From the dept. of "I'm sure they mean well"

[mirrorshard]

From today's Observer:

Last year my wife, already buried up to her neck in the business of raising our four children, tried to persuade a local agency to consider us as foster parents. She was told, almost sniffily, that this would be impossible because we did not have a spare room. The woman at the other end of the phone was also concerned that there were too many young children in the house. We were amazed that our admittedly chaotic but nevertheless loving home, overlooking the Weald of Kent and crammed with youngsters, could be seen as an unsuitable place for a vulnerable and wounded child.

What kind of crack-addled half-witted prating fool would even consider trying to foster a 'vulnerable and wounded child' without being able to give them their own safe space, let alone dumping them straight into the company of four strange children they can't get away from?

Comments

[arkady.livejournal.com]

I got about halfway through reading that article before giving up in disgust over the whole pompous attitude of "I offered to volunteer my assistance; look how generous I am! How dare they make me jump through the same hoops as everyone else!" And yet if a foster carer were found to have abused children and hadn't been security-vetted properly, no doubt there'd be complaints about why procedure hadn't been followed and why aren't the criteria for becoming a foster parent more stringent and demanding.

A woman who is "buried up to her neck" by trying to raise 4 young children is not going to have the time and attention to spare for a foster child who will likely be traumatised by separation from his or her parents and likely has a whole load of behavioural problems as a result. How on earth would she cope if that foster child demonstrated their unhappiness by defecating behind the sofa, refusing to eat, wetting the bed nightly and biting the other children? (Trust me; this is typical behaviour for a vulnerable child fostered out as a result of being on the "at risk" register, especially young children not yet capable of communicating their needs.)

As for the writer's complaint that his wife had to attend a course in order to teach illiterate adults - well, of course they're not going to appoint anyone as a teacher just because they say they can do it; recognised qualifications are needed! And as for the long background-check process for a mentor of young people - what does he expect?? Or would he prefer that the process is skipped to make it quicker and easier for anyone to apply, and then just deal with the aftermath when a paedophile manages to get the position?

It's the overwhelming sense of entitlement that comes through in that article that nauseates me. They're not being charitable for the sake of the people they're supposedly trying to help; they're doing it because it makes them feel good to boast of how generous they are, and they're angry that the long selection and vetting process prevents them quick and easy gratification in that respect.

If they were truly doing it for altruistic reasons, then the wait wouldn't matter.

I've encountered far too many people who wanted to foster for all the wrong reasons and really would not be suitable to foster. They have no concept of how demanding and stressful fostering can be. It's not enough to just be a "good person".

[shuripentu.livejournal.com]

Or what if the foster child has been, say, physically or sexually abused by their parents, and turns on the biological children of the foster parents once they're there? I suspect Mr and Mrs We're Nice People So We Ought To Be Able To Do Stuff With No Checks Or Training hadn't considered that possibility...

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Quite. I wouldn't want that family fostering: they don't have the space, they already have four young children, they can't understand that a foster child would need privacy, and they think that such things as police checks and disability training are a waste of time. Wouldn't it be fun if they turned out to be homophobic too ("good Christian family values" or whatever) and got a LGBT youngster to foster?

The assumption that all volunteers are lovely people is naive beyond belief. D, who's the assistant manager (i.e. one of only two salaried staff) at a charity bookshop, recently went through no end of hassle from the higher-ups because £50 vanished one day when he was running the shop. A variety of volunteers were in that day at various times. The next week, more money vanished. After that, the new volunteer who'd been there both times never showed up again and evaded all attempts at contact, so it was pretty definite it was him, but not before D had been grilled endlessly on exactly what had happened when he'd taken money to the bank and so forth. (The first time he was frantically triple-checking everything in case he'd made a mistake himself, not that he thought he had, mainly because he didn't want to think one of the volunteers was a thief.) I'm still a little shocked that the charity let it slide and didn't call in the police. And people are against police checks for volunteers?

As for disability training, try being disabled in today's world.