Voices of Fostering

Ali - My Mum was fostered!

• National Fostering Group • Season 4 • Episode 2

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In this episode of Voices of Fostering, we sit down with Ali, a dedicated foster carer with 34 years of experience. Ali shares her journey into fostering, inspired by her mother's difficult post-war childhood in the care system. 

Her story highlights the profound importance of empathy and meticulous care in fostering, especially for children with disabilities. Ali provides insights into the challenges and rewards of fostering, the importance of managing transitions for foster children, and her unwavering commitment to making a difference. 

Join us to hear Ali's inspiring story and gain a deeper understanding of the world of fostering.

If you would like to find out more about fostering please visit our website here.

If you have any questions that you would like to be answered on our next episode email podcast@nfa.co.uk

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Helen:

Hello and welcome to this episode of Voices of Fostering. Today I am joined by another of our lovely foster carers. Welcome to Voices of Fostering. Alison. Hello, Alison. Hello. Call me Ali please. Ali, lovely to have you on Ali. Well thank you so, so much for joining us. So Ali, you've been a foster carer for quite a long time, haven't you? Is it 34 years?

Ali:

Yeah,

Helen:

a long time. Wow. If you try and think back all the way back 34 years ago, what was it that that led you to fostering? Why did you decide to do it? Because when I was very

Ali:

tiny, um, and then through my childhood, um, I would talk to my mum and she at times got very, very depressed. Um, but we had a really good relationship and. I would talk to her about it. And it kind of struck me that when they were orphaned, they were all taken into care. Um, and the way in which it was done like a van with no windows or anything came, they were allowed to have one small bag each, and they shaved their heads, um, and put them in the back of this van. And that was the start of what you call coupon fostering because it was just after the second World War, the foster carers. Used to take the children in so they could have their ration vouchers, and then they had some clothing vouchers from social care. And that was how fostering sort of started off. Wow. So, and one of my uncle got sent.

Helen:

Your mom and your mom's siblings were, are they referred to as voucher children? Ali, can you, can you explain, were Yes. Yeah. Can you explain to us what, what, what that is and, and what they experienced? So the,

Ali:

the ration coupons system didn't just stop when World War II ended. It went on into the fifties. My grandmother, their mom died of cancer just six months after the end of the war. And in those days, what you had was some children that were small enough were sent to Canada to be adopted over there. Um, there were families split up and divided across to even Australia if there are relatives out there. Um. They had aunties, but none of the aunties wanted to foster them apart from one who did it for the ration coupons. And then to get foster carers on board because there were very, very high rate of orphans after the war. Um, the ration slips, coupons would be signed over to them, and there were other sort of perks as well, um, again, like clothing vouchers and what have you. Um, and so they, they had. I think it was about two pounds back in those days to buy clothing for the child and what have you. Um, and so that became known as, as, um, voucher fostered. Um, two of my uncles were sent down to Devon to work on a farm when they got 12 years of age, and so they. Their vouchers stopped, but then they went down to work on a farm at 12 years of age. So it was very, very different system than if you were an orphan and you didn't have, um, any social workers really. You had one that used to just send you to the place and then when you got to 12, another one would come in and say, right, this is where you're going next. Um, and it struck me that my mom was the oldest. I. And she really, really kicked up of us, um, and refused to let them send her baby sister, who was a baby then. She was 12 months old. Uh, she refused to let them send her to Canada to be adopted. And my mum, at 12 years of age, every weekend, she would go to her four siblings at different parts of the country. So she would get on the National Express bus and she would drive down to Devon. Then the next weekend she would drive down to Cornwall and then she went to Essex and what have you, while she remained in London. Um, and she, it was quite a, a horrible, horrible childhood that they had. Having lost their mother.

Helen:

Yeah.

Ali:

So when their vouchers ran out, then they went onto the next bit. So they, they were put to work at 12 years of age and they

Helen:

were, they were spread out across the country. As you say, your, your mum had to travel miles to visit her siblings. That must have been so, so tough and thankfully that's not something that really happens now 'cause. Um, you know, we, we try and keep sibling groups together as much as possible. So that must be something that you are really passionate about now.

Ali:

Very, yeah, and I'm very, very proud of my mum because, um, you know, she did have a lot of depression. I think that there was some really, really dark times and so did, two of her siblings had very dark times, um, but she still kept doing it. She still, she worked for two pounds, um, in the shop and. She saved that two pounds every week, went on a National Express Coach ticket, and around to all of her siblings, she would go. So every weekend she would travel to one of the different children. Um, so yeah, it's something that I'm very, very passionate about and I'm very proud of my mum. And I think that she would be proud of me.

Helen:

Absolutely. And I genuinely,

Ali:

you know, 'cause quite often as grownups we do that thing where we say, okay, mom's up in heaven, is she gonna be happy about that or is she not? And I think, yeah, she's happy. Yeah. That's, I think she might be disappointed in my cooking.

Helen:

Sure. So, so yeah. So Ally, growing up, knowing that your mom had had this difficult childhood she'd grown up in, in the care system, that really is, is was the catalyst for you wanting to be a foster carer 34 years ago?

Ali:

Yeah. Yeah. And my mom, um, she went, at first she was, uh, at the police station, uh, when, when the stations were within towns, you know, and not so much, um, countywide, but she was at the police station there. And then she went to work for social services. And I found it really fascinating looking at the two things. And as she got older, I mean, she wouldn't tell me names, obviously, for obvious reasons. But we would talk because my dad wasn't there. He, they divorced and, and I was the only one really that was there to chat with at night. So we used to eat cheese and crackers and talk. And it struck me how different it is from the policing side to the social services side because she then went on to be a team leader in social services. So for me, that sort of, it probably captured me more than reading a book. I love to read a book in those days. I read lots, but I think, yeah, I suddenly thought, well, hang on a minute. How does this work? And there was a very, very specific time when I thought, no, hang on a minute, it's not working. Um, and that was before 1986, you know, that was 19 80, 19 78. So I was still a child still at school, but I found it quite

Helen:

fascinating. So tell us, Ali, about your fostering journey then over the past 34 years. Um, how did it begin? What sort of fostering were you doing then and, and what, what type of fostering do you do now?

Ali:

So, when I, when I started, um, I had been in the police and I decided that I didn't want to be, I wanted to, to be working with children. Um, I was very young. I went to, uh, work as head of night staff at a local disability school. Um, IVA was still in the police and he was in the next village down. That was where our police house was that we lived in. And I'd quite often get him to like, bring the car in so the kids could put the blue lights on and the sirens and everything, and we kind of like let them crawl over the car. Um, and I did that for. County council. I won't say which one. Um, and as I was sort of taking the children home, I thought nobody's actually questioning it. No one's really even saying to me, should you be taking that child home? Um, I did get permission from all of their parents. Uh, so I would phone them and say, can I take Adam home with me for the weekend? Because he was just stuck there every day of his life in a residential school because of his disabilities. So the parents did say yes, and I took them, but it wasn't by any means closely monitored. And I started fostering for the county council, and I quite quickly became really frustrated with their performance. And the one thing that I'd always thought was, I'm gonna try and find out some information about private agencies and see if they have a better standard of care for the children. And. I quite quickly found out that the standard of care with a private foster care agency is so much higher. Um, I mean, I was given children and, and they'd got their names wrong. One little boy who was quite verbal, but he didn't answer me at all when I was calling him, and it turned out that they'd given me the wrong child and it, his brother was. Up the road. I phoned up the other foster carer and I said, okay, are you my little boy that answers to such and such? Oh my goodness. And she was like, yeah. And so that was how we found out that we'd both got the wrong boys, you know, that between the foster carers and I was the social worker came in and I said, you gave us the wrong children's with the wrong names. And she went, oh, silly me sort of thing. And I thought, okay, I'm not very pleased with this. And there were lots of other niggly bits. You know, like, um, reviews being left far, far too long. And for me, I thought that's actually quite dangerous for me and my family. You know, if you don't have a really, really good system in place, there are reasons why we have got body bruise maps. There are reasons why we've got medications, um, forms and such, like, and if you're not doing that properly, it could come back on you. You have to imagine that the responsibility of giving a child, especially not your own medications, without proper advice and guidance and being monitored, that's really dangerous. And I had a, a situation recently where a, a medication for one of my foster children was on a national shortage and we couldn't get it. And I spent. A week leading up to it. I knew that I'd only got a week's left supply and every day I was phoning a hundred plus pharmacies to see if they could get a bottle. That's a whole other story that we haven't got time for now, but you need to be responsible and realize that the very often the buck does stop with you and you, it's no good saying, oh no.'cause the social worker didn't tell me, oh no, you need to actually do it yourself. Do the research. Always know as much as you possibly can, and the way that you start off that placement is the way that it should carry on. So don't build false expectations. Don't try and be Mrs. Superwoman who gives them sweets every single day and lets them stay up until they, you know, they finished watching two hours more of TV or something. Because if you start it off wrong. You're not gonna get very far.

Helen:

Yeah. And Ali, in, in the 34 years that you've fostered, I can imagine you've had many placements where, um, it's been important for you to, to help those children or young people transition between families really. And that's something you are quite passionate about now, isn't it? Um, you know, helping children to, to settle into a new foster home and moving from their pre previous carers. So, can you tell us a bit about that and why those transitions are so important to manage?

Ali:

So the children that I have are always disability now, um, um, very, very complex needs. Many of them have been, I've had two where social workers have literally said that child can't be fostered. They're gonna have to go into a residential placement. We've actually fostered them really, really well, and, and I've credit myself totally with teaching one of them to talk and communicate. And I worked really, really hard to let them communicate because I thought very early on, just imagine what it was like would be like if somebody came in that you didn't know and they picked you up from the dining table, led you out and said, we are taking you away from here now. And just imagine how you would feel. You would be terrified. It must feel like the most traumatic moment of that child's life. They don't ever forget it. My mum never forgot it. It was her most significant memory of her childhood, and I don't think that people realized just how traumatic it's for children to be moved around to come into care in the first place. Because very often they still love their parents. And so I thought about it and I kind of would do an exercise with myself where I would put down several different things on paper. You know that game where you have to write the next sentence and the next sentence and you pass it all around? It's showing my age, but we used to do a party, so everyone wrote a line and then you forwarded it and you sent it around. And I've done that with my family and it's really, really interesting because. Nobody can actually find a way to express how traumatized they would be feeling. We just can't find the right words, and it is, at the end of the day, it's PTSD. It's not just children with disabilities. It's children with a relatively low disability, right, who have still been traumatized. I always try to imagine if I can, what it feels like to just suddenly be lifted from your house. And taken to a family of complete strangers. Yeah. And you dunno anything about the house? My house isn't gonna look like the house that they've come from. It's not gonna have the same smells. It's not gonna have, you know, my mom's house, it always smelt of jam tarts and bake because she baked every day. There was the dog's little fluffy cushion on the floor. Um, for the dogs to lay on and things like that. And you had all of these markers. There was a picture that she hung in every house. She took it with us whenever we moved, and this picture was on the wall in the house, and she died in my arms at my home. And the second that she had stopped breathing, I literally got a blast of that picture in my memory. It came up and it hit me, and I was so. Miserable and sad and utterly desperate, but I could just see that picture and I thought we did actually have a good life together, my mom and I, and my brother. So in the face of everything, we need to try to help the children to understand that there is gonna be some light at the end of the tunnel. I tend to use a lot of tricks because of my disabilities fostering. So if you've got a child coming into a new placement. Try and get a photograph of them. Make place mats up you just a for paper. Put the person's picture on it. So there'll be dad, there'll be, uh, either there'll be Ali, there'll be other children in the family, laminate them. And then when it comes to that very first mealtime, when everyone goes to the table, they can see their picture and there's no question of having to wait or ask for a seat. They just sit there. Yeah. And you put the same thing up on their bedroom door. And you make sure that there are pictures there, you do everything that you can to try and leapfrog a little bit into familiarity. And you have to do that by having different things, like a morning routine, get up, brush your teeth and what have you. And they use the disabilities website symbols, um, because even if they can't read, they can still recognize brushing teeth and they can still recognize that school uniform comes after brushing teeth and things like that. So I tried to make it, the start of it and the transition, whichever it is from, so easy for them to understand because the stress is massive. And I think if I'd gone through that, honestly, I probably would've had a nervous breakdown as a child. We've got a prism population that is 80% filled with children who were looked after children in various different situations. And our, our mental health care in our country is failing. It's dead. I've, I've had a child who's coming up to a decade waiting for Cams to see him, to review his medications and to see him a decade of me just giving him the control drug that they prescribed when he was five years old. That's not right. So the only person that can really, really do anything is the foster carer, our social worker, our supervising social worker. She is brilliant. She's very, very lovely, and she's very calm. But I always make sure that I take the responsibility on for helping the child in the transition.

Helen:

Yeah.

Ali:

You know, they're not gonna sleep for weeks and weeks, would you? If someone just took you away from your mom?

Helen:

Yeah.

Ali:

You know, the house might have smell of weed and maybe mom didn't feed them seven nights a week, you know? But the fact is, it's still where their mum is. And so those things, for good or bad, they're gonna miss terribly.

Helen:

Yeah.

Ali:

And it seems silly to say, well, they're gonna miss the smell of urine on the carpets. They do because they, they miss what was meant to be their life and improved on. And so it is a terrible trauma that children go through.

Helen:

Ali, thank you so, so much for, for sharing with us today and hearing the, the such high level of empathy that you have is just so, so powerful. So thank you so much for, for sharing your story with us. Could you just finally, could you imagine your life without being a foster carer now?

Ali:

No. No, not at all. Do you think you'll do it forever? I think, yeah, I think, I think that I will. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, it is my life and, and I realized that I was always meant to do that. I had a few other things that I was gonna join the police for a while, and then I thought, should I train as a nurse and what have you? No, I don't want to do that. Once I thought about it and I thought about what my mum had been through, I knew that I had to do that and I can't see myself giving up. I'm not gonna give up when I'm retirement age 'cause it doesn't work like that. As long as I'm able to, I'll still do it. My children that I have are extremely special. They're very, very high needs. Um, one of them is two to one at all times. We're now in public, but the fact of the matter is we have to. Care for him to that level is what he needs. So that's what he has to get. And my supervising social worker, she does help. She arranges things around support and what have you. And if, if I ask her for something, she usually manages to get it for me. Um, and she's come on the training courses with us less so. And she'd only been at the agency for about two weeks. And then we were doing price training and, and. She'd got myself, my husband in the, you know, they saying, okay, so you put, you link arms across the body and marked them slowly forward. And poor Daniel, it was just poorer by myself and I, who was feeling extremely embarrassed 'cause he doesn't like that kind of thing. So it was like, just do it. Do what they say, look out it. But it was funny as well. It was good laugh, but yeah, I won't ever stop it. Not, not unless I'm really, really unwell. I've had a couple of heart attacks, I've had a couple of heart attacks and I've got pacemaker. I still keep going on and I don't think they could switch me off. Now it's my theory.

Helen:

Oh goodness. Well, thank you so, so much for talking to us today, Ali. It's been wonderful to hear your story and uh, thanks so much for sharing it with us. Thank you so much. Take care. Okay, bye bye. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Voices of Fostering. If you'd like to find out more, head online and search National Fostering Group and make this the year you foster.