lives.
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FEEL HEART.
FEEL HOPE.
READ CASEY.
Discover more about Casey Watson.
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Copyright
This book is a work of non-fiction based on the author’s experiences. In order to protect privacy, names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed or reconstructed.
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First published by HarperElement 2012
FIRST EDITION
© Casey Watson 2012
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