I am so lucky!

Written by Estrella82 on May 30, 2011

It’s been way too long since I last put my thoughts down on here.  Many things have happened over the past 6 months which I will no doubt update you on soon, but I had a conversation with a friend last week that really got me thinking.

My friend is a social care worker.  Despite her obviously being incredibly good at her job she was made redundant last year from her job with one of the local councils.  This in itself angered me.  How can they justify making a fantastic social care worker redundant when she was already flat out working with so many children that needed help? Anyway that’s another story!  She quickly got a new job with another council where she has been for about 6 months now.  I caught up with her last week and we ended up talking about her job for much of the night, and about the kids she was working with.

She alone works with about 14 kids and young people ranging from babies to early 20s.  One example was a 9 year old girl who has been in foster care for years with a family along with her older sister and the family have now turned around and said they will keep her sister but they want to get rid of this girl and never have contact with her again.  OK so she has behavioural problems but how can any adult do that to a child?  Surely they knew what fostering was about when they took the girls on? I mean, would you ever consider doing that to your own child? The sad thing is, maybe some people would...

There is another girl also in foster care, who the school had to talk to my friend about her personal hygiene.  The girl’s clothes are filthy and she soils herself but doesn’t clean up.  But the poor girl only has a couple of school shirts, both of which are too small, but she has nothing else to wear and has never been taught to clean herself up so what is she supposed to do?  Why should she know any different?  Can you believe my friend had to tell the foster parents to buy her a new school shirt? Is this not just simple common sense?  Not only that, they receive an awful lot of money to have children in foster care, so where the hell is this money going if not on the children?

My friend has previously had to remove a baby from a mother, who threw the child down the stairs!  She is constantly dealing with people who have been neglected or disowned, not only by their own parents but also foster parents, who surely know what they are volunteering themselves to do and go through a long selection process to assess their suitability.

She seems to constantly be in and out of court with these kids as well but the sad thing is, is it really surprising that these kids are finding themselves in trouble with the law after the upbringing they have had.  I could go on forever about the awful stories she tells me, I have literally just picked a couple here.  Listening to her talk really hit home and made me feel so very lucky. I know I complain about things and feel sorry for myself sometimes but when I hear these stories I realise I’m so fortunate I hardly know I’m born!  I take for granted what a wonderful loving family and upbringing I had, where so many children don’t have a family at all, let alone one that loves and cares for them.

What makes me sadder still is that she only works with about 14 kids and she is completely overworked.  Just imagine how many other kids there are in our country alone that are in similar situations but simply aren’t getting the help that my friend provides due to the councils being under staffed and care workers stretched to their limits.  We hear about terrible stories in the news, Baby P being a fairly recent one in the UK and what happened to him was horrendous, but part of me thinks, is it any wonder when the resources are stretched as much as they are? 

And then that leads me on to realise just how many people there are doing this type of job, who really aren’t good enough!  It scares me the number of kids that have never opened up and my friend is told that she won’t get anything out of them, yet within a week or two of working with them, they are telling her things they have never said to anyone. I admire my friend so very much. Even I would say she knows more about me than any other friend, I guess she is just one of those people you want to talk to and open up to.  As far as she is concerned she is just doing her job, but it is worrying how many people do hers or similar jobs but just don’t connect with the kids like she does. It’s no wonder so many young people slip through the net.

The problem is bigger than I ever imagined and the worrying thing is, how can we ever improve it when resources are being stretched further by the day.  Just speaking to her made me feel so lucky, it’s an eye opener to say the least! ? I genuinely don’t have any sort of answer on where to begin trying to sort this out and the harsh reality is, there are always going to be kids that need this help.  I just hope and pray that people like my friend who do such amazing jobs begin to get more support and recognition for the fantastic jobs they do and to me she is a true inspiration.