Time to act

Listening to young people speaking at the Associate Parliamentary Group for Looked After Children and Care Leavers last week it seemed clear that they want social workers, foster carers and residential staff who have time, are committed to staying around and who care about them and their futures. That really makes sense - it’s what we all want.

But it’s not as simple as that is it? If it was, surely by now we would have created a care system which could meet those very human needs? And that made me think about the very good social workers I know, and especially the foster carers, like Andi, who seem to get it right. Because it’s not easy to open up your home and to build long-lasting relationships with children who are not your own. Yet Andi, a carer in the West Country, has been able to do it -  and to do it very well. So that it’s not only the adults she fostered as teenagers who keep in touch, but also their children who feel part of her large, unconventional extended family.

How does she do it? I learnt so much about fostering and what works by hearing her experiences. She’s very honest, ‘I fell into this. I was a single parent, had young children at home. I couldn’t go out to work.’ And then she found she was good at it. She could build bonds, and could love young people whose very difficult early lives had made them hard to love.

So how did she do it? ‘By having an agency and a team around me who could support me, respect what I was doing and sometimes just listen when I was going through a hard time.’ But it’s also clearly something about her and the personal qualities she possesses. ‘I won’t give up on them. Whatever happens I won’t give up. And I don’t expect happy endings - if they need me, I’m here ‘

You can only feel respect for people like Andi – but I also believe it’s time to learn from what they do and how they do it. Just as it’s important to listen to the voice of young people about what works, isn’t it time for policymakers and politicians to think carefully how to use this knowledge to shape good practice?