Mad Love for Foster Parents

[exhausted]

Exhausted says it is the same in the UK

Exhausted's view of British Social Services is coloured and biased at best  :flame:

As I have every right to be

They are as much use as a chocolate radiator

The girl I fostered 5 years ago was a 13 year old persistent runaway prostitute, who was in danger of getting herself killed, the only way she would stay at home and not keep running off to London was if I agreed to take her in

Social Services were totally against this idea and wanted her to return home, where she was smacked around the head with a saucepan, burnt with an iron by step dad and verbally abused

Good old social services agreed with mum that she was a very lucky girl because her mum bought her a pony  :roll:

The kid would have been better treated if she'd grown four legs and a tail, my onjective was to work with her & her mum and try to get her home without all the crap that was going down in their house happening, it didn't work out, they were determined to control her with abuse

She visits me often, and tells me she just needed to be with people who cared about her for who she was, in the long run she went back to college and is doing very nicely thank you today, all she wanted was a family who wanted the person she was around them, we accepted her warts and all, we didn't control her but offered her choices in her lifestyle, there were consequences, once she actually felt self worth and accepted that there were people out there who liked her for being who she was, she stopped going to London, she dropped her loser friends, it was all her choice, she started hanging out with people who wanted to be with the person, not the piece of meat she was and what she'd give them for a few quid ... she learnt self worth, it wasn't difficult

And I never got paid a dime, all i asked for was her Child benefit to cover food costs, nothing else

To this day Social Services will swear she would have been better off in the home environment working through her issues with her parents, not so, she worked through a hell of a lot more with them by having space, thinking time and distance, plus the safety of being able to remove herself from the home with someone to go other than the streets - although she never did return to her home to live, we found a little place for her to rent and she is very happy there - she now speaks with her mum, dare I say even tries to get on with her, still hates the step dad, but bridges are being built and I'm really proud of the effort she has put in to changing her lifestyle, if Social services had their own way, they would have waited until she'd been hurt seriously either on the streets or at home and only then would they have realised that maybe, just maybe home wasn't the best place for her to be.

Now tell me I'm being bias towards Social rotten stinking services who only ever get involved once the tragedy has happened

Read the whole thing, every link.....How many times hospital doctors reported abuse to Social bloody Services and they still sent her home - then tell me how wonderful they really are
And this is not a one off

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/ ... efault.stm

[try another castle]

They are as much use as a chocolate radiator

 :rofl:

What a great turn of phrase.

[Anonymous]

2006 Foster Parent of the Year
3 Fostees to his name
God Bless Him

[Anonymous]

They can't win if they try. You cite one example of a child who you think should have been taken away. But, if a child does get taken away from their parents because of abuse, suddenly social services are in the shit cos they're "breaking up families."  The Daily Mail is onto it, it's a "national scandal," all major parties are making political capital out of it and f* the kids who are just trying to survive, somehow.

And what happens to the kids who are taken away from their parents? They end up dumped in asystem with appaling staff morale and turnover, much more likely to end up homeless or in jail.

Why is this? Cos so many selfish people in this country b* about their taxes and demand tax cuts, completely failing to realise that, actually, these services need MONEY to function. You can't make this money magically appear by forcing staff to do horrendous amounts of overtime and denying them access to a free watercooler at work. You can only get this money through an increase in taxation, adn the sooner someone steps up and acknowledges that the rich MUST start to pay more tax to ensure the safety and security of our state services, the more chance this country has of redeeming itself.

On the whole, social workers try bloody hard to do a bloody hard job! They deserve applause, credit, acknowledgement in terms of their pay and conditions, and a bloody big pat on the back. But no, everyone has their "horror story" mostly gleaned from half-truths half-stories.

[exhausted]

Social workers spend their time ignoring children in real need & jumping all over the ones who aren't

The general attitude in this country is that if a child is over the age of ten years of age, they are able to walk away from an abusive situation and survuive on the streets, so once you hit ten years of age you are fucked, there are kids living all over the streets and social services just shrug

My daughter alone has 3 friends who by the age of 14 had been kicked out of home and social services told them to fend for themselves

Yer they're real troopers

[Anonymous]

So its not just americans that want strangers to raise their kids.

[exhausted]

Er no - it's all over the world

These particular girls' parents didn't particularly want anyone to raise their kids I don't think.....they just didn't want to do it themselves, i don't think there was any thought as to who would raise them once they'd gone out the door

[Anonymous]

Sorry the government can't raise your kids for you Exhausted. Bloody shame that.

you owe me a new keyboard, fuck i havent laughed that hard in a while.

[Anonymous]

Sorry the government can't raise your kids for you Exhausted. Bloody shame that.

you owe me a new keyboard, fuck i havent laughed that hard in a while.

 :rofl:  :rofl:  :rofl:  :rofl:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  ops:  ops:      ::fuckoff::  ::fuckoff::  ::fuckoff::  ::both::  ::both::  ::both:: ::kma:: ::rocker::

[Anonymous]

How much money do you get per kid and what is the maximum number of kids you can get?

[White Cracker Man]

Here in the USA, you can have as many kids as you have beds/cribs.

[Anonymous]

No way. Is that really true?  How much does the govt shill out for each kid?

[Deborah]

I'm sure it varies state to state, and it's not 'alot' of money, but significantly more (double, triple) what the parent would receive in aid, if the issue was that the parent genuniely couldn't afford to provide their child's basic necessities. Might we call that 'involuntary' neglect vs willful neglect. All based on CPSs interpretation as well. Kids are placed often for this reason, gov't shells out money to the foster they wouldn't have given the parent, which might've kept the family together. That foster child then is 5 times more likely to be injured or killed due to the placement, in Tx. Could it be more fucked up?

[exhausted]

Sorry the government can't raise your kids for you Exhausted. Bloody shame that.

Fuck you TSW, you know damn well that's not the case, when have I ever said I wanted them to raise my kids for me? I am asking them for help! Without the involvement of Social Services, nearly all of the aid in school, projects, therapists, even help for me to try to find out where I'm going wrong, is closed off to me - I want to raise my own kids, but I want to do it properly, which I'm evidently not at the moment, that is why i want Socal Services involved - but you know that aleready, you know the score, I have no idea why you'd attack me openly like this when you know privately how it really is.

[Anonymous]

Because he's a dick, Exhausted.

gov't shells out money to the foster they wouldn't have given the parent, which might've kept the family together.

The word here is "incentive". Government does not want to give poor people an incentive to have more kids and get money for doing that. In that light, it makes sense to pay someone else to do the job rather than reward people who have babies and can't afford them..