The Girl Who Just Wanted to Be Loved

by Angela Hart

Keeley had been with us for three months now, and the day had arrived for our second six-weekly placement meeting, to be attended once again by Jonathan and me, the social workers Sandy and Joan, plus Sandy’s boss Sheila Briggs.

  For several days beforehand Jonathan and I had talked late into the evening, picking over the conversation we’d had about coping with Keeley, and what we should say at this meeting. It wasn’t an easy decision, but we both agreed that despite the good behaviour we’d recently enjoyed, seeing Keeley getting along so well with Ellie, it was still wise for us to broach the subject of Keeley moving to a single placement, if and when the right one became available. We had to do what was right for her, we told ourselves. We might be judged by Social Services for suggesting such a move; perhaps even viewed to be struggling to cope or even failing, but if that was the case, then so be it. Our priority was Keeley’s wellbeing, and all we wanted was the best for her, and for the boys.

  I felt nervous when I took my seat around the table in the Social Services office. I was very familiar with these meetings, having attended hundreds by this point in my fostering career, but this was the first time I had gone into one with the intention of suggesting a child would ultimately be better off living with somebody else. Jonathan looked nervous too, his worried expression and the sheen of sweat on his brow reminding me of the day when, some seventeen years earlier, we waited to hear if a panel of officials had decided whether or not we were fit to be passed as foster carers.

  As usual, the meeting started with a discussion about the formalities required in every placement, such as routine check-ups with the doctor, dentist and optician, and school attendance and progress. Jonathan and I answered all of the questions to everybody’s satisfaction, and then Joan spoke. As Keeley’s social worker, she had spoken to her a few days before the meeting to ask how she felt about the placement, so that this information could be passed on. Joan told the meeting that Keeley had commented: ‘I wish I could just live with Angela,’ and that this was not the first time she had intimated this. Sandy, Jonathan and I all conceded that we were not surprised to hear this, as the three of us had discussed the fact Keeley seemed to enjoy one-to-one attention from me more than anything else.

  Sheila Briggs took up the reins, and to my surprise she began to catalogue how Social Services had hoped to put Keeley in a single placement from the start, following the breakdown of her other placements. This, according to her file, was on the advice of her therapist.

  ‘Mmm, I see, bonding issues,’ Sheila said, reading from notes. ‘Hence the recommendation for a single placement, and hence Keeley’s comments about wanting to live just with Angela.’

  Jonathan and I gave each other a look. We both knew that sending Keeley to us had not been first choice for Social Services. She had come to us because of our specialist training, and as we understood it there were simply no other foster carers with our training available at the time. If we hadn’t taken her in then she may have ended up in a special unit, which would probably have been much worse for her than living with me and Jonathan, Carl and Phillip. I had no regrets about agreeing to have Keeley move in with us, but I felt irritated. I just wished somebody had spelled out from the start that Keeley had ‘bonding issues’ that warranted her therapist to recommend a single placement. As it was, we’d been left to our own devices, trying to piece together Keeley’s confusing jigsaw with little else but Sandy’s anecdotes from a conference and a few photocopied hand-outs.

  ‘Can I ask,’ I interjected, as soon as I saw an opportunity. ‘Is there anything on the notes that says Keeley has attachment disorder?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Sheila replied, asking me to elaborate as she continued scanning pages in Keeley’s file.

  I explained briefly about the conversation with Sandy, who supported me by chipping in with some details about the conference she’d attended, and then Joan concurred that she too had wondered whether Keeley had attachment disorder, but that to her knowledge this had never been confirmed by any of the several medical experts Keeley had seen since her time in care. It was frustrating that nobody in the room seemed to know the full facts about Keeley’s mental health, although in our experience professionals often don’t like to label youngsters. In any case, I thought that at least this conversation had set the scene very well for me to give my views about Keeley moving into a single placement. I went on to hold the floor for quite some time, explaining how we felt Carl and Phillip were suffering as a result of having Keeley in their lives.

  ‘If we just had Keeley on her own I am sure we would manage well,’ I said, being ever-mindful of the fact I didn’t want to be seen as incapable. ‘But the fact is the boys were with us first and there are no plans in place at the moment for either of them to move out. I’m afraid that the situation with Keeley might escalate.’

  ‘Can you elaborate, Mrs Hart?’ Shelia Briggs said once more.

  ‘Yes, I can. Keeley sets out to deliberately aggravate the boys and, as we’ve discussed and put in writing already, she is sometimes physically aggressive towards them. So far the boys have not retaliated by fighting back, but she is pushing them all the time, particularly Phillip. He can be volatile given the wrong set of circumstances and I’m worried he might hit back if, for example, Keeley carries on digging him in the ribs or scratching and bruising him.’

  I felt guilty speaking about Keeley like this, and I went on to talk about the positive progress we’d made lately too, and in particular how she had made a good friend in Ellie and joined the theatre group.

  ‘I can see you and Mr Hart are very competent carers and you are doing your level best,’ Sheila remarked. ‘But I understand that this is not necessarily enough, in this instance. I do agree that we need to make renewed efforts to find an alternative home for Keeley.’

  Joan pointed out that we were all in a difficult situation: it had been hard enough finding specialist carers for Keeley. Now she needed a single placement with two specialist carers; one carer on their own would not work with a child like Keeley, as they would be under too much strain and it would not be safe for them.

  ‘I’m afraid this is like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ she said. ‘Those places are incredibly rare, and it could take years for one to come up.’

  I felt deflated, but I suppose this should not have come as a surprise. For many mainstream foster carers, it is just not feasible to commit to the extensive specialist training that Jonathan and I had over the years. We were in the very fortunate position of running our business in tandem with fostering, and because we were both self-employed and able to cover for each other, we managed to fit everything in.

  Sheila then said something else that I really hadn’t anticipated.

  ‘Joan, can you bring the meeting up to date on the situation with Keeley’s family, and is there any possibility of her living with another relative?’

  As far as I was aware there was only Tina and Eric. I hadn’t considered there might be a larger family tree after all.

  ‘On her mother’s side, there are no other relatives besides the grandfather, Eric, and we’ve drawn a blank so far in tracking down Keeley’s father,’ Joan said. ‘However, the good news is that he has not been absent throughout Keeley’s life, as we first thought. It appears he has been in contact with Tina several times over the years, and the last time he saw Keeley was about two years ago.’

  This surprised me. I’d always believed that Keeley’s father had disappeared off the scene when Keeley was a baby and too young to remember him, but clearly this was not the case. Keeley had never once mentioned her dad, but then again Keeley barely talked about her mum unless a contact session was taking place. I calculated she would have been about six years old the last time she saw him, though, so she was definitely old enough to remember him.

  Sheila then asked Joan to step up whatever efforts had been made to contact Keeley’s father, and then she moved on to another matter: the police interview.

  Scanning the
file in front of her on the desk once more, Sheila nodded and said: ‘I see that the police interviewing hasn’t led to any further action.’

  Jonathan and I exchanged yet more glances. We had heard nothing at all since we took Keeley to the interview house, and we had no idea what had gone on since, if anything.

  Joan nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. As you’ll see in the notes, unfortunately Keeley wouldn’t talk to the officers. She wouldn’t say a word. When they asked her why this was, after agreeing to be interviewed, she said she had seen a programme on the television that week in which a girl had gone to the police about her dad hurting her. The dad was sent to jail and Keeley said she didn’t want her grandfather to go to jail.’

  I cast my mind back to the week of the police interview, and to my dismay I recalled Keeley watching her favourite soap opera, which at the time was dramatising an ongoing police investigation. I normally watched the programme with her, but it was the night she scratched Phillip and I gave her the telephone directory to rip up, and I remembered that I’d left her to it and retreated to the kitchen for a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit and five minutes’ peace and quiet. I regretted this now, but then again, would I have stopped Keeley watching the episode had I sat down to watch with her? Probably not, and I had to accept that what was done was done. This unfortunate coincidence was out of my control and, in any case, who knows whether she would have seen it through with the police? Jonathan and I were nervous enough waiting outside the interview room, so goodness only knows what it was like for Keeley to be inside, surrounded by strangers and with such a difficult story to tell. It would be very hard for any child not to clam up and decide the easier option was to say nothing.

  The placement meeting was concluded with a discussion about Keeley’s mother. Tina wanted to come to our house for the next contact session, so that she could see Keeley’s bedroom and would be able to picture where her daughter was living. Jonathan and I were quite happy to agree to this. We’d seen Tina on many occasions by now at the weekly contact sessions but we had never had a proper conversation with her, as Jonathan and I always sat outside while the contact officer supervised the visit. I was sure Keeley would enjoy having her mum come to us for a change, and I thought it would also be an opportunity for Jonathan and I to get to know her better, which could be no bad thing. The social workers agreed that Jonathan and I could supervise this contact session by ourselves and didn’t need a contact social worker to be in the house with us, and a time was set for the coming Friday, when Tina would be driven to our house by a member of staff from Social Services, who would also take her home afterwards.

  That evening I told Keeley her mum was visiting after school on Friday.

  She thought about this for a moment and then told me she wasn’t sure if she wanted her to. Keeley had never objected to seeing her mum before and always seemed to quite enjoy it, so I asked her why it was she felt this way.

  ‘Dunno. It’ll just be weird, that’s all.’

  ‘You like seeing your mum though, don’t you, Keeley?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s a bit weird, her coming here, that’s all.’

  She didn’t say any more, apart from to tell me not to worry because she could see that I was frowning, which I thought was very sweet of her.

  I understood what she meant by it being ‘weird’ having Tina in our house. This was Keeley’s territory, a place where she was safe from any bad memories and the abuse she had suffered in the past. We still had no evidence about whether or not there had been any sexual abuse from mother to daughter, or indeed from her grandfather. After the failed police interview I doubted we ever would, but the physical and emotional trauma Keeley had been through when she was in her mother’s care was not disputed.

  Seeing her mum on neutral ground, away from the family home, had clearly been something Keeley could handle. Before I became a foster carer I would not have believed that even this would have been possible. I imagined that if a child had been abused in any way by a parent or relative, be it emotional, physical or sexual abuse, then they would not want to see them at all, but of course I’ve learned that this is rarely the case. Almost every one of the fifty children I’ve looked after has shown themselves to be incredibly resilient and forgiving, no matter what parents or other abusers within the family have subjected them to.

  One boy we looked after for a short while had been put in foster care at the age of three. He was eleven by the time he came to us, and his mother had been promising she would have him back ‘soon’ every few months for the past eight years. He picked himself up after every disappointment, his enthusiasm to return home and his loyalty to his mother unabated. I heard that she finally took him back in when he was seventeen and earning money, which unfortunately is not unusual. Then he stayed for just a few months, until his mother got fed up with him and kicked him out. Apparently, even then he remained her most loyal supporter.

  I thought long and hard that evening about Keeley’s reaction to her mother’s visit. I could completely see how meeting in a council building differed entirely to meeting in our house, or indeed any family home. The Social Services’ supervised contact room was fairly nondescript and it smelled like all council buildings – a little bit dusty and stale, with a faint whiff of disinfectant. This environment was a bonus to many children as it reduced the danger of bad memories being triggered by the smells and objects of home, plus the institutionalised setting made it seem safer and more controlled than a visit in a private house.

  I remembered how I assisted on a training course in the late nineties, during which Jonathan and I learned how reminders from home are very powerful, and can work in both a positive and negative way. For example, a child may arrive at their new foster home with a smelly old blanket, a broken toy or clothing that is too small for them. Whatever condition their belongings are in, and even if it looks like rubbish that is only fit for the bin, you must not, under any circumstances, throw any of their personal items away. I had to do a role play at that particular training session, in which I played an insensitive foster carer who was greeting a child for the first time.

  ‘What’s in your bin bag?’ I had to say.

  ‘My stuff,’ the person playing the foster child replied.

  ‘Give it here, then. I’ll help you unpack. Oh God! That stinks! That has to go in the bin right away!’

  The child then helplessly and unhappily watched this so-called rubbish being thrown out. The simple but powerful message was that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure, and for some children taking away what might be their only physical reminder of a person or a place is potentially very damaging, and can make it much harder for them to settle into their new environment. The child is already going through a period of great change, and it is your job as a foster carer to help make them feel as comfortable as possible, and not to add to their anxiety.

  I’ve also learned through training that sometimes objects and smells have the opposite to a comforting effect, and can instead trigger traumatic memories. One child we looked after became extremely upset when a teenager in the house used a particular aftershave, because it reminded her very powerfully and instantaneously of her abuser. It was like a switch. One minute she was happily playing a game and the next she was ashen-faced and shaking. It took her several hours to calm down after she smelled the aftershave, and several days to tell me why she had this reaction. Needless to say, I had to ask the boy not to use the aftershave again, and fortunately he readily agreed with no questions asked.

  I discussed all of these thoughts with Jonathan, because I could feel myself getting stressed about the visit. I’d fretted that Tina’s own perfume might linger in our house, and whether this might trigger Keeley in a bad way, after her mum had left. I wanted, and needed, Jonathan’s opinion.

  ‘How do you think we should handle Tina’s visit?’ I asked him. ‘Is there anything we can do to make it go as smoothly as possible, avoid any potential problems?’

&nb
sp; ‘First of all, we have agreed to the visit and it’s not our decision to change the arrangement,’ he said, trying to work through the problem systematically and reasonably, searching for any answers that could quell my concerns. ‘Social Services have set this up and we trust they know what they are doing, don’t we?’

  ‘That’s right. I’ll pass on what Keeley has said about her mother coming to our house, though. They don’t know she’s said it’s a bit “weird”.’

  ‘OK, yes, of course. We also know that Keeley is fine having contact with Tina at the offices, don’t we? So the problem is not actually in seeing her mother, it’s in her mother coming here.’

  ‘Exactly. So the real question is, Jonathan, what is causing that reaction? It’s not because her mother’s scent or clothes or anything like that brings back memories from the past, because that would happen in the offices too.’

  ‘Right, Angela. And so, therefore, the problem has to be that here she is simply worried her private space is being invaded, which as you’ve already said is quite understandable. We simply need to reinforce the fact to Keeley that nothing will change once Tina has been in the house. Keeley is just as safe, we will look after her just the same, and Tina’s visit is not going to alter what goes on here.’

  Conversations like these have been taking place between Jonathan and me for decades now. We laugh sometimes at how we have become amateur psychologists and detectives on our fostering journey. The training courses we’ve been on have been second to none, and we’re both very comfortable with analysing situations, trying to put ourselves in the shoes of the child and, above all, being open-minded and willing to watch and learn.

  24

  ‘I’m not sure I can take much more’

  ‘Babe!’ Tina trilled when she arrived at our house. Keeley was in the hallway, dressed in her favourite denim-blue leggings and a fluffy sweatshirt with a rabbit on the front.

  ‘Hello, Mum,’ Keeley replied.