system
Growing up in the care of strangers
That’s the title of a book…. about care.
We haven’t read the book. But its authors are profiled over at www.fostercareinamerica.com, so that tells us it’s worth looking into. It’s available on Amazon but takes some time to be delivered to us here in Oz (and at some expense). So we hope the authors will forgive us for taking little more than the title, and a bit of information from the blurbs, and writing something about it.
You can read about the authors, Dr John Seita and Waln Brown, at www.fostercareinamerica.com, and they have a website for the book (which tells you a little more).
They and their contributors are foster care alumni. It is marvelous to see those who experienced the system capable of, and interested in, working in it. That’s one of their points. When is the system going to take on board advice from those who experienced it?
Business listens to its customers (or tries to) frequently. And there’s a whole wave of debate and discussion globally about Government transparency and interaction. And yet our experience of the foster care system is, quite frankly, that the ‘consumers’ of it – children and birth families – and partners in it – carers – often don’t get much of a say. Their ability to do so seems to be very much at the mercy of individual workers, and not enshrined in the system.
If we take the title of this book at face value, you shouldn’t have to grow up in the care of strangers, should you?
The word ‘strangers’ hit us hard because we have been strangers to a small, bemused child who landed on our doorstep. The dazed look on her face was quite hard to face, and we remember our pleasure when we watched it gradually give way to some expression as she became familiar with us.
The ‘strangers’ have now retreated, to be replaced by loving family members. We’ve watched the Camper grow happier and stronger as the realization and assurance of that has worked its way deep into her soul. Careful and skilled eyes see this change in her. We see it, but we feel it too, and that’s the feeling that gives us the greatest joy.
So the only strangers in the Camper’s life now are those outside our family and her birth family, and her circle of friends and acquaintances. Like most kids.
The system decided she needed permanency, and sought it for her. We have taken up that challenge. We have held the line when those in the system got a bit confused, and thought that relationships other than the Camper’s and ours were more important and should be given priority. We have made sure some workers understand that the Camper is a child who has a birth family she doesn’t live with, rather than a child in substitute care who needs to conform to some pre-defined relationship with her birth family. We have made sure that her individual interests didn’t get swamped beneath the standard way the system does things. We’ve acted like the Camper’s parents. Because we are.
We’ve said for a while that the foster carer base needs to be segmented. There is a vast difference between short and long term care – both in what a child needs from it and what a carer needs to be able to commit to and provide. All of which drives us to advocate more transparency about how this system works.
So our congratulations to every one of the contributors to Growing up in the Care of Strangers. Not just for what they have achieved in their lives, but for speaking out.
We haven’t read the book. But its authors are profiled over at www.fostercareinamerica.com, so that tells us it’s worth looking into. It’s available on Amazon but takes some time to be delivered to us here in Oz (and at some expense). So we hope the authors will forgive us for taking little more than the title, and a bit of information from the blurbs, and writing something about it.
You can read about the authors, Dr John Seita and Waln Brown, at www.fostercareinamerica.com, and they have a website for the book (which tells you a little more).
They and their contributors are foster care alumni. It is marvelous to see those who experienced the system capable of, and interested in, working in it. That’s one of their points. When is the system going to take on board advice from those who experienced it?
Business listens to its customers (or tries to) frequently. And there’s a whole wave of debate and discussion globally about Government transparency and interaction. And yet our experience of the foster care system is, quite frankly, that the ‘consumers’ of it – children and birth families – and partners in it – carers – often don’t get much of a say. Their ability to do so seems to be very much at the mercy of individual workers, and not enshrined in the system.
If we take the title of this book at face value, you shouldn’t have to grow up in the care of strangers, should you?
- Did you ever wonder where you might be sleeping tomorrow, or the next day?
- Did you ever wonder whether the adult giving you assistance or instruction really, really cared deep down for you, or were they just doing a job?
- Did you ever want just one person to tell you they loved you, just you?
- Did you ever think that, no matter what, there was one place and one person who would welcome you, any time?
The word ‘strangers’ hit us hard because we have been strangers to a small, bemused child who landed on our doorstep. The dazed look on her face was quite hard to face, and we remember our pleasure when we watched it gradually give way to some expression as she became familiar with us.
The ‘strangers’ have now retreated, to be replaced by loving family members. We’ve watched the Camper grow happier and stronger as the realization and assurance of that has worked its way deep into her soul. Careful and skilled eyes see this change in her. We see it, but we feel it too, and that’s the feeling that gives us the greatest joy.
So the only strangers in the Camper’s life now are those outside our family and her birth family, and her circle of friends and acquaintances. Like most kids.
The system decided she needed permanency, and sought it for her. We have taken up that challenge. We have held the line when those in the system got a bit confused, and thought that relationships other than the Camper’s and ours were more important and should be given priority. We have made sure some workers understand that the Camper is a child who has a birth family she doesn’t live with, rather than a child in substitute care who needs to conform to some pre-defined relationship with her birth family. We have made sure that her individual interests didn’t get swamped beneath the standard way the system does things. We’ve acted like the Camper’s parents. Because we are.
We’ve said for a while that the foster carer base needs to be segmented. There is a vast difference between short and long term care – both in what a child needs from it and what a carer needs to be able to commit to and provide. All of which drives us to advocate more transparency about how this system works.
So our congratulations to every one of the contributors to Growing up in the Care of Strangers. Not just for what they have achieved in their lives, but for speaking out.
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Can a foster parent ‘over-advocate’ for their foster child?
We follow a number of online forums and this came up over at www.fostercarecentral.com. A carer posted that they’d been told they ‘over-advocated’ for their foster child.
Over-advocate? That seems to be legal-speak creeping into the child services area. We are sure we could find some plain english expressions that are much clearer and, quite frankly, a whole lot more honest.
‘An advocate is someone who speaks on behalf of another person, especially in a legal context. … Implicit in the concept is the notion that the represented lacks the knowledge, skill, ability, or standing to speak for themselves.’ (Wikipedia)
So let’s be honest and decipher what that term might mean. As a foster parent, you attend case conferences, and talk with social workers on behalf of your foster child. Depending on their age or their circumstances they might lack the knowledge, skill, ability, maturity or capability to speak on their own behalf.
Can a carer ‘over-speak’, or ‘over-represent’? Are we saying more than we should?
We’d love to hear an honest debate on this one. We’d like to ask the social workers whether they are saying that we aren’t educated or qualified or experienced enough to make a contribution to the discussion about the child’s needs?
Or are they saying that we simply don’t have the right to contribute? Is our role to provide a home and care but leave the decision making to the ‘system’?
Sadly, this sounds like a turf war.
If the social welfare profession is so precious that outspoken foster parents cause grief, then we really need an overhaul. Business deals with outspoken, opinionated customers and shareholders all the time. We judge their contribution according to their talents, but we don’t – and can’t – prevent them from having their say.
We’ve had workers who spent a great deal of energy telling us, with diminishing degrees of politeness, to shut up and get back in our box. We had a role to play, designated by the system, and they were thoroughly annoyed that we didn’t stick to the script.
But interestingly, it’s our willingness to step outside ‘our role’ that sees us maintaining contact with children formerly in our care, long after they have become adults. It’s why we stepped up to help them ‘age out’ of foster care (emotionally, financially and with life skills), when the system, previous carers, and all those passionate social workers had left the scene.
If we applied some innovative thinking to the issue, then maybe the passion with which carers might speak on behalf of a child is a good thing? Business has long recognised that divergent viewpoints and passionate debate, if managed well, drive much better results.
So it gets down to frontline training. In all fairness we believe social workers have a large range of stakeholders to deal with – from authorities, to birth families, to agencies, to carers and beyond. But there are other professions that deal with such a range. The ability to manage people is not taught at university (and if anyone tells you it was, or is, they are lying). It is learned on the job, over many years, and requires both an interest in people and a willingness to be self-aware. Too often the fundamental skill that underpins both of those elements – listening – is absent.
So, listen up. We’ll over-advocate for the Camper as long as we can breathe.
(If you are a carer about to provide care, you might like to print these bullet points out, amend or add to them to reflect what you think you bring to the placements, and give them to your worker.)
And if doing any of that is a challenge, we suggest a great deal more training is needed. We’re happy to assist.
Over-advocate? That seems to be legal-speak creeping into the child services area. We are sure we could find some plain english expressions that are much clearer and, quite frankly, a whole lot more honest.
‘An advocate is someone who speaks on behalf of another person, especially in a legal context. … Implicit in the concept is the notion that the represented lacks the knowledge, skill, ability, or standing to speak for themselves.’ (Wikipedia)
So let’s be honest and decipher what that term might mean. As a foster parent, you attend case conferences, and talk with social workers on behalf of your foster child. Depending on their age or their circumstances they might lack the knowledge, skill, ability, maturity or capability to speak on their own behalf.
Can a carer ‘over-speak’, or ‘over-represent’? Are we saying more than we should?
We’d love to hear an honest debate on this one. We’d like to ask the social workers whether they are saying that we aren’t educated or qualified or experienced enough to make a contribution to the discussion about the child’s needs?
Or are they saying that we simply don’t have the right to contribute? Is our role to provide a home and care but leave the decision making to the ‘system’?
Sadly, this sounds like a turf war.
If the social welfare profession is so precious that outspoken foster parents cause grief, then we really need an overhaul. Business deals with outspoken, opinionated customers and shareholders all the time. We judge their contribution according to their talents, but we don’t – and can’t – prevent them from having their say.
We’ve had workers who spent a great deal of energy telling us, with diminishing degrees of politeness, to shut up and get back in our box. We had a role to play, designated by the system, and they were thoroughly annoyed that we didn’t stick to the script.
But interestingly, it’s our willingness to step outside ‘our role’ that sees us maintaining contact with children formerly in our care, long after they have become adults. It’s why we stepped up to help them ‘age out’ of foster care (emotionally, financially and with life skills), when the system, previous carers, and all those passionate social workers had left the scene.
If we applied some innovative thinking to the issue, then maybe the passion with which carers might speak on behalf of a child is a good thing? Business has long recognised that divergent viewpoints and passionate debate, if managed well, drive much better results.
So it gets down to frontline training. In all fairness we believe social workers have a large range of stakeholders to deal with – from authorities, to birth families, to agencies, to carers and beyond. But there are other professions that deal with such a range. The ability to manage people is not taught at university (and if anyone tells you it was, or is, they are lying). It is learned on the job, over many years, and requires both an interest in people and a willingness to be self-aware. Too often the fundamental skill that underpins both of those elements – listening – is absent.
So, listen up. We’ll over-advocate for the Camper as long as we can breathe.
(If you are a carer about to provide care, you might like to print these bullet points out, amend or add to them to reflect what you think you bring to the placements, and give them to your worker.)
- We will challenge you on decisions, and we will give you our well thought out opinion on what we see the child going through.
- We will raise issues and suggest decisions that need to be made for you to give us feedback on.
- We will tell you politely if we think you are wrong, and we will become less polite if you ignore us.
- We will expect you to be skilled enough to see the love/compassion we have for this child and understand the depth of our care for the child.
- As time goes by we will expect you to be skilled enough to see the love this child has for us, or the reliance they place on us, and take that into account.
- We don’t accept there is any ‘mark’ to overstep so we will have no tolerance for you complaining, overtly or covertly, about us doing that.
- We will expect that you, as the professional you hold yourself out to be, will be able to assess us and judge us and manage us and collaborate with us.
And if doing any of that is a challenge, we suggest a great deal more training is needed. We’re happy to assist.
Agencies' neglect fatal for Ebony
There are a few circumstances in life where one mistake can be fatal. But in most cases, adults are usually involved. Adults choose to put themselves at risk.
Small children don’t choose to put themselves at risk.
Not in relation to the fundamentals – like love, family, care, learning. They rely on adults to protect them. They rely first on their parents. And our child protection system is set up to monitor, and manage, when parents fail. We expect it to work. But if the parents fail, and then the system fails, a child can die.
So what an absolute tragedy to read about a child in New South Wales who starved to death while in the care of her parents. No child should go through what Ebony went through. If ‘the system’ is the last line of defence, then it’s a huge responsibility for the people who work in ‘the system’.
We know when software fails. We know when a company fails. We know when some appliance fails. Do we know when a parent fails? You don’t just get a blue computer screen. In many cases it is not just one event that makes it obvious you have a #parentfail.
But when the risk of not acting is a child’s life, you may ask why on earth someone didn’t do something?
One of the newspaper reports stated that DoCs had ‘failed to convince the Children's Court to remove Ebony and her two older sisters from their parents, despite the fact Ebony's younger sister had been removed’. So the ‘system’ had a ‘fail’ at what appears in hindsight to have been the right course of action? Why?
The Ombudsman concluded that Ebony’s case "illustrates very clearly what can go wrong for children when agencies fail to work effectively, fail to work together and fail to take shared responsibility for the care and protection of children".
No kidding.
Small children don’t choose to put themselves at risk.
Not in relation to the fundamentals – like love, family, care, learning. They rely on adults to protect them. They rely first on their parents. And our child protection system is set up to monitor, and manage, when parents fail. We expect it to work. But if the parents fail, and then the system fails, a child can die.
So what an absolute tragedy to read about a child in New South Wales who starved to death while in the care of her parents. No child should go through what Ebony went through. If ‘the system’ is the last line of defence, then it’s a huge responsibility for the people who work in ‘the system’.
We know when software fails. We know when a company fails. We know when some appliance fails. Do we know when a parent fails? You don’t just get a blue computer screen. In many cases it is not just one event that makes it obvious you have a #parentfail.
But when the risk of not acting is a child’s life, you may ask why on earth someone didn’t do something?
- Is it because the online forums are full of condemnation at the apparent ease with which we remove children from biological parents who don’t care properly for them?
- Is it because we hear from children who have been in care that they have never managed to deal with, or been given the support to cope with, being removed from their birth parents?
- Is it because psychologists have studies that tell us that even a poor biological family is better than removing a child from them?
- Is it because the ideology favours family support and keeping a family together, no matter what?
- Is it because none of the ‘systems’ or agencies that look out for a child in NSW are linked?
- Is it because no one is able to see the complete picture?
- Is it because worker turnover meant there was never one worker with the family history?
- Is it because the processes in the main organisation charged with the responsibilities for children at risk simply don’t work?
One of the newspaper reports stated that DoCs had ‘failed to convince the Children's Court to remove Ebony and her two older sisters from their parents, despite the fact Ebony's younger sister had been removed’. So the ‘system’ had a ‘fail’ at what appears in hindsight to have been the right course of action? Why?
The Ombudsman concluded that Ebony’s case "illustrates very clearly what can go wrong for children when agencies fail to work effectively, fail to work together and fail to take shared responsibility for the care and protection of children".
No kidding.
- Agencies failing to work effectively means process improvement is required.
- Agencies failing to work together means no links (technical or personal), no reason to share and no habit of collaboration. Links need to be built and people need to be trained in collaborating. Having worked with social workers who didn’t even like collaborating with us, we suspect there’s a cultural issue to address in some sectors as well.
- Shared responsibility? That means all of us. Courts, system and community. This isn’t just a DoCS problem.
65 Australian children per 1000 are living in out of home care
We don’t often see statistics in Australia about children in care. This came across our RSS feed the other week from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
As at 30 June 2008 in Australia, there were 31,116 children living in out of home care (OOHC). That’s 6.5% per 1,000, or 65 children per 1000.
One third were aged 10-14 years, one third aged 5-9 years, 25% were aged under 5 years, and 14% were aged 15-17 years.
This rate and number has more than doubled since 1997 (from 11,600 to the current number). The increase is a result of more children commencing OOHC than are being discharged from it each year. The increased duration of OOHC placements also reflects the increasing complexity in family situations.
Common family situations are low family income, parental substance abuse, mental health issues and family violence.
The majority of children - 95% - aged 0-14 were in home based care. That is split into foster care (48%) and kinship care (45%). A smaller proportion were in residential care (5%), and they were generally older children over the age of 10 years.
During 2007-08, there were 317,526 reports of suspected child-abuse and neglect made to authorities. These figures appear to indicate that the reporting of abuse has increased. Of that number, 194,937 concerned the same children. There were a total of 148,824 finalised investigations recorded in Australia (an increase of 8% on the 2005-06 year).
Pretty sobering figures, don’t you think?
As at 30 June 2008 in Australia, there were 31,116 children living in out of home care (OOHC). That’s 6.5% per 1,000, or 65 children per 1000.
One third were aged 10-14 years, one third aged 5-9 years, 25% were aged under 5 years, and 14% were aged 15-17 years.
This rate and number has more than doubled since 1997 (from 11,600 to the current number). The increase is a result of more children commencing OOHC than are being discharged from it each year. The increased duration of OOHC placements also reflects the increasing complexity in family situations.
Common family situations are low family income, parental substance abuse, mental health issues and family violence.
The majority of children - 95% - aged 0-14 were in home based care. That is split into foster care (48%) and kinship care (45%). A smaller proportion were in residential care (5%), and they were generally older children over the age of 10 years.
During 2007-08, there were 317,526 reports of suspected child-abuse and neglect made to authorities. These figures appear to indicate that the reporting of abuse has increased. Of that number, 194,937 concerned the same children. There were a total of 148,824 finalised investigations recorded in Australia (an increase of 8% on the 2005-06 year).
Pretty sobering figures, don’t you think?
Humans are very poor judges
‘The most fundamental problem with child protection in Australia is a philosophical one… the source of the problem is the erroneous assumption that because the protagonists in child abuse are people…the solution lies with other more socially competent people who are employed to make judicious decisions about risk and provide wise advice on parenting.’
This paragraph is from the article by James Barber published in the SMH.
If we had to summarise the article in one word (and we are not known for our brevity), we’d say it was on specialisation. It’s about making use of more specialised skills and methods in judging families and children at risk. Just as medicine has moved to make use of science over ‘practice wisdom’, Barber suggests that children’s services must follow suit.
The issue is whether humans can really detach themselves from their own prejudices and experiences to make objective decisions about other humans?
We’d all like to think we can. But whether we can or not, the other way of looking at the issue is to ask ‘are there now better ways to review information and make decisions about children and families at risk?’
It would be a brave person who said no.
Barber advocates for Evidence Based Practice, which suspends the human judgment in judging humans, and ‘which is about the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of the best available evidence in making decisions about the care of individual clients’.
He mentions recent research in North America. It has proven that mathematicians and actuaries, making use of bucket loads of data in a way that one person simply cannot, are actually able to make better decisions about families at risk than social workers.
Considering that the way most people manage the daily onslaught of work and life challenges is to find the ‘norm’ or pull everything towards the average, it seems entirely reasonable to us that more technology, science and skill is required to handle some of the critical calls in children’s services.
And if the out of home care system is only going to be more distributed to the private agencies, as per the Wood Royal Commission recommendations, more rigour, science and common standards are essential.
It sounds funny to consider that certain parts of the children’s services model need to lose the human element, but after mulling over this for a week we think it does.
This paragraph is from the article by James Barber published in the SMH.
If we had to summarise the article in one word (and we are not known for our brevity), we’d say it was on specialisation. It’s about making use of more specialised skills and methods in judging families and children at risk. Just as medicine has moved to make use of science over ‘practice wisdom’, Barber suggests that children’s services must follow suit.
The issue is whether humans can really detach themselves from their own prejudices and experiences to make objective decisions about other humans?
We’d all like to think we can. But whether we can or not, the other way of looking at the issue is to ask ‘are there now better ways to review information and make decisions about children and families at risk?’
It would be a brave person who said no.
Barber advocates for Evidence Based Practice, which suspends the human judgment in judging humans, and ‘which is about the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of the best available evidence in making decisions about the care of individual clients’.
He mentions recent research in North America. It has proven that mathematicians and actuaries, making use of bucket loads of data in a way that one person simply cannot, are actually able to make better decisions about families at risk than social workers.
Considering that the way most people manage the daily onslaught of work and life challenges is to find the ‘norm’ or pull everything towards the average, it seems entirely reasonable to us that more technology, science and skill is required to handle some of the critical calls in children’s services.
And if the out of home care system is only going to be more distributed to the private agencies, as per the Wood Royal Commission recommendations, more rigour, science and common standards are essential.
It sounds funny to consider that certain parts of the children’s services model need to lose the human element, but after mulling over this for a week we think it does.
Who should assess whether families are at risk?
Every so often a very provocative article comes across our desk.
There are very frank conversations that should happen in relation to children’s services, but we’re not sure they happen very often, if at all.
So it’s refreshing to see a completely different viewpoint offered, especially by someone with relevant experience.
This article is quite challenging. Here James Barber suggests that there are people better qualified than social workers to assess families most at risk.
We’ll write more about it soon.
There are very frank conversations that should happen in relation to children’s services, but we’re not sure they happen very often, if at all.
So it’s refreshing to see a completely different viewpoint offered, especially by someone with relevant experience.
This article is quite challenging. Here James Barber suggests that there are people better qualified than social workers to assess families most at risk.
We’ll write more about it soon.
Foster children walking on eggshells
Here is a quote, from a real person, Jennifer, who runs a site called Foster Care in America. Her site gets the thumbs up from us because of its constructive focus, and its positive objectives. Jennifer highlights foster care alumni and their achievements, and has recently started writing about her experiences as a child in care. How’s that for leadership?
So just take a moment, close your eyes, and try to think about what that might feel like. Knowing that the most fundamental element of your life – where you live and who you live with – might change at any moment. No warning. Out of your control. That’s stressful.
Why on earth would you begin to put down any roots? Why would you bother?
Children are learning to live with a level of stress that most of us only deal with as adults. What does that do to them?
As adults, we have lots of resources available to help us cope with stress. We have the ability to research for ourselves. We have support groups, family networks and often employers who care enough to teach us to deal with it or to support us if it becomes overwhelming. And we have life experience to put the stressful event in some sort of context.
Kids have none of that.
The Camper is with us now until she decides otherwise (she has told us that she’s never moving out by the way). She sees her birth family and this knowledge of her history is good. But we’ve seen her deal with stress about her birth family. She has suffered acute stress after contact visits. She suffers stress about what she thinks her birth family expect of her at contact visits. It’s not what the usual under-10 brigade has to deal with, and so we balance two approaches with her: a cheerful sense of robustness about it all (‘oh, you’ll be fine!’), and an acutely tuned awareness of how she really feels. So we are actively addressing the Camper’s stress. If we want her to trust us and have confidence that we can make it right for her, we need to be able to influence it.
Luckily we can. As the Camper works through this it has reinforced for her that:
If moving children causes them such stress, shouldn’t we aim not to move them? Or if we need to move them, shouldn’t we have the guts to make it permanent, at the very least for those early formative years. When there is so much evidence that multiple moves harm children, why do we keep accepting that it is the best we can do?
Imagine if we could get a Prime Minister to say ‘No child should walk on eggshells, knowing that at any moment without warning; HOME CHANGE!’
So just take a moment, close your eyes, and try to think about what that might feel like. Knowing that the most fundamental element of your life – where you live and who you live with – might change at any moment. No warning. Out of your control. That’s stressful.
Why on earth would you begin to put down any roots? Why would you bother?
Children are learning to live with a level of stress that most of us only deal with as adults. What does that do to them?
As adults, we have lots of resources available to help us cope with stress. We have the ability to research for ourselves. We have support groups, family networks and often employers who care enough to teach us to deal with it or to support us if it becomes overwhelming. And we have life experience to put the stressful event in some sort of context.
Kids have none of that.
The Camper is with us now until she decides otherwise (she has told us that she’s never moving out by the way). She sees her birth family and this knowledge of her history is good. But we’ve seen her deal with stress about her birth family. She has suffered acute stress after contact visits. She suffers stress about what she thinks her birth family expect of her at contact visits. It’s not what the usual under-10 brigade has to deal with, and so we balance two approaches with her: a cheerful sense of robustness about it all (‘oh, you’ll be fine!’), and an acutely tuned awareness of how she really feels. So we are actively addressing the Camper’s stress. If we want her to trust us and have confidence that we can make it right for her, we need to be able to influence it.
Luckily we can. As the Camper works through this it has reinforced for her that:
- We are her family, we love her and we will help her work through this.
- We know her best and she can talk to us about it.
- She gets a say, and she can influence the outcome.
If moving children causes them such stress, shouldn’t we aim not to move them? Or if we need to move them, shouldn’t we have the guts to make it permanent, at the very least for those early formative years. When there is so much evidence that multiple moves harm children, why do we keep accepting that it is the best we can do?
Imagine if we could get a Prime Minister to say ‘No child should walk on eggshells, knowing that at any moment without warning; HOME CHANGE!’
'Shattered father failed by DoCS system'
OK, we’d like to warn anyone who has been more than an occasional reader of this blog to hold on. Because we are about to stand up for DoCS. Bet you never saw that coming, heh?
We regularly hold social work agencies and workers up to scrutiny for poor policy, poor performance, and poor people management. But we try to balance our rants with some constructive suggestions about what the preferred approach should be. And as we are foster parents in the system, we are actively putting our money where our mouth is. We’ve earned our right to have a say and it is an informed one. Right?
So we’ve been watching this week’s vitriol from the great uninformed about DoCS’ performance in relation to the 12 year old mum to be. If you follow us on Twitter (@fostercarer) then you’ll have seen some tweets (and if you don’t follow us on Twitter, give it a go. Pithy is good and we are at our pithiest there…)
Here’s the most recent, in depth (and we use that term loosely) article on the subject from The Daily Telegraph. It’s titled Shattered father failed by rotten DoCS system. That’s an award winning headline.
All fingers, including those of anyone who can type a comment on a news website, are pointing to DoCS as having failed the expectant child. Despite an order awarding custody to the mother, who was clearly not fit to care for the child or provide a safe home (so who made THAT decision?), when the non-custodial father raised his concerns to DoCS about the child’s welfare, they didn’t remove the child.
In work and life we believe you should cop it on the chin when you deserve it. But our sense of fairness is feeling a bit confronted.
Even Community Services Minister Linda Burney seems to have waved goodbye to the horse as it bolted past her out the gate, and has given up trying to provide any cogent explanation as to what really happened in DoCS when one of these cases hits the headlines.
So we applauded just a bit when we saw this piece from Tory Maguire on The Punch, entitled Blaming Government for rotten parents.
She writes: ‘Blaming the authorities has become the default position for so many people who don’t think the ultimate responsibility for the care of children lies with their parents.’
Spot on. We’re not sure who appointed DoCS as the only defence for children in this state, but they seem to be expected to pick up the pieces when it all goes pear-shaped no matter what the previous circumstances. If they were resourced, and structured to do just that, then we’d be leading the calls for accountability. The problem with all this is that slowly, relentlessly, we are accepting the idea that DoCS is ultimately and finally responsible. Not the parents. Not the community. Not the police or the legal system. Not the other support systems like schools and the medical profession.
Maguire points out that ‘there were children in greater danger than this little girl’ that took the available resources.
Do you know, at some point that could have been our foster child? We have a child in care because the decision was made that her birth family couldn’t care for her properly. She was at serious risk of immediate harm and enduring hardship, and a worker mobilised the system to remove her and initiated the decision to keep her safe. Her case was, in an over-taxed system, given priority.
So here’s a quiet round of applause for all the dedicated DoCS workers who make the right decisions. Credit where credit is due. It’s a shame that the positive stories don’t sell newspapers, isn’t it.
We regularly hold social work agencies and workers up to scrutiny for poor policy, poor performance, and poor people management. But we try to balance our rants with some constructive suggestions about what the preferred approach should be. And as we are foster parents in the system, we are actively putting our money where our mouth is. We’ve earned our right to have a say and it is an informed one. Right?
So we’ve been watching this week’s vitriol from the great uninformed about DoCS’ performance in relation to the 12 year old mum to be. If you follow us on Twitter (@fostercarer) then you’ll have seen some tweets (and if you don’t follow us on Twitter, give it a go. Pithy is good and we are at our pithiest there…)
Here’s the most recent, in depth (and we use that term loosely) article on the subject from The Daily Telegraph. It’s titled Shattered father failed by rotten DoCS system. That’s an award winning headline.
All fingers, including those of anyone who can type a comment on a news website, are pointing to DoCS as having failed the expectant child. Despite an order awarding custody to the mother, who was clearly not fit to care for the child or provide a safe home (so who made THAT decision?), when the non-custodial father raised his concerns to DoCS about the child’s welfare, they didn’t remove the child.
In work and life we believe you should cop it on the chin when you deserve it. But our sense of fairness is feeling a bit confronted.
Even Community Services Minister Linda Burney seems to have waved goodbye to the horse as it bolted past her out the gate, and has given up trying to provide any cogent explanation as to what really happened in DoCS when one of these cases hits the headlines.
So we applauded just a bit when we saw this piece from Tory Maguire on The Punch, entitled Blaming Government for rotten parents.
She writes: ‘Blaming the authorities has become the default position for so many people who don’t think the ultimate responsibility for the care of children lies with their parents.’
Spot on. We’re not sure who appointed DoCS as the only defence for children in this state, but they seem to be expected to pick up the pieces when it all goes pear-shaped no matter what the previous circumstances. If they were resourced, and structured to do just that, then we’d be leading the calls for accountability. The problem with all this is that slowly, relentlessly, we are accepting the idea that DoCS is ultimately and finally responsible. Not the parents. Not the community. Not the police or the legal system. Not the other support systems like schools and the medical profession.
Maguire points out that ‘there were children in greater danger than this little girl’ that took the available resources.
Do you know, at some point that could have been our foster child? We have a child in care because the decision was made that her birth family couldn’t care for her properly. She was at serious risk of immediate harm and enduring hardship, and a worker mobilised the system to remove her and initiated the decision to keep her safe. Her case was, in an over-taxed system, given priority.
So here’s a quiet round of applause for all the dedicated DoCS workers who make the right decisions. Credit where credit is due. It’s a shame that the positive stories don’t sell newspapers, isn’t it.
Social work survey says workers described negatively
CommunityCare.co.uk did a survey. And they found that ‘Journalists used negative words to describe social work roughly five times as often as positive or sympathetic words’.
Their results were blunt. Consider this:
‘Words (describing social workers' conduct, ability or demeanour) varied from "inept" and "arrogant" to serious personal allegations, such as "bullying", and "blackmailing". Social workers will no doubt be alarmed that the second most used word was "bully" or "bullying".‘
There are many definitions of bullying, but here is the Wikipedia one.
In colloquial speech, bullying often describes a form of harassment perpetrated by an abuser who possesses more physical and/or social power and dominance than the victim.
So it’s all about an inequality of power, and dominance.
The purpose of this blog is to share and educate. While the survey reviewed journalists’ reporting (and has some interesting things to say on whether all sides of the story are able to be presented), here’s our experience of some behaviour that was not social work’s finest hour.
A worker raising the same issue, after we had indicated we didn’t agree with it, at every single phone call, email message and visit. It was the wrong thing for the Camper and so we just kept saying no.
Now we’d call them on it, indicate we have answered the question and unless they have new reasons to raise it again, we consider the issue has been dealt with.
A worker who, when challenged, got frustrated and aggressive.
We stayed calm and suggested she learn how to receive feedback and work with various parties to achieve agreement. We thought she would have learned that at uni but maybe she missed that class?
Perjorative comments that were belittling or disparaging. Our particular favourite was ‘this is what you signed up for’ (so you as the carer don’t get a say).
We cheerfully advised that we signed up to care for a child, not to slavishly agree with the workers on everything without analysis and debate.
We took a support person with us to a meeting. When that support person spoke, they were told they were allowed to be present at the meeting, but not to speak.
If we were in that situation again, we would initiate a discussion at the start of the meeting as to the roles of all the people present and establish the ground rules.
All of these examples have one thing in common. The unspoken assumption, exhibited by the worker in each instance, was that they held the power, the decision-making responsibility, or the high moral ground. And when we disagreed, or challenged them, their behaviour veered dangerously close to bullying.
The interplay of all the adults responsible for a child’s life can be a delicate matter.
Carers expect the worker to have skill and experience, we care for this child and want to do the right thing for them, and we know the agency has a role to play. But workers are from an institution with all the authority that comes with it, and we are just a family or an individual. The power may not feel equal, and it doesn’t take much to shift it.
Lest we scare off any prospective carers out there, we hasten to tell you that we have experienced the other side of the spectrum. We know workers who are collaborative, wise, thoughtful and perceptive. They share their views without lecturing, and they are prepared to listen to the carers, and more importantly, the child.
We wish there were more of you. We hope you are recognized within the system as the exceptional workers you are, and we hope other, less experienced workers learn from you.
Their results were blunt. Consider this:
‘Words (describing social workers' conduct, ability or demeanour) varied from "inept" and "arrogant" to serious personal allegations, such as "bullying", and "blackmailing". Social workers will no doubt be alarmed that the second most used word was "bully" or "bullying".‘
There are many definitions of bullying, but here is the Wikipedia one.
In colloquial speech, bullying often describes a form of harassment perpetrated by an abuser who possesses more physical and/or social power and dominance than the victim.
So it’s all about an inequality of power, and dominance.
The purpose of this blog is to share and educate. While the survey reviewed journalists’ reporting (and has some interesting things to say on whether all sides of the story are able to be presented), here’s our experience of some behaviour that was not social work’s finest hour.
A worker raising the same issue, after we had indicated we didn’t agree with it, at every single phone call, email message and visit. It was the wrong thing for the Camper and so we just kept saying no.
Now we’d call them on it, indicate we have answered the question and unless they have new reasons to raise it again, we consider the issue has been dealt with.
A worker who, when challenged, got frustrated and aggressive.
We stayed calm and suggested she learn how to receive feedback and work with various parties to achieve agreement. We thought she would have learned that at uni but maybe she missed that class?
Perjorative comments that were belittling or disparaging. Our particular favourite was ‘this is what you signed up for’ (so you as the carer don’t get a say).
We cheerfully advised that we signed up to care for a child, not to slavishly agree with the workers on everything without analysis and debate.
We took a support person with us to a meeting. When that support person spoke, they were told they were allowed to be present at the meeting, but not to speak.
If we were in that situation again, we would initiate a discussion at the start of the meeting as to the roles of all the people present and establish the ground rules.
All of these examples have one thing in common. The unspoken assumption, exhibited by the worker in each instance, was that they held the power, the decision-making responsibility, or the high moral ground. And when we disagreed, or challenged them, their behaviour veered dangerously close to bullying.
The interplay of all the adults responsible for a child’s life can be a delicate matter.
Carers expect the worker to have skill and experience, we care for this child and want to do the right thing for them, and we know the agency has a role to play. But workers are from an institution with all the authority that comes with it, and we are just a family or an individual. The power may not feel equal, and it doesn’t take much to shift it.
Lest we scare off any prospective carers out there, we hasten to tell you that we have experienced the other side of the spectrum. We know workers who are collaborative, wise, thoughtful and perceptive. They share their views without lecturing, and they are prepared to listen to the carers, and more importantly, the child.
We wish there were more of you. We hope you are recognized within the system as the exceptional workers you are, and we hope other, less experienced workers learn from you.
Children in care need a pushy parent
‘England's care system needs a radical overhaul with the state acting as a "pushy parent" to get the very best for the children in its charge, MPs say.’
We understand the sentiment behind this call in the UK, reported on the BBC in April. Someone needs to – let’s say it like it is – fight for these children, or never give up, just like a parent who loves them dearly.
So in theory, OK. At a system level, the state should put in place the best care for these children, and use its considerable muscle to make sure that level of care is provided.
But the state – a collective, anonymous, corporate entity – cannot replicate a parent’s care. Individual workers of real empathy and talent may bond with and counsel children in care. But let’s hope the MPs haven’t gotten carried away.
‘A report by the Commons' Children, Schools and Families Committee says the state fails as a "parent" because it does not demand enough from services.’
Good luck to them. We hope the ‘services’ are up to it. As foster parents, we demanded more from our private agency. Like a seat at the table in decisions about Happy Camper, and an evaluation of whether their ‘one size fitted all’ policy really applied to our Camper. They didn’t like that. Junior manager, senior manager, and agency head honcho. They lined up one after the other like dominoes, to tell us that we were ‘just the carers’ and their policy won. We didn’t accept that and transferred to another agency.
‘We welcome the government's assertion that it should become exceptional for a young person to leave care before they turn 18, and hope that it will precipitate a culture change in local authorities.’
Well, yeah. Don’t you love how the most obvious principles are restated as if they are the Eleventh Commandment? But think about what the system teaches many of these children, by bouncing them from home to home to home through their childhood. By moving these children so many times, we are actively teaching them that attachment is transient, that they will survive moving homes, and that they really shouldn’t learn to care about a family. And we’re surprised when they leave?
‘(entering the care system) must be seen as a positive experience, but this will only happen if the state can better replicate the warm, secure care of good parents for every child in the system.’
We have a child in care, who has been with us longer than with anyone else. The system made a call when she was quite tiny. It recognized that she needed the warm, secure care of good parents. And so the love, warmth and security has overwhelmed any conscious memories of the earlier unsettled times. This is now her ‘real’ life. Importantly, her reality is stability, attachment, trust, and expectation.
‘For some children care should be seen as "the best available option rather than a last resort", they said.’
Care will be the best available option for children when it is permanent. Stable. And enduring. So maybe we need to have the courage to make a decision for the child’s sake early on. Does the birth parent have a perpetual right to try and get their child back, no matter what? Too often care becomes the last resort when a rehabilitation plan fails. Or too much of the plan with birth parent is visible to the child, before there are any indications it will be successful. And the person who suffers long term damage is the child.
‘…concern for the happiness and welfare of the 60,000 children in care should be at the heart of the system.’
Everyone says this. ‘It’s all for the children’ you hear. Sometimes it can be so piously quoted to justify a viewpoint you feel like shouting. But try to break this principle down to reasonable, sensible decisions that put the child first, and too often policy, process and research get in the way.
We understand the sentiment behind this call in the UK, reported on the BBC in April. Someone needs to – let’s say it like it is – fight for these children, or never give up, just like a parent who loves them dearly.
So in theory, OK. At a system level, the state should put in place the best care for these children, and use its considerable muscle to make sure that level of care is provided.
But the state – a collective, anonymous, corporate entity – cannot replicate a parent’s care. Individual workers of real empathy and talent may bond with and counsel children in care. But let’s hope the MPs haven’t gotten carried away.
‘A report by the Commons' Children, Schools and Families Committee says the state fails as a "parent" because it does not demand enough from services.’
Good luck to them. We hope the ‘services’ are up to it. As foster parents, we demanded more from our private agency. Like a seat at the table in decisions about Happy Camper, and an evaluation of whether their ‘one size fitted all’ policy really applied to our Camper. They didn’t like that. Junior manager, senior manager, and agency head honcho. They lined up one after the other like dominoes, to tell us that we were ‘just the carers’ and their policy won. We didn’t accept that and transferred to another agency.
‘We welcome the government's assertion that it should become exceptional for a young person to leave care before they turn 18, and hope that it will precipitate a culture change in local authorities.’
Well, yeah. Don’t you love how the most obvious principles are restated as if they are the Eleventh Commandment? But think about what the system teaches many of these children, by bouncing them from home to home to home through their childhood. By moving these children so many times, we are actively teaching them that attachment is transient, that they will survive moving homes, and that they really shouldn’t learn to care about a family. And we’re surprised when they leave?
‘(entering the care system) must be seen as a positive experience, but this will only happen if the state can better replicate the warm, secure care of good parents for every child in the system.’
We have a child in care, who has been with us longer than with anyone else. The system made a call when she was quite tiny. It recognized that she needed the warm, secure care of good parents. And so the love, warmth and security has overwhelmed any conscious memories of the earlier unsettled times. This is now her ‘real’ life. Importantly, her reality is stability, attachment, trust, and expectation.
‘For some children care should be seen as "the best available option rather than a last resort", they said.’
Care will be the best available option for children when it is permanent. Stable. And enduring. So maybe we need to have the courage to make a decision for the child’s sake early on. Does the birth parent have a perpetual right to try and get their child back, no matter what? Too often care becomes the last resort when a rehabilitation plan fails. Or too much of the plan with birth parent is visible to the child, before there are any indications it will be successful. And the person who suffers long term damage is the child.
‘…concern for the happiness and welfare of the 60,000 children in care should be at the heart of the system.’
Everyone says this. ‘It’s all for the children’ you hear. Sometimes it can be so piously quoted to justify a viewpoint you feel like shouting. But try to break this principle down to reasonable, sensible decisions that put the child first, and too often policy, process and research get in the way.
Reporting more detail on children in care?
This came from Caroline Overington (#overingtonc) via Twitter. The full article is called The girl in the window, and recounts, in quite astonishing detail, the story of a 9 year old Florida girl.
She was so neglected and abused in her birth family that she now suffers developmental delay of the most extreme, fundamental kind. She has been adopted by a family who are trying to mend what they can. The article discloses a great deal of personal information about the child and her birth family, and a lot of detail on what the child experienced.
It should be compulsory reading for anyone who thinks they have an informed opinion on children’s services.
So, why can’t Overington and other responsible journos report this type of story, at this level of detail, in Australia?
Should we be able to report this type of story at this level of detail?
How can you work to a solution when no one is able to openly discuss the problem?
Can you educate all the people involved when the facts remain hidden?
Can you bring struggling parents to some degree of self-awareness if they never hear other stories they might identify with?
Can you report at this level of detail and still protect people’s privacy, particularly the children’s?
Perhaps it is time for a new approach.
Just today it was reported that ’Australian health and welfare agencies … formed a taskforce to combat increasing numbers of child abuse and neglect, which reached 55,000 cases last year’.
With notifications for alleged child abuse and neglect almost tripling in Australia between 1999 and 2007, the problem isn’t being solved by existing methods.
So maybe the time has come to give some committed, experienced, responsible journos the green light to start reporting.
Is it too easy to consider it ‘someone else’s problem’ if we don’t get too close to it?
When do we listen to the children?
Well done to Jenny Brockie and her team for the Insight program on Kids on Divorce.
While we think it is one of the most thought-provoking shows on the box, sometimes the dive is way too shallow. Just when you think the issue is finally open, the show finishes. And presenting one perspective, while powerful, can leave a viewer wondering what the other ‘side’ is. Some of the comments on the website suggest that there is another perspective.
But Brockie and Co should be giving lessons, for they are doing what too many institutions, and individuals, have failed to do for a long time now.
They are listening.
In Brockie’s case, she asks people what they actually think. And in this episode the kids had a view on divorce and its impact on them.
LISTEN
Where does the system give the secondary players (that would be the minor children) a say? Too often they are deemed too young to know what’s best for them. But their behaviour will often tell you that what is happening to them isn’t good.
LISTEN
And yet no one asks them their view. Or if they are asked there is no follow through. We once counselled a senior corporate executive that IF he asked the question then he needed to SHOW how he was acting on the answers.
LISTEN
Children might know what they want today. And then tomorrow they want something different. That’s the nature of small people. But if you spend enough time with them, you will hear a consistent message.
LISTEN
Too often the system pays lip service to listening, and then marshals all the research to tell the individual why they are wrong. Anyone who’s done at least a year at uni knows that you can make the statistics say just about anything if you try hard enough and ask the right questions.
LISTEN
How about listening to the individual? We need a system that stops dragging people to the average. The most amazing comment we ever heard was from a private agency senior manager who told us that neither the Camper nor we were unique. Well my dear, we’ve got news for you. We are. We’re happy to say that there is no one else EXACTLY the same as us in the world. That makes us unique. You wanted to classify us as average so we would fit the statistics and do as you said.
LISTEN
We watched a DOCS worker sit beside a very young child in out of home care, and listen. She asked thoughtful questions, heard the answers, asked some careful and gentle follow up questions. It was done with such care and skill that we were mightily impressed. So if one person in the system can do it, why can’t everyone?
LISTEN
We don’t raise Happy Camper using statistics and averages. We use our love for her, our knowledge of her, and our desire to see her become the person she deserves to be. And so far, all reports from those in ‘the system’ are that she’s going fabulously. Have we proven ourselves? How about listening to us too?
While we think it is one of the most thought-provoking shows on the box, sometimes the dive is way too shallow. Just when you think the issue is finally open, the show finishes. And presenting one perspective, while powerful, can leave a viewer wondering what the other ‘side’ is. Some of the comments on the website suggest that there is another perspective.
But Brockie and Co should be giving lessons, for they are doing what too many institutions, and individuals, have failed to do for a long time now.
They are listening.
In Brockie’s case, she asks people what they actually think. And in this episode the kids had a view on divorce and its impact on them.
LISTEN
Where does the system give the secondary players (that would be the minor children) a say? Too often they are deemed too young to know what’s best for them. But their behaviour will often tell you that what is happening to them isn’t good.
LISTEN
And yet no one asks them their view. Or if they are asked there is no follow through. We once counselled a senior corporate executive that IF he asked the question then he needed to SHOW how he was acting on the answers.
LISTEN
Children might know what they want today. And then tomorrow they want something different. That’s the nature of small people. But if you spend enough time with them, you will hear a consistent message.
LISTEN
Too often the system pays lip service to listening, and then marshals all the research to tell the individual why they are wrong. Anyone who’s done at least a year at uni knows that you can make the statistics say just about anything if you try hard enough and ask the right questions.
LISTEN
How about listening to the individual? We need a system that stops dragging people to the average. The most amazing comment we ever heard was from a private agency senior manager who told us that neither the Camper nor we were unique. Well my dear, we’ve got news for you. We are. We’re happy to say that there is no one else EXACTLY the same as us in the world. That makes us unique. You wanted to classify us as average so we would fit the statistics and do as you said.
LISTEN
We watched a DOCS worker sit beside a very young child in out of home care, and listen. She asked thoughtful questions, heard the answers, asked some careful and gentle follow up questions. It was done with such care and skill that we were mightily impressed. So if one person in the system can do it, why can’t everyone?
LISTEN
We don’t raise Happy Camper using statistics and averages. We use our love for her, our knowledge of her, and our desire to see her become the person she deserves to be. And so far, all reports from those in ‘the system’ are that she’s going fabulously. Have we proven ourselves? How about listening to us too?
At what age can a child make his/her own decision?
A decision about what? Before we launch off, let’s refine that question a bit.
There’s been a lot in the news lately regarding children trying to juggle the needs of both parents after a marriage breakdown. Yes, you heard right – the children often do the juggling – emotions, loyalty, sheer tiredness, change of homes. Unfortunately the decision often seems to pay little regard to what the children want. ‘But they are children’, you say? ‘They are too young to know what’s best for them’.
As a foster parent your child may well be juggling contact with a birth family and life with you. Depending on their age and the circumstances you may also find loyalty issues, emotions and stress come from that contact.
So at what age is a child able to offer a valid viewpoint on their contact with a non-custodial parent?
Is it 12 (mentioned in the Adoption Act) or younger? Dare we ask whether younger children, in certain circumstances, actually know what they need?
Our role, as second parents who love the child, is to prepare Happy Camper for life. That means teaching her to have an opinion. And it means teaching her to express that opinion. Given her circumstances and the players in her life, the sooner she learns that skill the better.
And there are good things that flow from that. We are teaching her to talk about things, and not bottle it up. We are teaching her to articulate how she feels and explore her reactions. We are helping her work through how she feels and how to manage. We are teaching her to accept her circumstances as part of life and get it in perspective. And most importantly, we are showing her what control looks like. Hers, actually.
Having an opinion is a fundamental first step to making a decision. Creating and forming opinions, and the two way interaction that usually follows, teaches a child what a good decision looks like.
The importance of this became clear to us when we had a worker who ‘ran’ access. We have no doubts that came about because the agency had an agenda to restore the child to birth parent, combined with a ferocious ‘tick-the-box’ approach. The agency paid lip-service to ‘we are a team and we want your contribution’ but that was a crock. Not only did the relentlessly artificial management of the visit unsettle the Camper mightily, it created a false expectation in the birth family about prospects in the future. The Camper’s view on access, and ours as her foster parents, was simply irrelevant to the agency.
So now the Camper gets a say. She doesn’t make important decisions about her life, and neither does she want to, but she’s learning how it all works. And we are teaching her how to express that opinion to us, to workers, and eventually, to members of her birth family. They will have a better relationship for it.
We think that the adults in ‘the system’, from workers to the judiciary, need to listen a lot more carefully to the small people.
There’s been a lot in the news lately regarding children trying to juggle the needs of both parents after a marriage breakdown. Yes, you heard right – the children often do the juggling – emotions, loyalty, sheer tiredness, change of homes. Unfortunately the decision often seems to pay little regard to what the children want. ‘But they are children’, you say? ‘They are too young to know what’s best for them’.
As a foster parent your child may well be juggling contact with a birth family and life with you. Depending on their age and the circumstances you may also find loyalty issues, emotions and stress come from that contact.
So at what age is a child able to offer a valid viewpoint on their contact with a non-custodial parent?
Is it 12 (mentioned in the Adoption Act) or younger? Dare we ask whether younger children, in certain circumstances, actually know what they need?
Our role, as second parents who love the child, is to prepare Happy Camper for life. That means teaching her to have an opinion. And it means teaching her to express that opinion. Given her circumstances and the players in her life, the sooner she learns that skill the better.
And there are good things that flow from that. We are teaching her to talk about things, and not bottle it up. We are teaching her to articulate how she feels and explore her reactions. We are helping her work through how she feels and how to manage. We are teaching her to accept her circumstances as part of life and get it in perspective. And most importantly, we are showing her what control looks like. Hers, actually.
Having an opinion is a fundamental first step to making a decision. Creating and forming opinions, and the two way interaction that usually follows, teaches a child what a good decision looks like.
The importance of this became clear to us when we had a worker who ‘ran’ access. We have no doubts that came about because the agency had an agenda to restore the child to birth parent, combined with a ferocious ‘tick-the-box’ approach. The agency paid lip-service to ‘we are a team and we want your contribution’ but that was a crock. Not only did the relentlessly artificial management of the visit unsettle the Camper mightily, it created a false expectation in the birth family about prospects in the future. The Camper’s view on access, and ours as her foster parents, was simply irrelevant to the agency.
So now the Camper gets a say. She doesn’t make important decisions about her life, and neither does she want to, but she’s learning how it all works. And we are teaching her how to express that opinion to us, to workers, and eventually, to members of her birth family. They will have a better relationship for it.
We think that the adults in ‘the system’, from workers to the judiciary, need to listen a lot more carefully to the small people.
US laws ban single foster carers
We’ve had debates about obese people fostering, and now a number of US states have passed laws that will, among other things, prevent single carers from fostering.
It seems inconceivable that policy-makers would try to limit who can apply, when the most important thing should be finding these children someone to love them.
What’s behind it? The conservative movement considers that the appropriate family is a mum, a dad and the kids.
Well, that’s great. In a perfect world. But most children entering care left a perfect world far behind them, if in fact they ever knew it. Many of them have never experienced the glorious ‘nuclear family’. They wouldn’t know it if they tripped over it. So why should it be the only type of care available?
Maybe, just maybe, the best care for many of these children might be finding one person who loves them. Just one. Who really loves them. And cares about them. Perhaps that’s all it takes?
The authorities have an obligation to seek out the best for these children once they enter care. But that doesn’t mean the nuclear family is essential in all instances. And it doesn’t mean the nuclear family is possible in all circumstances.
Should these children be denied a home where one parent who loves and nurtures them might be more than they have ever had before?
We know many single carers, both foster parents and birth parents. Without exception they are very aware of what they need to supplement, for themselves and for the children, to provide a well-balanced life.
So for a solo mother, that might mean a loved uncle or grandad who provides a strong male role model for the child. And vice versa for a solo father. For children of a solo parent, that might mean close contact with married couples. And so on.
Foster children often deal with a birth family, so their concept of the perfect ‘nuclear family’ is already well extended. We suspect they are not nearly as hung up on the structure of the care they go into as the moral majority. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and often the children accept this more readily than adults.
So we are pleased to see that agencies in Australia consider that sole carers, with the right support, can make excellent foster parents.
For many of these children, a stable home with one loving parent is a vast improvement on what they have experienced.
And provided the child’s education and life experience shows them all the options that make up ‘a family’, their home circumstances should be a positive thing, not a negative.
The US must be well served with carers if they can afford to be so exclusive.
It seems inconceivable that policy-makers would try to limit who can apply, when the most important thing should be finding these children someone to love them.
What’s behind it? The conservative movement considers that the appropriate family is a mum, a dad and the kids.
Well, that’s great. In a perfect world. But most children entering care left a perfect world far behind them, if in fact they ever knew it. Many of them have never experienced the glorious ‘nuclear family’. They wouldn’t know it if they tripped over it. So why should it be the only type of care available?
Maybe, just maybe, the best care for many of these children might be finding one person who loves them. Just one. Who really loves them. And cares about them. Perhaps that’s all it takes?
The authorities have an obligation to seek out the best for these children once they enter care. But that doesn’t mean the nuclear family is essential in all instances. And it doesn’t mean the nuclear family is possible in all circumstances.
Should these children be denied a home where one parent who loves and nurtures them might be more than they have ever had before?
We know many single carers, both foster parents and birth parents. Without exception they are very aware of what they need to supplement, for themselves and for the children, to provide a well-balanced life.
So for a solo mother, that might mean a loved uncle or grandad who provides a strong male role model for the child. And vice versa for a solo father. For children of a solo parent, that might mean close contact with married couples. And so on.
Foster children often deal with a birth family, so their concept of the perfect ‘nuclear family’ is already well extended. We suspect they are not nearly as hung up on the structure of the care they go into as the moral majority. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and often the children accept this more readily than adults.
So we are pleased to see that agencies in Australia consider that sole carers, with the right support, can make excellent foster parents.
For many of these children, a stable home with one loving parent is a vast improvement on what they have experienced.
And provided the child’s education and life experience shows them all the options that make up ‘a family’, their home circumstances should be a positive thing, not a negative.
The US must be well served with carers if they can afford to be so exclusive.
'Make haste slowly' implementing the Wood recommendations
We don’t go around quoting the ancient Romans, but this gem from Augustus has been in our family for years, and it seems entirely apt.
We take serious issue with Mr Crispin Hull from Barnardos on a number of points in his SMH article.
He is giving the Government a right hurry up in relation to the planning and implementation of the Wood Royal Commission recommendations. He warns that DOCs and member unions might be defending their territory and resisting change.
And yet his article is at risk of sounding like a territory grab. We’re sure his intentions are admirable. But his organisation stands to gain a great deal from the proposed changes - financially, in scale and in responsibility. We’d be much happier if the hurry up came from someone who didn’t have a vested interest in the outcome.
That would be Commissioner Wood, we hear you say?
Yes. He made the recommendations. But we haven’t seen him out there jumping about in relation to the timing.
A royal commission is a royal commission. Not a detailed business or organisational restructure blueprint. There is a level of detail Commissioner Wood would not have gone into. And he had to rely on submissions which had, as their purpose, WHY a change is justified. Not HOW it should happen. That’s a whole extra piece of work. And if DOCs is as dysfunctional as everyone says, then understanding that in order to hand it over to someone else will take time.
But we already outsource to these agencies, you say?
We do, but not on this scale, and not the breadth of cases we are talking about here. So we can’t assume that the system of governance and monitoring currently in place is sufficient. And we can’t assume the agencies have processes that will scale up. And we can’t assume they will have the skill base to cope with it. And we can’t assume that moving people across from DOCs to private agencies will actually change a thing.
Here are just some of the issues that need to be solved:
How will cases be handed off between organisations and departments?
Who will ultimately be responsible for the child’s welfare?
How will the relationships be monitored?
Where is the right of appeal if things go wrong?
Who sets the standards and policies?
Who monitors the agencies to ensure their approach is consistent?
Out-sourcing is a complex beast to handle. Many companies have done it in order to provide better service and cut costs, and have found the management of it quite extraordinary.
So take the time to plan it properly, for the childrens’ sake.
We don’t have territory to defend. We just think that such a huge change needs to be planned and implemented well.
Or we might find that we end up swapping an ‘unworkable’ monolithic government department for an outsourced model where no one is accountable and children don’t just fall through the cracks, they disappear into a chasm.
We take serious issue with Mr Crispin Hull from Barnardos on a number of points in his SMH article.
He is giving the Government a right hurry up in relation to the planning and implementation of the Wood Royal Commission recommendations. He warns that DOCs and member unions might be defending their territory and resisting change.
And yet his article is at risk of sounding like a territory grab. We’re sure his intentions are admirable. But his organisation stands to gain a great deal from the proposed changes - financially, in scale and in responsibility. We’d be much happier if the hurry up came from someone who didn’t have a vested interest in the outcome.
That would be Commissioner Wood, we hear you say?
Yes. He made the recommendations. But we haven’t seen him out there jumping about in relation to the timing.
A royal commission is a royal commission. Not a detailed business or organisational restructure blueprint. There is a level of detail Commissioner Wood would not have gone into. And he had to rely on submissions which had, as their purpose, WHY a change is justified. Not HOW it should happen. That’s a whole extra piece of work. And if DOCs is as dysfunctional as everyone says, then understanding that in order to hand it over to someone else will take time.
But we already outsource to these agencies, you say?
We do, but not on this scale, and not the breadth of cases we are talking about here. So we can’t assume that the system of governance and monitoring currently in place is sufficient. And we can’t assume the agencies have processes that will scale up. And we can’t assume they will have the skill base to cope with it. And we can’t assume that moving people across from DOCs to private agencies will actually change a thing.
Here are just some of the issues that need to be solved:
How will cases be handed off between organisations and departments?
Who will ultimately be responsible for the child’s welfare?
How will the relationships be monitored?
Where is the right of appeal if things go wrong?
Who sets the standards and policies?
Who monitors the agencies to ensure their approach is consistent?
Out-sourcing is a complex beast to handle. Many companies have done it in order to provide better service and cut costs, and have found the management of it quite extraordinary.
So take the time to plan it properly, for the childrens’ sake.
We don’t have territory to defend. We just think that such a huge change needs to be planned and implemented well.
Or we might find that we end up swapping an ‘unworkable’ monolithic government department for an outsourced model where no one is accountable and children don’t just fall through the cracks, they disappear into a chasm.
Too fat to adopt?
This UK couple has been told they cannot adopt because the husband is classed as ‘morbidly obese’. This is tricky territory, so we will tread carefully.
The husband acknowledges he is ‘too fat’. The local authority states ‘The council's adoption service has a legal responsibility to ensure that children are placed with adopters who are able to provide the best possible lifelong care’.
We get to play both sides of the debate on this blog. So here they are.
There are many parents who are obese, who smoke, who drink, who do recreational drugs. In most of those instances they are not denied the right to parent their birth children.
So on the face of it, are we applying a double standard to prospective adoptive or foster parents who may not be ‘perfect’?
On the other hand, there are a number of parents out there whose alcohol or drug habits have spiralled out of control, or who have mental health and other issues. They have had their children removed from their care for the children’s safety. Those children have already suffered loss in their lives.
In adoption with a new family, the children deserve to know that the family they are placed with has the capacity to look after them for the long term.
We have seen the effect of multiple moves on children. Some never recover. The Camper has given us her heart, her love and her trust. We know, quite simply, that to break that now would change her life forever.
So if we put the child first, which is a theme of this site, then this couple needs to minimise any risk to their health.
Adoptive or long term foster parents need to be as healthy and strong as they can be, not because the authority says so, but because some small child – who is going to give them his or her heart and trust - deserves it.
We would suggest that it is the same standard that should apply to ANY parent by the way. Raising children is a tiring, strenuous, whole-hearted activity. We find physical health to be key in handling the workload and the stress. It helps us parent better by being able to share physical activity with our children.
So our advice to this couple? Improve your health. There is a child out there who needs you, but they do need you for the long term. You might not have met them yet but you owe it to them already.
Posted by EssentialMum
The husband acknowledges he is ‘too fat’. The local authority states ‘The council's adoption service has a legal responsibility to ensure that children are placed with adopters who are able to provide the best possible lifelong care’.
We get to play both sides of the debate on this blog. So here they are.
There are many parents who are obese, who smoke, who drink, who do recreational drugs. In most of those instances they are not denied the right to parent their birth children.
So on the face of it, are we applying a double standard to prospective adoptive or foster parents who may not be ‘perfect’?
On the other hand, there are a number of parents out there whose alcohol or drug habits have spiralled out of control, or who have mental health and other issues. They have had their children removed from their care for the children’s safety. Those children have already suffered loss in their lives.
In adoption with a new family, the children deserve to know that the family they are placed with has the capacity to look after them for the long term.
We have seen the effect of multiple moves on children. Some never recover. The Camper has given us her heart, her love and her trust. We know, quite simply, that to break that now would change her life forever.
So if we put the child first, which is a theme of this site, then this couple needs to minimise any risk to their health.
Adoptive or long term foster parents need to be as healthy and strong as they can be, not because the authority says so, but because some small child – who is going to give them his or her heart and trust - deserves it.
We would suggest that it is the same standard that should apply to ANY parent by the way. Raising children is a tiring, strenuous, whole-hearted activity. We find physical health to be key in handling the workload and the stress. It helps us parent better by being able to share physical activity with our children.
So our advice to this couple? Improve your health. There is a child out there who needs you, but they do need you for the long term. You might not have met them yet but you owe it to them already.
Posted by EssentialMum
Contact with birth families is good
We are in favour of contact with birth families – 100%.
There are many reasons why it is beneficial for a child to know their birth family. Here are some of them.
‘Who is my birth mum and/or my birth dad?’
Knowing my origins - It is very difficult for a child, particularly when they start to attend school and families are on the curriculum, to cope with a complete blank where a birth parent’s identity might be. As a carer you need an explanation that increases in detail as the child matures.
‘Why isn’t my hair dark brown like yours?’
A sense of identity - This can be important physically, as the child begins to want to emulate or be part of their second family.
‘I’m only living with you because my birth parent is a rock star’
A sense of reality – as a child grows older they may want to know why they are not with their birth family. Contact can help prevent a fantasy life evolving around a birth parent. This in turn may prevent any ‘play-offs’ between birth and second families. It can be quite devastating for an older child to meet a birth parent and experience their shortcomings. Acceptance from an early age is helpful.
‘Why did my birth parents give me up?'
Understanding and communication - An opportunity for child and birth parent to communicate on these issues can be good. It’s tricky territory, for a birth parent may not be prepared to answer the hard questions, or may be in complete denial about what actually happened and their responsibility for it. That in itself is a useful conversation for a trusted person to have with the child.
So what is the issue, for the child, around birth family contact?
BALANCE
You can completely undermine a child’s sense of security if contact with birth family overwhelms them and over-rides their daily life. Let’s state the obvious – access for a child who has a good chance of restitution with their birth family, should be very different to that of a child who has been put into the care of the Minister until they reach 18 years.
We believe that the PURPOSE of contact should be an item on any case plan.
The frequency of contact is usually covered, but we’ve not experienced an open and frank discussion about the purpose. We’ve seen this come unstuck when a worker thought they were meant to re-establish the child/birth parent relationship, when the appropriate purpose of access was to ‘maintain contact between child and birth parent’. There is a world of difference between those two objectives.
Understanding the purpose of contact will help you know how access should run.
We saw that world of difference played out in the behaviours of worker and birth parent. The workers pushed a level of interaction, and a set of rules, that alienated the child and increased her insecurity. It also resulted in a birth parent believing they had far more say in the child’s life than was the case. It was left to a more experienced worker to do damage control, and remind birth parent of the reality of the situation. It wouldn’t have happened if the issue had been discussed properly.
Understanding the purpose of contact will help you help the child manage their response to birth parent.
It will help you know which behaviours, from child and birth parent, to support, and what you should hose down. You know the child best, and you know what their life is now, so you are best placed to understand the impact access with a birth parent may have.
We’re going to have the purpose of access firmly on the agenda at our next case conference. We recommend that you discuss this with your worker until you are really clear about what it means. We think it is a useful discussion for any birth parent to participate in. And we especially recommend it as a discussion with any new worker who wants to change some aspect of access.
Posted by EssentialMum
There are many reasons why it is beneficial for a child to know their birth family. Here are some of them.
‘Who is my birth mum and/or my birth dad?’
Knowing my origins - It is very difficult for a child, particularly when they start to attend school and families are on the curriculum, to cope with a complete blank where a birth parent’s identity might be. As a carer you need an explanation that increases in detail as the child matures.
‘Why isn’t my hair dark brown like yours?’
A sense of identity - This can be important physically, as the child begins to want to emulate or be part of their second family.
‘I’m only living with you because my birth parent is a rock star’
A sense of reality – as a child grows older they may want to know why they are not with their birth family. Contact can help prevent a fantasy life evolving around a birth parent. This in turn may prevent any ‘play-offs’ between birth and second families. It can be quite devastating for an older child to meet a birth parent and experience their shortcomings. Acceptance from an early age is helpful.
‘Why did my birth parents give me up?'
Understanding and communication - An opportunity for child and birth parent to communicate on these issues can be good. It’s tricky territory, for a birth parent may not be prepared to answer the hard questions, or may be in complete denial about what actually happened and their responsibility for it. That in itself is a useful conversation for a trusted person to have with the child.
So what is the issue, for the child, around birth family contact?
BALANCE
You can completely undermine a child’s sense of security if contact with birth family overwhelms them and over-rides their daily life. Let’s state the obvious – access for a child who has a good chance of restitution with their birth family, should be very different to that of a child who has been put into the care of the Minister until they reach 18 years.
We believe that the PURPOSE of contact should be an item on any case plan.
The frequency of contact is usually covered, but we’ve not experienced an open and frank discussion about the purpose. We’ve seen this come unstuck when a worker thought they were meant to re-establish the child/birth parent relationship, when the appropriate purpose of access was to ‘maintain contact between child and birth parent’. There is a world of difference between those two objectives.
Understanding the purpose of contact will help you know how access should run.
We saw that world of difference played out in the behaviours of worker and birth parent. The workers pushed a level of interaction, and a set of rules, that alienated the child and increased her insecurity. It also resulted in a birth parent believing they had far more say in the child’s life than was the case. It was left to a more experienced worker to do damage control, and remind birth parent of the reality of the situation. It wouldn’t have happened if the issue had been discussed properly.
Understanding the purpose of contact will help you help the child manage their response to birth parent.
It will help you know which behaviours, from child and birth parent, to support, and what you should hose down. You know the child best, and you know what their life is now, so you are best placed to understand the impact access with a birth parent may have.
We’re going to have the purpose of access firmly on the agenda at our next case conference. We recommend that you discuss this with your worker until you are really clear about what it means. We think it is a useful discussion for any birth parent to participate in. And we especially recommend it as a discussion with any new worker who wants to change some aspect of access.
Posted by EssentialMum
More understanding can mean more insecurity
It’s a double-edged sword. An older child might be able to articulate what they feel, what they understand, and what they are confused about in their life and their circumstances. That’s great. But with this understanding comes understanding: there will be more questions about their circumstances, and perhaps more insecurity about what it really means. They might make their own judgment about what they want.
So you may suddenly find you have a small person who doesn’t want to see birth family. A small person who doesn’t want to have a ‘birth parent’. A small person who doesn’t want to be different from their friends.
But the ‘system’ or the ‘research’ will tell you it is good for them to know their birth family. That maintaining contact is positive – that they won’t create some fantasy life surrounding birth family. That reality, however relentless, is good.
For once, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of one of these small people.
Imagine this:
You’ve been moved around a lot since you were born. You’re a resilient kid, so on a day-to-day basis, you manage to smile and laugh and make it look like you are OK. So you’ve learned to be very affectionate, very quickly, with any new people you meet. You take whatever gets thrown at you because you’ve learned that’s how you survive. You might still bang your head on the pillow occasionally at night, because that makes you feel better, but no one hears.
You’re a smart kid: you are very tuned in and hyper-aware of what’s going on around you. In many ways you are much older than your years. You are really quite grateful that you’ve arrived at what seems to be a good place – the parents are nice and reasonable and give you a sense that they know how to deal. You try and show how grateful you are. They hug you and tell you that they are happy too, but you’re not sure they really understand how you feel.
But nothing changes over time, and you get to know them better. They are always the same, and you start to cautiously rely on them. And in there somewhere is a funny feeling. You see it in their eyes when they look at you. And you feel it too. You start to really like their hugs and kisses. Their support and approval feels really good. You like school and have some good mates. One day, you begin to hope that this is how it is going to be.
You see your birth family. That’s been fine, up until the last few times when your birth parent started telling you that you were still part of their family and not to forget it. You tried to shrug it off, but birth parent kept telling you every time you saw them. You mentioned it to your foster parents. They said that no one is taking you anywhere. But you’ve had a few nightmares recently where your birth parent came and took you away. You are really not sure that you want to see your birth family at the moment. Maybe you could take a break from them?
Can you imagine that? How would you feel?
Posted by EssentialMum
So you may suddenly find you have a small person who doesn’t want to see birth family. A small person who doesn’t want to have a ‘birth parent’. A small person who doesn’t want to be different from their friends.
But the ‘system’ or the ‘research’ will tell you it is good for them to know their birth family. That maintaining contact is positive – that they won’t create some fantasy life surrounding birth family. That reality, however relentless, is good.
For once, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of one of these small people.
Imagine this:
You’ve been moved around a lot since you were born. You’re a resilient kid, so on a day-to-day basis, you manage to smile and laugh and make it look like you are OK. So you’ve learned to be very affectionate, very quickly, with any new people you meet. You take whatever gets thrown at you because you’ve learned that’s how you survive. You might still bang your head on the pillow occasionally at night, because that makes you feel better, but no one hears.
You’re a smart kid: you are very tuned in and hyper-aware of what’s going on around you. In many ways you are much older than your years. You are really quite grateful that you’ve arrived at what seems to be a good place – the parents are nice and reasonable and give you a sense that they know how to deal. You try and show how grateful you are. They hug you and tell you that they are happy too, but you’re not sure they really understand how you feel.
But nothing changes over time, and you get to know them better. They are always the same, and you start to cautiously rely on them. And in there somewhere is a funny feeling. You see it in their eyes when they look at you. And you feel it too. You start to really like their hugs and kisses. Their support and approval feels really good. You like school and have some good mates. One day, you begin to hope that this is how it is going to be.
You see your birth family. That’s been fine, up until the last few times when your birth parent started telling you that you were still part of their family and not to forget it. You tried to shrug it off, but birth parent kept telling you every time you saw them. You mentioned it to your foster parents. They said that no one is taking you anywhere. But you’ve had a few nightmares recently where your birth parent came and took you away. You are really not sure that you want to see your birth family at the moment. Maybe you could take a break from them?
Can you imagine that? How would you feel?
Posted by EssentialMum
Do foster children always become troubled teens?
‘AN AMERICAN academic is to run a five-year study of NSW children who are removed from their parents and placed in foster care in the hope of finding ways to stop them becoming troubled teenagers.’ SMH 26/12/08
Well Professor Fred Wulczyn, let’s get you started on the way.
The system often prevents these children from putting down roots with a new family. Either the legal process fails to catch up with the child’s needs and the child spends too long in ‘temporary care’, or the system applies the invisible brand to them – ‘foster child’ – and demands things of them that ‘normal’ children never have to contemplate. Let us explain.
Happy Camper had been bounced around the system for some years before she landed with us. She had been emotionally abandoned and that was obvious from the minute we met her. Her physical needs hadn’t been well looked after either, but they were relatively easier to fix. We threw every ounce of care, love and attention into making her feel that we were her family, that we were here to stay. As her level of understanding has grown, we’ve explained that she will get a say in anything that happens now.
But some workers viewed our level of passion and commitment with nothing less than suspicion. They worked hard to redevelop the bond between the Camper and birth family, and increase her reliance on the social worker. So when the Camper was coming to grips with the fact that no one in her birth family was able to take care of her, and hadn’t, and she desperately wanted to believe she was finally somewhere safe, she had a worker telling her quite forcefully through actions and words that it was all about birth family. We could see the confusion and distrust in her eyes.
We know carers who foster with that particular agency, and the agenda (restitution with birth families) hasn’t changed. A new worker has suddenly told a carer, who has had a child in care from 4 months to early teen years, that she considers the child needs to have more contact with her birth mum. They see birth mum and other members of the birth family every school holidays and it is pitched at just the right level. The child is old enough to ask her foster mum, who she considers to be her mum, ‘why?’ We hope the carer has what it takes to ask the agency ‘why?’ on behalf of the child.
We can tell you that this particular child is thriving – winning awards at school, happy, a very capable sportsperson, very savvy about her circumstances - and she handles her birth mum’s probing for information with an ease well beyond her years. So she is one of Professor Wulczyn’s success stories. We’re working on the Camper being a success story as well.
So what characterises these two placements?
The children have put down roots. They feel stable. They trust that nothing is going to change.
The system recognises they have been put into long term care for a very good reason, and is not trying to undermine that. The children are free to get on with living.
They have contact with their birth families, but not at the expense of time with their new families and their sense of stability. It’s a delicate balance.
Imagine if you were a child, and had a worker continually telling you how important your birth mum was, insisting you cuddle the woman when you only see her 5 times a year, reminding you to your face that you are ‘a child in care’, not calling the mum and dad you live with ‘mum’ or ‘dad’, but ‘carer? Imagine if you couldn’t have a play date with your friends on a particular day in the school holidays because of contact with your birth family. Imagine if you knew you couldn’t go away on holidays with your family because you had to be back for access with your birth family?
The agency recognises a ‘good’ placement and plays a monitoring role.
There is often a huge lack of continuity of approach from one worker to the next. Good governance demands that new workers review placements and all the circumstances around them, but aspects of the placement should not be changed without very good reason. These should be thoughtfully monitored and individually researched reasons. They should be discussed and reviewed with the carers over time before any decision to change is made. Workers should be taught that leaving their individual mark on a case is not always a sign of success.
We are good carers.
Forgive us if we state it bluntly, but we are. We treat these children as if they were our own. We don’t expect them to do anything much differently to our other children. We’re not in it for any financial gain. We love them.
So we are genuinely puzzled as to why the system has such a hard time codifying what works?
Maybe it’s not talking to the right people? Maybe it is not prepared to hear what we are saying? Maybe there are agendas and policies that the system, and those who work in it, need to give up?
Posted by EssentialMum
Well Professor Fred Wulczyn, let’s get you started on the way.
The system often prevents these children from putting down roots with a new family. Either the legal process fails to catch up with the child’s needs and the child spends too long in ‘temporary care’, or the system applies the invisible brand to them – ‘foster child’ – and demands things of them that ‘normal’ children never have to contemplate. Let us explain.
Happy Camper had been bounced around the system for some years before she landed with us. She had been emotionally abandoned and that was obvious from the minute we met her. Her physical needs hadn’t been well looked after either, but they were relatively easier to fix. We threw every ounce of care, love and attention into making her feel that we were her family, that we were here to stay. As her level of understanding has grown, we’ve explained that she will get a say in anything that happens now.
But some workers viewed our level of passion and commitment with nothing less than suspicion. They worked hard to redevelop the bond between the Camper and birth family, and increase her reliance on the social worker. So when the Camper was coming to grips with the fact that no one in her birth family was able to take care of her, and hadn’t, and she desperately wanted to believe she was finally somewhere safe, she had a worker telling her quite forcefully through actions and words that it was all about birth family. We could see the confusion and distrust in her eyes.
We know carers who foster with that particular agency, and the agenda (restitution with birth families) hasn’t changed. A new worker has suddenly told a carer, who has had a child in care from 4 months to early teen years, that she considers the child needs to have more contact with her birth mum. They see birth mum and other members of the birth family every school holidays and it is pitched at just the right level. The child is old enough to ask her foster mum, who she considers to be her mum, ‘why?’ We hope the carer has what it takes to ask the agency ‘why?’ on behalf of the child.
We can tell you that this particular child is thriving – winning awards at school, happy, a very capable sportsperson, very savvy about her circumstances - and she handles her birth mum’s probing for information with an ease well beyond her years. So she is one of Professor Wulczyn’s success stories. We’re working on the Camper being a success story as well.
So what characterises these two placements?
The children have put down roots. They feel stable. They trust that nothing is going to change.
The system recognises they have been put into long term care for a very good reason, and is not trying to undermine that. The children are free to get on with living.
They have contact with their birth families, but not at the expense of time with their new families and their sense of stability. It’s a delicate balance.
Imagine if you were a child, and had a worker continually telling you how important your birth mum was, insisting you cuddle the woman when you only see her 5 times a year, reminding you to your face that you are ‘a child in care’, not calling the mum and dad you live with ‘mum’ or ‘dad’, but ‘carer? Imagine if you couldn’t have a play date with your friends on a particular day in the school holidays because of contact with your birth family. Imagine if you knew you couldn’t go away on holidays with your family because you had to be back for access with your birth family?
The agency recognises a ‘good’ placement and plays a monitoring role.
There is often a huge lack of continuity of approach from one worker to the next. Good governance demands that new workers review placements and all the circumstances around them, but aspects of the placement should not be changed without very good reason. These should be thoughtfully monitored and individually researched reasons. They should be discussed and reviewed with the carers over time before any decision to change is made. Workers should be taught that leaving their individual mark on a case is not always a sign of success.
We are good carers.
Forgive us if we state it bluntly, but we are. We treat these children as if they were our own. We don’t expect them to do anything much differently to our other children. We’re not in it for any financial gain. We love them.
So we are genuinely puzzled as to why the system has such a hard time codifying what works?
Maybe it’s not talking to the right people? Maybe it is not prepared to hear what we are saying? Maybe there are agendas and policies that the system, and those who work in it, need to give up?
Posted by EssentialMum
Good things come to those who wait?
It seems sometime since I updated you on my journey to become a foster carer.
“Where’ve you been?” you might ask.
Well, I’ve been sitting here waiting. Waiting for the agency to complete their paperwork. Waiting for checks to be completed and returned. Waiting for a worker to get to my name on their list. Now patience is something I oft struggle with and perhaps this is one of those life lessons that is long overdue.
But leaving that to one side, if there is shortage of carers and children who desperately need a home, then I am bemused, nay befuddled, by the lack of urgency with which the system seems to move. Each time I call to follow up and make sure that the agency has all it needs from me, I am met with the same story of how the process works and that they are very busy and will get to me in due course. Does this apparent lack of resources simply mean there aren’t enough workers? Or are there more kids needing care than previously? Or is it that there is a heightened awareness of children at risk which requires greater levels of investigation and the inevitable paperwork which follows.
I suspect it is a combination. So here I sit and wait for my new life to begin and wonder whether there is something else I should be doing in the meantime. I only hope it’s not like “waiting for Godot” for if my memory serves correctly, Godot never arrived.
Yours in anticipation
Dorothy
Posted by Dorothy
“Where’ve you been?” you might ask.
Well, I’ve been sitting here waiting. Waiting for the agency to complete their paperwork. Waiting for checks to be completed and returned. Waiting for a worker to get to my name on their list. Now patience is something I oft struggle with and perhaps this is one of those life lessons that is long overdue.
But leaving that to one side, if there is shortage of carers and children who desperately need a home, then I am bemused, nay befuddled, by the lack of urgency with which the system seems to move. Each time I call to follow up and make sure that the agency has all it needs from me, I am met with the same story of how the process works and that they are very busy and will get to me in due course. Does this apparent lack of resources simply mean there aren’t enough workers? Or are there more kids needing care than previously? Or is it that there is a heightened awareness of children at risk which requires greater levels of investigation and the inevitable paperwork which follows.
I suspect it is a combination. So here I sit and wait for my new life to begin and wonder whether there is something else I should be doing in the meantime. I only hope it’s not like “waiting for Godot” for if my memory serves correctly, Godot never arrived.
Yours in anticipation
Dorothy
Posted by Dorothy
The Commission Outcomes
Dear Justice Wood, Premier Rees, Minister Burney and all those who will be working through Justice Wood’s recommendations,
It was big commission wasn’t it? 111 recommendations, and a significant part of those is in relation to moving responsibility for sheltering children at risk to the private sector.
Funnily enough, ask any business person and they will tell you that one of the greatest challenges in outsourcing a service is governance – who monitors the system to make sure it works as intended - and accountability. You can’t outsource accountability. So what structure will still be in place in government? I suppose that’s all to be worked out yet.
Our experience has also shown us a very great difference between DOCS workers and private agency workers – in skill, in maturity, in experience. So the uplift required for many agencies will be huge. But you knew that, didn’t you? And the officers from those agencies who presented to the commission were honest and upfront about how well they functioned, and what it would take to enable their agencies to effectively take over from DOCS. Weren’t they?
We’d like to recommend that one of the toolsets you implement, to maintain standards across this distributed agency group, and to give us carers a clearer picture of what we are entitled to expect, are service levels. They won’t solve all the problems but they will provide some clarity. You see, agencies can get pretty autocratic about how they do things, their policies and their processes. They can push an agenda relentlessly. If you are a carer with an opinion and push hard enough back they can even get a bit narky. But you knew that, didn’t you?
So good luck. It’s a shame that more of the submissions to the Commission were not made public. Then I think we’d all have a better understanding of all the issues we are dealing with. It’s not that we don’t trust you, but at present, having heard the agency and DOCS submissions, we’re just feeling a bit one-sided.
Yours faithfully,
EssentialMum
Posted by EssentialMum
It was big commission wasn’t it? 111 recommendations, and a significant part of those is in relation to moving responsibility for sheltering children at risk to the private sector.
Funnily enough, ask any business person and they will tell you that one of the greatest challenges in outsourcing a service is governance – who monitors the system to make sure it works as intended - and accountability. You can’t outsource accountability. So what structure will still be in place in government? I suppose that’s all to be worked out yet.
Our experience has also shown us a very great difference between DOCS workers and private agency workers – in skill, in maturity, in experience. So the uplift required for many agencies will be huge. But you knew that, didn’t you? And the officers from those agencies who presented to the commission were honest and upfront about how well they functioned, and what it would take to enable their agencies to effectively take over from DOCS. Weren’t they?
We’d like to recommend that one of the toolsets you implement, to maintain standards across this distributed agency group, and to give us carers a clearer picture of what we are entitled to expect, are service levels. They won’t solve all the problems but they will provide some clarity. You see, agencies can get pretty autocratic about how they do things, their policies and their processes. They can push an agenda relentlessly. If you are a carer with an opinion and push hard enough back they can even get a bit narky. But you knew that, didn’t you?
So good luck. It’s a shame that more of the submissions to the Commission were not made public. Then I think we’d all have a better understanding of all the issues we are dealing with. It’s not that we don’t trust you, but at present, having heard the agency and DOCS submissions, we’re just feeling a bit one-sided.
Yours faithfully,
EssentialMum
Posted by EssentialMum
'I've been instructed to...'
How timely. In our last post we were being very reasonable about how one might ‘fix’ DOCs.
Well, here’s a problem that needs fixing.
It’s the ‘I’ve been instructed to’ message.
You might get it by email – or if you are lucky (and we have been) you might even get it in person. That’s really special.
Even when a first conversation might be a collaborative discussion, there will come a point where a worker will pull rank. You’ll be told to just do it. They might even move it up the food chain and state ‘I’ve been instructed to…’. Wow, by the Manager.
If we were trying to address all the problems, then we’d acknowledge that there are stubborn, careless, less than satisfactory carers out there who would try the patience of a saint (and probably break the heart of one sometimes) and need to be told what to do.
But we’re not trying to address all the problems. And we don’t need to be told what to do.
In business using the ‘I’ve been instructed to’ defence is called abrogating responsibility, and any manager worth their salary won’t let a team member get away with it. It teaches bad habits and leads to bad outcomes.
In this foster care world, it is toxic. Let us tell you the sub-text that sits behind that request. We’ll range from the generous to the less than….
So don’t serve up the ‘I’ve been instructed to…’ advice to us. It doesn’t wash.
Posted by EssentialMum
Well, here’s a problem that needs fixing.
It’s the ‘I’ve been instructed to’ message.
You might get it by email – or if you are lucky (and we have been) you might even get it in person. That’s really special.
Even when a first conversation might be a collaborative discussion, there will come a point where a worker will pull rank. You’ll be told to just do it. They might even move it up the food chain and state ‘I’ve been instructed to…’. Wow, by the Manager.
If we were trying to address all the problems, then we’d acknowledge that there are stubborn, careless, less than satisfactory carers out there who would try the patience of a saint (and probably break the heart of one sometimes) and need to be told what to do.
But we’re not trying to address all the problems. And we don’t need to be told what to do.
In business using the ‘I’ve been instructed to’ defence is called abrogating responsibility, and any manager worth their salary won’t let a team member get away with it. It teaches bad habits and leads to bad outcomes.
In this foster care world, it is toxic. Let us tell you the sub-text that sits behind that request. We’ll range from the generous to the less than….
- I’m genuinely too busy to negotiate any solution with these people.
- I haven’t got time to debate this.
- I have a job to do.
- You (carer) have a job to do.
- I’m obeying a court order for my case, there is no room in it to accommodate your (carer) needs.
- Your (carer) reason for not being able to accommodate this request is irrelevant.
- I decide what’s best.
- I know what’s best.
- I’m in charge – just do as you (carer) are told.
So don’t serve up the ‘I’ve been instructed to…’ advice to us. It doesn’t wash.
Posted by EssentialMum
Can we 'fix' DOCs?
Rise in deaths of 'at risk' children (The Australian, Caroline Overington | October 16, 2008).
‘MORE than 150 children who died in NSW last year came from families that were known to the Department of Community Services. The figure, a quarter of all child deaths in the state, represents a 40 per cent increase on the previous year in the number of so-called "reviewable" deaths.’
‘Fix DOCs’ we hear people shriek.
But you can’t fix a problem at the macro level. So you can’t just ‘fix DOCs’.
To solve problems, you need to be very specific about the problems. You need to be honest and open about what causes them. You need to address them quite specifically. But you need to understand how fixing the problem in the middle will impact all the others surrounding it. It is essential that everyone who plays a role agrees on what the problems are and wants to solve them.
So if more children ‘at risk’ died in 2008 than in the previous year, why?
Let’s state the obvious - children were left in a home environment that was dangerous to their life or to their health. The system that is charged with making decisions about what is best for them didn’t act, couldn’t act, couldn’t monitor, or simply couldn’t solve the problems.
Here are some of the questions we think need to be asked:
There is a lot riding on the outcomes of the Wood Commission. Let’s hope that at the first level there has been a very honest assessment of what the problems are that need to be solved.
Posted by EssentialMum
‘MORE than 150 children who died in NSW last year came from families that were known to the Department of Community Services. The figure, a quarter of all child deaths in the state, represents a 40 per cent increase on the previous year in the number of so-called "reviewable" deaths.’
‘Fix DOCs’ we hear people shriek.
But you can’t fix a problem at the macro level. So you can’t just ‘fix DOCs’.
To solve problems, you need to be very specific about the problems. You need to be honest and open about what causes them. You need to address them quite specifically. But you need to understand how fixing the problem in the middle will impact all the others surrounding it. It is essential that everyone who plays a role agrees on what the problems are and wants to solve them.
So if more children ‘at risk’ died in 2008 than in the previous year, why?
Let’s state the obvious - children were left in a home environment that was dangerous to their life or to their health. The system that is charged with making decisions about what is best for them didn’t act, couldn’t act, couldn’t monitor, or simply couldn’t solve the problems.
Here are some of the questions we think need to be asked:
- At what point does the child’s right to a safe, healthy, stable life become more important then staying with their birth parents? Are there government or agency policies that influence these decisions?
- What is the risk to the child and its development if the ‘recovery or rehabilitation’ of a birth parent is slow or troubled by setbacks? Will the child’s life and development be compromised in either the short or the long term by not moving them?
- Do workers feel they have the autonomy to make a call regarding the child’s circumstances? Are they equipped to make the call? Are they supported by the system in making that call? Is the system prepared to deal with calls that may be premature?
- What if the headline we were reading reported an increase in the number of children removed from their birth families? Would we be comfortable with that?
- Are the civil liberties of birth parents over-riding the best interests of the child?
- What resources are available to the birth parents to help them cope with life, family and future? How willing and capable are the birth parents of using those resources?
- Is a system in place that can monitor birth parents’ progress and keep watch on the health and safety of the child? Can the system do this frequently enough to adequately monitor the child? If not, what is the risk to the child?
There is a lot riding on the outcomes of the Wood Commission. Let’s hope that at the first level there has been a very honest assessment of what the problems are that need to be solved.
Posted by EssentialMum
Guarantees in foster care?
An article in The Australian (Thursday Oct 2, 2008) ‘Potential carers put off fostering’ (Overington and Trup) reviewed some of the confidential submissions to the Wood Royal Commission. It is well written article.
The first paragraph states ‘Tens of thousands of affluent, educated and responsible couples are ready to take the nation’s abused and neglected children into their care, if only they could be guaranteed that the children would be allowed to stay’.
What an absolute tragedy.
There are tens of thousands of couples that might have missed out on what may be the most rewarding journey of their life? And, more importantly, there are thousands of children who might have found a life with wonderful parents?
Will better education and communication change the perspective of some of those potential carers? Maybe the ‘system’ needs to make a call earlier for some children and place them in a ‘permanent’ home as soon as possible?
We took the journey, and we have a little person in our life who is now safe, happy, thriving, loved. These statistics hit home because the littlest statistic is very real to us. But we didn’t take her in with any more guarantee than a court order.
The fact is, you don’t get many guarantees with foster care.
These children are not adopted – you don’t get to take them in and be left alone. You deal with birth families and workers, with the legal construct of fostering. The children themselves may often have issues.
But you can work towards some certainty, before you foster:
Is there a long-term order for the child? Would you be taking them on long-term? Does this mean until the age of 18 or of ‘maturity’?
What are the birth family circumstances? Is a birth parent working towards getting the children back in a realistic and meaningful way?
What’s the agency’s long term goal? Are they aiming for restitution or permanency planning for the child? What do they see your role as?
Is the placement long term and will the agency support that?
So to all those prospective foster parents - you want guarantees the child is with you to stay? Then get in there and fight for them. Take them in, care for them, love them, bond with them, become their parent. Then you won’t need guarantees, you’ll make them. You’ll face anyone who thinks moving this child might be an option with steely eyed determination. For you are their parent. And for the first time in their lives, these children have an adult to advocate for them. Not just mouth the words, but really do it. With love and care and something at stake.
You have to decide whether you are fostering for you, or for them?
Posted by EssentialMum
The first paragraph states ‘Tens of thousands of affluent, educated and responsible couples are ready to take the nation’s abused and neglected children into their care, if only they could be guaranteed that the children would be allowed to stay’.
What an absolute tragedy.
There are tens of thousands of couples that might have missed out on what may be the most rewarding journey of their life? And, more importantly, there are thousands of children who might have found a life with wonderful parents?
Will better education and communication change the perspective of some of those potential carers? Maybe the ‘system’ needs to make a call earlier for some children and place them in a ‘permanent’ home as soon as possible?
We took the journey, and we have a little person in our life who is now safe, happy, thriving, loved. These statistics hit home because the littlest statistic is very real to us. But we didn’t take her in with any more guarantee than a court order.
The fact is, you don’t get many guarantees with foster care.
These children are not adopted – you don’t get to take them in and be left alone. You deal with birth families and workers, with the legal construct of fostering. The children themselves may often have issues.
But you can work towards some certainty, before you foster:
Is there a long-term order for the child? Would you be taking them on long-term? Does this mean until the age of 18 or of ‘maturity’?
What are the birth family circumstances? Is a birth parent working towards getting the children back in a realistic and meaningful way?
What’s the agency’s long term goal? Are they aiming for restitution or permanency planning for the child? What do they see your role as?
Is the placement long term and will the agency support that?
So to all those prospective foster parents - you want guarantees the child is with you to stay? Then get in there and fight for them. Take them in, care for them, love them, bond with them, become their parent. Then you won’t need guarantees, you’ll make them. You’ll face anyone who thinks moving this child might be an option with steely eyed determination. For you are their parent. And for the first time in their lives, these children have an adult to advocate for them. Not just mouth the words, but really do it. With love and care and something at stake.
You have to decide whether you are fostering for you, or for them?
Posted by EssentialMum
Do agencies keep carer lists up to date?
We had a phone call recently. A very pleasant young person identified herself as a new case worker with a particular private agency.
We were invited to a social event at the agency, despite the fact that it is well over 12 months since we have been carers with that agency.
When we mentioned this, the worker laughed and advised that she must have had an ‘old’ list.
We were surprised.
Does the agency maintain a ‘current’ list of carers? How often is that updated? Who is accountable for updating it? Are files in the agency marked ‘current’ and ‘past’? How do they manage privacy for ‘closed’ files that they no longer have any accountability for? Can any new worker access any closed file?
Oversights do happen. But we are not inclined to give this agency the benefit of the doubt. It is, sadly, representative of the lack of attention to detail from them.
At an annual case conference, a worker presented a case plan that listed Happy Camper’s only sibling by the wrong name. The same worker arranged a schedule of home visits for the year and completely omitted the most important – visits between Happy Camper and her birth mum. On another occasion the manager had been unable to advise us that birth mum was not attending an access visit because she’d been unable to find our up to date mobile number on the file.
Harsh words? Maybe. We have been known to take a service provider to task for poor service, failure to follow through, or sloppy work. Fine when we are battling over our iPhone bill.
But we expect better. We are dealing with a person. How will Happy Camper feel, many years on, when she reads the case conference notes and sees the errors? She is entitled to expect every adult who has been given a role in her life by ‘the system’ to take the utmost care – of her, of her information, of her feelings.
Poor form indeed.
Posted by EssentialMum.
We were invited to a social event at the agency, despite the fact that it is well over 12 months since we have been carers with that agency.
When we mentioned this, the worker laughed and advised that she must have had an ‘old’ list.
We were surprised.
Does the agency maintain a ‘current’ list of carers? How often is that updated? Who is accountable for updating it? Are files in the agency marked ‘current’ and ‘past’? How do they manage privacy for ‘closed’ files that they no longer have any accountability for? Can any new worker access any closed file?
Oversights do happen. But we are not inclined to give this agency the benefit of the doubt. It is, sadly, representative of the lack of attention to detail from them.
At an annual case conference, a worker presented a case plan that listed Happy Camper’s only sibling by the wrong name. The same worker arranged a schedule of home visits for the year and completely omitted the most important – visits between Happy Camper and her birth mum. On another occasion the manager had been unable to advise us that birth mum was not attending an access visit because she’d been unable to find our up to date mobile number on the file.
Harsh words? Maybe. We have been known to take a service provider to task for poor service, failure to follow through, or sloppy work. Fine when we are battling over our iPhone bill.
But we expect better. We are dealing with a person. How will Happy Camper feel, many years on, when she reads the case conference notes and sees the errors? She is entitled to expect every adult who has been given a role in her life by ‘the system’ to take the utmost care – of her, of her information, of her feelings.
Poor form indeed.
Posted by EssentialMum.
Questions to ask a prospective foster agency
People often ask us for advice on which agency they should approach. Does it matter?
Well, yes, it does.
Agency and carer should be well matched, just like carer and child.
Over 40 years and a number of agencies, we’ve experienced:
Escalating conflict as the worker is stretched beyond their capability, experience or comfort zone. Carers discovering the non-negotiable policies of an agency many years into the placement. Hidden agendas. Workers creating a false expectation for birth parents about the placement, and the long term possibilities for the child. Workers compromising the relationship or interaction between carers and birth family members. Workers insisting on a designated ‘role’ in the foster child’s life without consideration of the carers’ wishes. Workers being completely unavailable. Lack of trust in the carer’s intentions or approach. Lack of negotiation between all parties in creating a case plan for the child.
Of course these are one sided, and many workers could give you a list of carer behaviours that defy belief. But our aim here is to facilitate successful placements for the children, and informed carers are key to that.
If we were to foster again, we'd ask some specific questions. These directly relate to the day-to-day part of the placement. They may sound negative, or too forthright. Like any relationship, everyone expects the best, but it’s the detail and the mismatched expectations that cause the problems.
Here is the list of questions we'd ask an agency:
Posted by EssentialMum
Well, yes, it does.
Agency and carer should be well matched, just like carer and child.
Over 40 years and a number of agencies, we’ve experienced:
Escalating conflict as the worker is stretched beyond their capability, experience or comfort zone. Carers discovering the non-negotiable policies of an agency many years into the placement. Hidden agendas. Workers creating a false expectation for birth parents about the placement, and the long term possibilities for the child. Workers compromising the relationship or interaction between carers and birth family members. Workers insisting on a designated ‘role’ in the foster child’s life without consideration of the carers’ wishes. Workers being completely unavailable. Lack of trust in the carer’s intentions or approach. Lack of negotiation between all parties in creating a case plan for the child.
Of course these are one sided, and many workers could give you a list of carer behaviours that defy belief. But our aim here is to facilitate successful placements for the children, and informed carers are key to that.
If we were to foster again, we'd ask some specific questions. These directly relate to the day-to-day part of the placement. They may sound negative, or too forthright. Like any relationship, everyone expects the best, but it’s the detail and the mismatched expectations that cause the problems.
Here is the list of questions we'd ask an agency:
- What is the agency’s policy in relation to birth family contact? Is the agency working towards restitution of foster child and birth family? Does the agency want to re-establish a relationship between child and birth parent? Or is the agency aiming to maintain contact between child and birth family?
- What is the agency’s policy in relation to the foster child’s relationship with their birth family? Who attends access? What are the policies in relation to what the child should call birth and foster parents? What locations are used for access (agency offices, play centres)? How flexible is this? Do the workers always attend access? At what point might the worker not attend access?
- What is the agency’s schedule for visits and follow up (phone, email) with carers? How often will these occur? What happens if the carers can’t accommodate the schedule? Will this change over time and what will cause it to change?
- Clearly describe the social worker’s role. What are the service levels carers are entitled to expect from all parties? [Service levels are a business concept where the standard of service and the approach are set out and guaranteed. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has service levels. It makes interesting reading.]
- How often do agency workers change? How long is the foster child likely to have a relationship with one worker for? How will the transition to a new worker be handled?
- What do you see the carer’s role to be? How much input will the carer have in developing the case plan for the child?
- Who can carers talk to if they are unhappy with a worker’s approach, performance or policies? What is the process they follow and what is likely to occur? What are the options?
- Does the agency recognise that at some point the carer has the most up to date knowledge of the child? What weight is the agency prepared to give that?
- At what age does the agency recognise the child’s ability to state what they want?
- What is the agency’s policy in relation to adoption by the foster family? Will it consider it on its merits or is the agency opposed to it in principal? What limitations does the agency place on it (child’s age, parents’ situation)?
Posted by EssentialMum
Don't look now: your relationship is not working
We had a great conversation recently with our social worker. It was around upcoming activities, holiday birth family contact and arrangements. What made it so great?
We exchanged views with the worker on a couple of issues. We listened to them, they listened to us, and we agreed on an approach that we were both happy with. Importantly, we both agreed that Happy Camper’s requirements were the most important ones. With such a clear agreement about the priority, coming to a solution was easy.
We had a quick word about what Happy Camper was up to. The worker reminded us of how far we have come and what great progress the Camper has made. It was wonderful to see that our worker recalls the journey we’ve taken, and trusts us to continue.
Sounds simple really. But it isn’t always.
We’ve experienced worker/carer meltdown. After several harmonious years, we were assigned a new worker who wanted to change the world, change Happy Camper’s life, and start ‘all over again’. We put our views to the the worker. They were never given a hearing. We outlined what part of the proposed changes we couldn't accommodate. We were told we simply had to. Suddenly issues that never rose before become deal-breakers. The agency and its workers had no room for a differing point of view. Even when Happy Camper had made outstanding progress under our care.
So what are your options? We can’t advise specifically, but here’s what we’ve seen.
Often a carer will try to put up with it because they are concerned that the child in care might become caught in the middle. Or they are concerned that any rising tension in dealing with a worker may flow over to the child. Often a carer, faced daily with numerous challenges in caring for the child, will simply roll with it. Too often a carer has no point of reference (or no time to chase a point of reference) to say ‘Is this really acceptable?’
The risk of going with it is that ‘bad situations’ don’t hold steady. They usually become worse. New issues give rise to new levels of conflict and irritation that build.
You need to work out where the relationship will end up.
Can you roll with it and manage around it? Can you stay calm and detached after contact with the worker? Can you manage the worker’s approach (or the agency’s policies) and still be happy with the outcome for your foster child?
If the answer to any of those is no, we’d suggest you act. Explain clearly to the worker your position. Call a meeting with their manager to discuss your perspective. Give it a go and work through suggested actions to resolve it. But if it still doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to take it higher.
We changed agencies when it became clear that the worker/agency approach was diametrically opposed to what we knew was best for Happy Camper. We were faced with an agency that would not modify any policy or approach one iota, because Happy Camper was ‘just one’ of their many children. The change wasn’t easy, but it was in Happy Camper’s best interests. And like any parent, we find it easy to put her interests first.
Posted by EssentialMum
We exchanged views with the worker on a couple of issues. We listened to them, they listened to us, and we agreed on an approach that we were both happy with. Importantly, we both agreed that Happy Camper’s requirements were the most important ones. With such a clear agreement about the priority, coming to a solution was easy.
We had a quick word about what Happy Camper was up to. The worker reminded us of how far we have come and what great progress the Camper has made. It was wonderful to see that our worker recalls the journey we’ve taken, and trusts us to continue.
Sounds simple really. But it isn’t always.
We’ve experienced worker/carer meltdown. After several harmonious years, we were assigned a new worker who wanted to change the world, change Happy Camper’s life, and start ‘all over again’. We put our views to the the worker. They were never given a hearing. We outlined what part of the proposed changes we couldn't accommodate. We were told we simply had to. Suddenly issues that never rose before become deal-breakers. The agency and its workers had no room for a differing point of view. Even when Happy Camper had made outstanding progress under our care.
So what are your options? We can’t advise specifically, but here’s what we’ve seen.
Often a carer will try to put up with it because they are concerned that the child in care might become caught in the middle. Or they are concerned that any rising tension in dealing with a worker may flow over to the child. Often a carer, faced daily with numerous challenges in caring for the child, will simply roll with it. Too often a carer has no point of reference (or no time to chase a point of reference) to say ‘Is this really acceptable?’
The risk of going with it is that ‘bad situations’ don’t hold steady. They usually become worse. New issues give rise to new levels of conflict and irritation that build.
You need to work out where the relationship will end up.
Can you roll with it and manage around it? Can you stay calm and detached after contact with the worker? Can you manage the worker’s approach (or the agency’s policies) and still be happy with the outcome for your foster child?
If the answer to any of those is no, we’d suggest you act. Explain clearly to the worker your position. Call a meeting with their manager to discuss your perspective. Give it a go and work through suggested actions to resolve it. But if it still doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to take it higher.
We changed agencies when it became clear that the worker/agency approach was diametrically opposed to what we knew was best for Happy Camper. We were faced with an agency that would not modify any policy or approach one iota, because Happy Camper was ‘just one’ of their many children. The change wasn’t easy, but it was in Happy Camper’s best interests. And like any parent, we find it easy to put her interests first.
Posted by EssentialMum
Which agency should I foster with?
Who should I approach? I’m really interested in fostering, but I’m not sure which agency, public or private, I should go through. What’s the difference?
This came into focus when we caught up with a friend last weekend, who reminded us that she was interested in long term fostering, and wanted our advice on where to start.
Let’s take a big step forward. When you have a child in care, one of the most important aspects of that placement is a real ‘meeting of the minds’ between carer and agency. You may have challenges with the child. The last thing you need is conflict or frustration with the agency that monitors and supports you.
‘Meeting of the minds’ is actually a legal concept that underpins contract law, but we’ve found it works well in business and life. Are your thoughts aligned? Do you want the same thing? Are you working towards the same outcome?
In our experience, the best agency/carer relationships have the following features:
Posted by EssentialMum
This came into focus when we caught up with a friend last weekend, who reminded us that she was interested in long term fostering, and wanted our advice on where to start.
Let’s take a big step forward. When you have a child in care, one of the most important aspects of that placement is a real ‘meeting of the minds’ between carer and agency. You may have challenges with the child. The last thing you need is conflict or frustration with the agency that monitors and supports you.
‘Meeting of the minds’ is actually a legal concept that underpins contract law, but we’ve found it works well in business and life. Are your thoughts aligned? Do you want the same thing? Are you working towards the same outcome?
In our experience, the best agency/carer relationships have the following features:
- An ‘aligned’ vision of what is best for the child. Put simply, you all agree on the basics - of care, access, support etc.
- A fair and open process of deciding what is best for the child. Think about what happens. The carer takes a child in. The child needs to settle, to trust, to learn, maybe even to learn to love. The timeframe varies but most long term carers become the people who know the child best. We live with them. Put our ‘on the ground’ experience with an experienced, thoughtful, objective social worker, provide willingness to discuss an issue and decide an approach together, and the results can be constructive.
- Room for individuality. These children need to be treated as individuals who matter. Too often their needs as an individual have been completely ignored. This is not uncommon in their birth family circumstances, but surprisingly can also occur in short term placements, where the focus might be on their physical needs. So any approaches or policies should be adjusted for the individual child. For example, the policy that ‘Our approach is that children in care call their birth parent “X” ‘ becomes ‘While generally our policy is that children in care call their birth parent “X”, in Y’s case we agree that….’
- Mutual respect. This needs to happen at the individual level. The PERSONAL level. Carers need to be able to respect the social worker assigned to their case, and workers need to respect the capabilities and experience of the carers. All parties need to demonstrate this – in what they say, how they listen to each other.
- Support. Depending on the needs of your child, you may call on the agency for support. They should be there when you need it. With what you need. And on the other hand, they shouldn’t be in your ear every week with demands and actions and policies and plans. Unless that's what you want.
- A willingness to listen. From all parties. This means that a proper conversation is going on.
- Recognition. Some recognition of the child’s progress really makes a carer feel good. More importantly, a ‘good’ placement, and the carers’ part in that, should go to the carers’ credibility. If the child is thriving, learning, growing, loving and happy do you think we might just know what we are doing?
Posted by EssentialMum
When do we connect the dots .................?
EssentialMum offloaded a car last year. She filled out her paperwork for the RTA transferring registration.
So - stay with me here - how interesting to receive an E-Toll statement this week, containing recent toll charges for the offloaded vehicle. Not high. Just wrong.
The E-Toll statement has the RTA logo on the top left corner, as well as the Roads and Traffic Authority business name and ABN (Australian Business Number). The links to the web for further information take the user to the RTA site. One could assume they were part of the RTA in fact. Couldn’t one?
EssentialMum rang the Operations Centre, and politely enquired as to why charges were still coming through for the offloaded car. The very polite and helpful staffer told us that the charges occurred when a tag didn’t work – so they would confirm the car registration and manually charge whichever E-Toll account had that car rego listed on it.
So one part of the RTA that processes a transfer in registration of a vehicle has no way of informing another part of the RTA of the change in ownership. In this age of connectivity, you’ve got to be kidding!
It’s a good day when we learn something – even if it is how to manage our E-Toll account. But it struck a chord with us.
This is what child welfare services struggle with.
No one joins the dots, and in those circumstances it is often a child’s life at risk, not a few dollars on a toll charge. In child welfare it is not just within an organisation, but across all parties charged with some responsibility for children’s welfare and safety.
How hard could it be to create a networked database, accessible by all required parties, to track case plans, incidents, issues and care plans for children at risk? Of course there are privacy issues. Corporations have been managing customer privacy issues for years.
Can you imagine the information flow if a case worker, a doctor, a teacher, a police officer, a community health worker, a foster parent, even a birth parent could communicate online? About a child. One can only dream.
Posted by EssentialMum
So - stay with me here - how interesting to receive an E-Toll statement this week, containing recent toll charges for the offloaded vehicle. Not high. Just wrong.
The E-Toll statement has the RTA logo on the top left corner, as well as the Roads and Traffic Authority business name and ABN (Australian Business Number). The links to the web for further information take the user to the RTA site. One could assume they were part of the RTA in fact. Couldn’t one?
EssentialMum rang the Operations Centre, and politely enquired as to why charges were still coming through for the offloaded car. The very polite and helpful staffer told us that the charges occurred when a tag didn’t work – so they would confirm the car registration and manually charge whichever E-Toll account had that car rego listed on it.
So one part of the RTA that processes a transfer in registration of a vehicle has no way of informing another part of the RTA of the change in ownership. In this age of connectivity, you’ve got to be kidding!
It’s a good day when we learn something – even if it is how to manage our E-Toll account. But it struck a chord with us.
This is what child welfare services struggle with.
No one joins the dots, and in those circumstances it is often a child’s life at risk, not a few dollars on a toll charge. In child welfare it is not just within an organisation, but across all parties charged with some responsibility for children’s welfare and safety.
How hard could it be to create a networked database, accessible by all required parties, to track case plans, incidents, issues and care plans for children at risk? Of course there are privacy issues. Corporations have been managing customer privacy issues for years.
Can you imagine the information flow if a case worker, a doctor, a teacher, a police officer, a community health worker, a foster parent, even a birth parent could communicate online? About a child. One can only dream.
Posted by EssentialMum
Children don’t go into limbo while the adults sort themselves out
Kate de Brito’s blog at news.com.au had an interesting topic. This week’s post was ‘Should I report my sister to child services?’ (If you click through don't be surprised to find some fairly blunt posts and comments on all manner of subjects).
The person who submitted the question – which was whether she should notify the authorities about her sister’s home situation - outlined what is essentially a scenario of children at risk, and asked for advice. There was plenty.
Many contributors were simply stunned. Given what is reported on the news most weeks that's surprising, but there you go. Many thought a good home clean-up/talking to/scare for mother was needed. Most of those missed the complexity of the situation and mother’s state of mental health and, we think, the reality that we are dealing with people here. And there were some well-reasoned and thoughtful responses.
The piece the readers had the least information on was what the family had done or was doing. There were a number of comments about what the family should do in such circumstances. That’s not an easy one to answer.
But surprise - the bogeyman was the authorities. While Kate recommended an initial approach to find out options, and a contributor pointed out that there is quite a process that the authorities follow before any decisions are made, many contributors put notifying the authorities as a last resort.
We can understand why many people assume the worst – of the system and the authorities. We can see why people feel that once they launch this juggernaut they will have no input and no control. A systematic approach, by its very nature, often works to exclude those who don’t understand it, or don’t have the skills the system requires to deal with it.
We have argued with social workers and stood our ground when we have a different view of what’s proposed for Happy Camper. Some workers made it clear that they thought we were being uncooperative because we dared to disagree with them. We believe we were doing our job and treating Happy Camper like the individual she is. It takes courage and smarts and tenacity to hold the line.
As a carer, you can feel torn by all these viewpoints. We think there is a guiding principle that helps. It’s certainly helped us work out what really matters.
Put the child first
Usually stated by all parties but not always done. We’ve heard a complacent ‘we advocate for the child’ from a worker. What the worker had conveniently forgotten was that she advocated for the child within the well prescribed, bog standard framework of the private agency. And the agency had its own agenda. Funnily enough, some of that bog standard framework was both in conflict with DOCS' approach and with what was best for Happy Camper.
So what’s the point?
There’s a point where the child’s needs outweigh those of the birth parent. Many of the posts on Kate de Brito’s blog advocated assistance for the mother. Absolutely. But make sure the children are OK while that process is going on.
Because children don’t go into limbo while the adults sort themselves out.
Posted by EssentialMum
The person who submitted the question – which was whether she should notify the authorities about her sister’s home situation - outlined what is essentially a scenario of children at risk, and asked for advice. There was plenty.
Many contributors were simply stunned. Given what is reported on the news most weeks that's surprising, but there you go. Many thought a good home clean-up/talking to/scare for mother was needed. Most of those missed the complexity of the situation and mother’s state of mental health and, we think, the reality that we are dealing with people here. And there were some well-reasoned and thoughtful responses.
The piece the readers had the least information on was what the family had done or was doing. There were a number of comments about what the family should do in such circumstances. That’s not an easy one to answer.
But surprise - the bogeyman was the authorities. While Kate recommended an initial approach to find out options, and a contributor pointed out that there is quite a process that the authorities follow before any decisions are made, many contributors put notifying the authorities as a last resort.
We can understand why many people assume the worst – of the system and the authorities. We can see why people feel that once they launch this juggernaut they will have no input and no control. A systematic approach, by its very nature, often works to exclude those who don’t understand it, or don’t have the skills the system requires to deal with it.
We have argued with social workers and stood our ground when we have a different view of what’s proposed for Happy Camper. Some workers made it clear that they thought we were being uncooperative because we dared to disagree with them. We believe we were doing our job and treating Happy Camper like the individual she is. It takes courage and smarts and tenacity to hold the line.
As a carer, you can feel torn by all these viewpoints. We think there is a guiding principle that helps. It’s certainly helped us work out what really matters.
Put the child first
Usually stated by all parties but not always done. We’ve heard a complacent ‘we advocate for the child’ from a worker. What the worker had conveniently forgotten was that she advocated for the child within the well prescribed, bog standard framework of the private agency. And the agency had its own agenda. Funnily enough, some of that bog standard framework was both in conflict with DOCS' approach and with what was best for Happy Camper.
So what’s the point?
There’s a point where the child’s needs outweigh those of the birth parent. Many of the posts on Kate de Brito’s blog advocated assistance for the mother. Absolutely. But make sure the children are OK while that process is going on.
Because children don’t go into limbo while the adults sort themselves out.
Posted by EssentialMum