Fostering

Fostering. A darker episode in our lives. Most of my posts talk about how good god has been. We are still struggling to find God’s goodness in this – perhaps the story is not yet finished.

I said my wife was having a mid-life crisis. Youngest at school, attempted to get involved in secular employment and church work, but nothing worked. Then we saw an advert for foster carers. We had room in our house, time on our hands (well my wife’s anyway), it fitted with our ethics an was a way to serve God in and with our own home, and was in line with my wife’s aspirations to work with children. Also, the payments would include a reward element – ie it was going to be her job.

We signed up for the assessment process, and as described in my previous post it was a very hard and very gruelling process, but one which we passed with flying colours. The only near sticking point was when the panel started to quiz me about my views on gay bishops. I pointed out that few of our foster children would be applying to bishops while in our care, and that whilst people who wish to run a club should abide by its principles, I was not about to impose strict religious observances on traumatised children. The training was an eye opener, in terms of the huge number of paedophiles out there, the damage done to children by neglect, and the dangers faced by people who try to care for them.

Also we had to prepare the house for foster children, improving the electrics to get a safety certificate, buying a suitable vehicle, etc – and incurred about £5000 costs.

Do not go into fostering unless you are emotionally very strong!!

We passed with flying colours. We had chosen to go to a private agency rather than the local authority. This was because the local authority had a reputation for deceiving its foster carers, and also because we wanted to care for sibling groups rather than individuals, who were more likely to come through the agency.

The phone rang and we were asked if we would take on a pair of 30 month old twins – a boy and a girl, for a short term. This seemed exactly what we were looking for – having them for two weeks would help us financially for our up-coming holiday. We were led to believe they were being removed from the natural mother that day.

After they arrived, we were told that they were coming to stay for at least six months, and that they had previously been in foster care but the placement broke down when the carers were approaching a divorce!

We had to cancel our holiday. I still took time off work to help. We had a constant stream of visitors – child psychologists, child solicitors, our social worker, the council social worker and assistant, the court’s child guardian and so on, plus contact visits with the natural mother three times a week.

When the twins came to us they were very disruptive, throwing heavy toys at your face if you tried to control them, biting, climbing over the safety gates, and so on. The boy always wanted to play the girls games, and the girl always wanted to play the boys games, but having joined in was not really interested and spoiled it. The work was full time for the whole time that the toddlers were awake – from 7am to 8:30pm – solid stressful work all day.

During this time we neglected our own children.

During this time we lost patience with each other and started to argue about money, about an anniversary card bought the day before the anniversary, about labour distribution, and everything. Our relationship started to break down. We ended up sleeping back to back for three weeks, and only talking when necessary to co-ordinate activity or to pretend to our children that we were OK. We cold not perform the tasks properly while not together as a couple, and we couldn’t sort out our relationship issues in such a stressful environment.

Because of our contract, we could not just send the children away – we had to give a month’s notice. My wife felt we would not survive that long. In the end, she phoned up and asked for them to be removed because her rheumatoid arthritis had flared up – which was true – but perhaps overstated, and also resigned from the job altogether. The twins were taken away within a week.

We found out later that the foster carers they moved too also suffered a marriage breakdown, but more encouragingly the next carers seem to be coping with them very well.

But this all left us in total disarray. After some time I took my wife to a restaurant and we made peace. And then had another row about whose fault it all was and whose turn it was to apologise first. But we did get back together more or less properly until another row six months later which was till really dealing with issues from this period

I am happy to report that we are now fully together, and properly and deeply in love again.

We still can’t understand what it was all for. We have been left with emotional scars, £2000 outstanding debt, and guilt for sending the vulnerable twins away. People keep asking us “How’s the fostering going?” and we can’t admit that we failed so we say we are changing agency and will look into it again next year (owing to a contract clause). Perhaps most importantly it has left us doubting our ability to read God’s plans for our life.

It has helped us to provide support and counselling for a family whose adoption broke down, but not much else.

My wife’s mid life crisis continues, and has cost us more, and there is currently a very exciting big plan in action, which I will write about in due course, but we worry that we have misread God’s plans again.

But we are really still waiting for the happy ending that God has enabled me to put at the end of all my other posts.