This image may shock those that know me because many have never thought of my life like this. This is me around age 6/7. House full of pets, no carpets and yes, that is faeces behind me. No food in the house and a mother in bed that was having a difficult mental breakdown-she still does suffer with severe mental health. This was my reality for several years, I had lived like this from around age 5. It is no surprise that I was shortly after taken into foster care, many people including school, family acquaintances and neighbours had reported the peculiar behaviours my mother had displayed. Sadly the system wasn’t as conscious of the long-term effects of instability for a child in 1996, I was rehabilitated back to my mother and removed from her a further 3 times- over a space of 4 years. By the age of 10, I had an array of abandonment, rejection and distorted relationship ideologies and mental behavioural patterns embedded.
Contact centres and taxis with escorts were my after school activities and meetings with guardians, therapists and court hearings were my norm. Now without going into catastrophic detail my purpose for this blog is to highlight that despite being a product of the care system and being left tussling life long PTSD and emotional difficulties, there are positives about foster care! There are not only positives but there are things that I believe helped shape me as a parent myself today. I get asked frequently “do you wish you had being adopted?” If I am totally honest yes, for when I was 6 and removed for the first time If I had being integrated into a suitable family and being given what all children need which is love, food, warmth and security then I probably would of escaped a lot of the mental struggles I still feel today. The abuse continued because I still had contact with my biological family and be it in the letters they sent, fortnightly supervised contact or the phone calls, despite social services attempts to protect me, the shielding wasn’t enough. Truth be told know one want’s to adopt a child by the time they are near on 11 and they said I had, had too much contact with my mother in early years to be adopted, so instead they said they would save my baby sister and had her adopted off instead. Ironically lumbering me with another ton of guilt, rejection, unanswered feelings and loss, but… never mind aye!
Fortunately for me there was something called long term foster care which meant the last family I was placed with had the opportunity to go to court and apply to look after me until I was 18. This meant less moving around and instability which is a positive in itself. It offered some feeling of acceptance and a sense of belonging to something. Human nature is to be together as one, a family.
Being with a family long term gave me 5 years of insite into the formalities around functional relationships and behaviours. I witnessed the routine of a working 2 parent family and how boundaries were in-bedded around discipline, respect and discussion. All these were alien to me because I had come from a 1 parent family with no structure and where I was the parent to the adult!
Long term care gave me holidays that I had never experienced before, travel is so important and as a parent now myself, I fully appreciate how special it is when you take your children abroad. Without foster care I wouldn’t of experienced that in my childhood, I am not saying every child in care is lucky enough to get this opportunity- this is simply my story.
Long term foster care allowed me to jump back onto the railway platform of education. Observe educated people and listen to the possibilities of university and courses something that members of my own family had never explored. Despite missing nearly three years of primary school I was able to catch up and that is most definitely a positive. I was able to socialise normally and make friends, some to this day I am still lucky to have.
Yet despite these positives the stigma of underachieving still lingers and occasionally creeps out in the words passed by other mouths
“Oh wow you went to university and your a care leaver”.
Phrases like this categorise you immediately, segregate you from fellow students and send your mind into pool of swirling questions like,
- Why can’t I go to university?
- Why does know one expect me to do well?
- Why are all care leavers expected to fail
- Why is it even a shock that I wanted to further my education
- Am I automatically deemed stupid because I was in care
- Why am I getting special treatment and grants because I was taken away from my family? No money can replace the pain I feel!
- Did I get those grades because they felt sorry for me?
- Did I get on the course so they could tick a box?
Despite the odds I did educate myself highly, three degrees and around 10 courses in various topics and interests which far outweighs and excels any stats about care leavers. I did this alongside being a teenage mum ironically, which is where I would, tick a box. Care leavers are more likely to end in teenage pregnancy. I would then argue that I didn’t repeat the cycle of being an abusive parent because of the positive things I had learnt in log term foster care. For example how to keep a clean and happy home. How to have discussions without physical fights (you may think isn’t that an obvious family trait) My biological family used violence on each other frequently if they didn’t get there own way. How to make celebrations special and exciting like birthdays, Christmas and so forth.
What is frustrating is the stigma also attached around being a good parent and being a care leaver. I have had many conversations in the past with health visitors, housing, medical professionals or therapists where they are surprised that “you’ve never had Social Services involvement”. It’s like it’s unheard of to be a care leaver and have children without repeating the cycle. I am the first to admit the anxieties I have had around them ever being in my life again have being unpleasant but that is no disrespect to social workers, it is purely inbuilt from my childhood memories.
If I were to turn back time and to be given the opportunity again to stay or to be taken, I would choose again to be taken. It isn’t ever going to be easy inside my head nor is it ever going to all make sense because a lot of the trauma comes in flashbacks and the 13 files I requested at 21 (10 years ago) I never read because it was to scary to re live. However what is positive is that I was able to use that trauma to propel myself into achieving. That little girl above in that image birthed an inner determination from being in care and it’s stayed with her ever since.
Written by Francesca Shaw for a friend that is studying at university and needed a case study on a care leaver 26/10/2020
The Wise Womb Woman 
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