Voices of Fostering

Patrice Lawrence - The Journey of Storytelling

• National Fostering Group • Season 4 • Episode 11

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In this episode of the Voices of Fostering podcast, we are joined by acclaimed author Patrice Lawrence. Patrice shares her compelling journey to becoming an author, rooted in her experiences of being privately fostered and growing up in a multi-ethnic family. 

She discusses the influence of fostering on her writing, the challenges of representation in literature, and how books can serve as powerful tools for empathy and understanding. 

Patrice also highlights her work in social justice and offers book recommendations for those interested in fostering. 

Join us for an inspiring conversation about the transformative power of stories.

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

You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin and YouTube

Tim:

Welcome to the Voices of Fostering podcast. Today we're joined by a fantastic author, Patrice Lawrence. Thanks for coming in and joining us today. You are welcome. Hmm. I think. Can we start, we wanna talk obviously about your writing and how that's influenced by fostering, but can we start just talking a bit about yourself and your journey to becoming an author and kind of what got you here essentially?

Patrice:

Well, I was, uh, born in Brighton on, in this sort of south coast of England, um, and the first of my family to be born. In the UK and I think there's, there's quite often an image of, of Caribbean people coming over as families or husband and wife. But my mom was the second youngest of 13 children in Trinidad and she came by herself, so she decided, I. As a cliche to train to be a nurse. So she already had a place in Brighton and then my biological father was born in Guyana on uh, in South America. I think he had a difficult upbringing'cause his parents I think were probably young, probably most likely not married. And also one was African Guyanese and one was. Indian Guyanese, and I think there was, you know, tension between the communities. So his mother brought him up in Barbados and then when he was 19, he just saw an advert saying, come and be a nurse in England. So he came to be a nurse in England, met my mom. They were young. There was no family baby. So, um, when my mom was pregnant, my father rather belatedly decided that he didn't want to be a father Uhhuh. So if you imagine in the sixties there's massive stigma about being a child of un married parents, and my mother had no one to support her in England. All her family was still in Trinidad. Um, and also, you know, being a, you know, single. Black pregnant woman in England was, it was very, very difficult. So her choices at that time were to either end the pregnancy, which wasn't legal, but also would've not been great for either of us, I imagine. Um, send me to Trinidad to be looked after by one of the aunties, which would are happy to do, but imagine I'd probably have no passport now if that happened. Um, or I could have been adopted and there were a lot of. People my age, quite often mixed heritage who were adopted because of the shame of being a child of an unmarried parent. Mm-hmm. But I was privately fostered. So that meant from the age of four months to four years, I was brought up by a white working class family on an estate near a race course in Brighton. Mm-hmm. So my foster mom, auntie Phyllis, was a widow and she had two teenage children and she was a toilet attendant. And I think one of my. Big beefs is about the demonization of white working class communities in England because she taught me to read when I was three, and I was one of those children who always goes like, why? Why? Which I think is why she taught me to read and and joined the library. So I was surrounded by stories. Yeah, from when I was very little and she fostered my curiosity. Bought me lots of books, always encouraged me, uh, to read. Um, and then when I was four, um, my mom came to take me to live with her because I was due to start school and there was worries. I, I think, you know Right, right. Rightful worries as becoming too attached to my foster family and. When I went to live with my mother, it was one of my, one of my strongest memories that I still have of being taken from my foster mom and crying and feeling so powerless about not wanting to go with this stranger who was my mother. Even though she wanted, she came to visit me. Mm-hmm. And wanting to stay with my foster family. You know, quite a traumatic thing. And it's one of those things that certainly influence when I write picture books, remembering how children have, little children have really strong feelings and emotions, but how we as adults don't always listen to them or we feel uncomfortable for them. And I think picture books are something that can help with that. But then going back to writing, my mom's a massive reader, absolutely massive reader. And one of the ways we could build some sort of love language together was through books. So. She would read books and then give them to me to read. Mm. And it was a way of creating a conversation. So even as adults, we're not particularly close, but we still send books to each other. Mm. And that's kind of like our, our love language. So books and stories thanks to my foster mom and they're my mom. And also my biological dad's a massive reader as well. There's always been stories in me, so it's always been part of me, but it. Because of the books that I read when I was growing up, there was never any sense whatsoever that I could be an author.'cause every author was white and dead, and mostly Enid Blyton. And some of the books also incredibly racist. I mean, very overtly racist. So it made me as a child. Believe that one, I didn't belong in books, but also there's absolutely no way that someone like me could be an author. And it took years and years and years, uh, for that to change for me.

Tim:

So the inspiration was there from four, by the sound of it, from the age of four, like quite early on in your life, when did you feel the confidence. To become an author, because obviously that sounds like that was, that was a big part of the challenge for you. When did that start to feel like, yeah, I can actually do this?

Patrice:

I think there's a difference for me from being a writer and being an author. Mm-hmm. I think the writing was always there. I think for me it was how I made sense of the world. Mm-hmm. And it's what I would've done, whether or not I was published in the same way. You know, some children like kick a ball around or play music, just that's who they are and that's what they love. And for me it was just creating stories was a way of like calming my brain and a way of making just sense or, or creating a different world sometimes. Um, I've got too much younger brothers, so one's nine years younger, one's 15 years younger. Oh, wow. So I used to write stories. For them as well. So yeah. Cool. About, and you illustrate them about a giant purple rabbit that flew in a giant carrot over the moon and cheeses that grew legs and chased them, and I'm still paying for their therapy. Um, but it was essential like putting them in stories as well, so. It was always, course you remember in year seven as well, when I started secondary school, um, writing my history homework about a Saxons and rhyming couplets,

Tim:

as you do, as you do, do,

Patrice:

I think the teacher was like so happy to get something a bit different. It gave me an A, but you know, it was just a way of like, oh, you know, how can I make this? Oh, I'm in couplets. Um. So I think that has always been part of me. Then at secondary school, um, I had two really good English teachers. Yeah. And it was pre national curriculum, even though the books that we studied for English were exactly the same as the ones and the text that, you know, my, and I was a long time ago, secondary school. Um, but one teacher, Mr. Jones, he, we studied a book called, um, pigment by Paul Del, which was. I suppose like a young adult book. Right? And it's like people write books about teenagers that aren't Romeo and Juliet, like, damn. And it opened this world to me about what you could write about. Yeah. And then another one was, uh, Ms. Clark did Z for Zacharia, which was like, um, a poster, apocalyptic story about teenage girl surviving after there's being It looks like a nuclear holo. Yeah. Sort of, uh, sort of apocalypse there. And I was like, whoa. And it kind of opened up what you could write, and I think that just must have sat in my head. For ages and um, when the first book that got properly published was one called Orange Boy when it was announced. I remember somebody wrote online that sounds just like Paul Zindel. I was like, yes. So it took a while and I started writing short stories. Um, I'm the most unromantic person in the world, but I got a couple published by two romances, like, yay, 60 quid. Yeah. Um, and then, you know, life takes over, but it, I, I, I just honestly, if you don't know how publishing works, how to get in it, you don't live in London. You haven't got that social capital. How on Earth, even now, how do you do it? Yeah. How do you do it? It's just not for you.

Tim:

Well, I think it's, it's, it's so lovely, isn't it? When we reflect back on. Teachers or people that have inspired us in their life. And it's mad how you just mention those teachers names, like as if it was yesterday still. That's obviously what's

Patrice:

lovely about, it's actually when, so the, the first, so I wrote a couple of books that were, after I've got an agent, were like guided reading books. Yeah. Um, in from primary schools, which inspired by sort of Trinidadian heritage. But the first book that I suppose. Started my career was one called Orange Boy, and it's for young adults about a boy called, uh, Marlon, who's 15, one of life's lovely people. Mm-hmm. Mom's a librarian at highest calling of all Dad died when he was little. Um, his older brother's been a bit of a bad boy and his promised his mom, he wouldn't go that way. Then he goes on a date with a girl, first date, way above his league, gonna fair ground. She gives him something a little bit illegal to carry in his pocket. Mm-hmm. Never done that before. Gonna ghost train, come out, she's dead. So I just wrote it literally as a, as. Start of something as a prompt and then sort of wrote, you know, the rest of it. So that book actually got shortlisted for the Costa Award. It won the young adult prize. It won, um, another prize. Can't remember what that one was. Um, but then the two teachers I mentioned, both of them saw that online. Wow. And it both found me, I think one on Facebook, one on Twitter. Oh my goodness. And they came back and said, how did that feel? So lovely. And he said, oh, we always thought, you know, one of them, Mr. Jones said there was only two people ever met that he thought that he thought would actually be writers. And I was one of them. And Ms. Clark as well, he

Tim:

recognized that.

Patrice:

Yeah. So I was, I could actually say thank you to them. Yeah. And I've actually met them since as well.'cause they were newly qualified when I was at secondary school and they're now retiring, so it, it's literally, so since then I've met them as well. So it was really lovely to say that, to be able to say thank you.

Tim:

I mean, you talk really passionately about those people that have inspired you and about how sharing books can, I guess, help build these strong relationships with people around us. Can you just tell us a bit more about why that matters to you? The sharing of books and these stories and Yeah. The sharing of people, I guess, and interactions.

Patrice:

Oh, in, in so many ways. I think firstly, I think books just help you in some ways build relationships. So even from. When I was at primary school, I lived, I lived in a cul-de-sac mm-hmm. In a sort of commuter town called, called Hayward Seas. Between at Brighton and, and sort of Gatwick Airport and everybody in Aus Street, you went to more or less went to the same primary school and in and out of each other's houses. But we shared stories, and again, because my, even though my mom was brought up in Trinidad, a colonial British country. And my stepdad who brought me up since I was four, he is Italian, so he, he sort of as this whole different life story. But you know, my friends would lend me stuff like, um, Voya Adorn tread, you know, there's one of Nia stories. Yeah. And, and somebody else had Nancy Drew and someone else. So we'd swap stories and swap books and it was away for me, also giving me a bit of cultural capital.'cause I, I don't know what it's like to be English. You know, when you grow up black in England, people. Don't presume you're ever English, so you're trying to find this, this ground of how to belong. Mm-hmm. And I think stories can help you do that. And they can help give you that cultural capital and those points of reference that help you to, to belong. Um. Also I think stories when I was a, when I became a parent, um, even I loved books and I loved stories. It never occurred to me to read to a baby. No, it just didn't, it just, but then when my child was nine months and it went to get their vaccinations from, um, their dad took them and they came back with like a book trust bag of. Books and it's like, well read, read a baby. And then there's just that joy like propping my little one in my arm. And then it was Helen Oxenberg, the illustrator. Yeah. And she'd the, there were board books and they were called, I think one was called Clap. Clap. And um, so little board books, just little r couplet. But they had brown babies in them. And I think it's so hard, even like in the late nineties, early two thousands to find. Books that were multi-ethnic, it was really difficult. So it's like on my days, like you can get books of brown babies. And then I used to look for books that looked like our family. Uh, it was still hard to find, uh, mixed race families and books, even though it's really not rare as a family type. And I remember finding one. Look kind of a little girl that maybe called, um, what about me? Written and illustrated I think by Helen Stevens, but a little girl called Katie and uh, her cat gets jealous'cause there's another cat on the, but Katie is drawn, quite stylized, kind of quite big face brown, curly hair. My baby used to kiss that picture of that child 'cause they thought it was me. And at that point I just thought if a baby sees their world represented a baby, why am I not writing stories about ourselves?'cause I only wrote white characters.'cause I was so not even convinced. It just was so part of me that people like me, in my messy shaped families, didn't belong in books. Yeah. Because again. You know, me having two parents that weren't married and then my mom was with Angelo, and Angelo would always call me his daughter from when I was, you know, when, when I was with him. But he's, there's a kind of stereotype of Italians being slightly Mediterranean. Angelo is the fairest Italian you've ever seen. It's only five foot as well. So, so he would always say, this is Patrice, this is my daughter, you know. People look at him and they look at me. Mm. And they look, and he's a dad of my two brothers. But they look very different as well. So people have never worked out our families. So being in a foster family, being a, a married child in child of un married parents, child, and a multi-ethnic family, they weren't in books. No. And every book I read, it was like Mr. And Mrs. Married Couple and all their children all white. So that's a norm. And so. I kind of wanted to be the norm for a while. I wanted to feel like could belong

Tim:

or felt you should be the norm, I guess. Like what the norm is like.

Patrice:

I mean, that just felt that to try and fit in, and particularly again growing up in Sussex when again, it would be overt racism. People shout names at me outta cars. Mm. The first time anybody said, you know, the first day of school, actually primary school inviting, I got called a racist name, so. From the beginning, you feel you don't belong no matter what you do. Yes. You're looking for that way in. And I think what books can do is not necessarily force you into something that's seen as a normal, they can let you feel that you do belong whoever you are. And the range of books that we showed children now and that were available as picture books are amazing. And those conversations around reading those, looking at those pictures, the, you know, that. Talking about what that might mean to you as a child and all of that is what books can do. So I honestly do think books are magic,

Tim:

and I think that is massively reflected in book clubs and how, you know, everyone can have the same book in front of them, but different backgrounds, different people have different takeaways and different interpretations of that book. So I think writing about you and your background really important for people to then take away from it what. What they want, I guess, isn't it? That's an important part of it,

Patrice:

kind of. I think when you write about your own background, it can feel quite fragile putting yourself out there. Mm-hmm. Because I don't want people to judge my mom for having an unmarried child. I don't want people to do that. And what I do want people to understand is that families can be all shapes and sizes and that we should stop seeing a, uh, a heterosexual. Married couple. Yeah. As what everybody should aspire to and that everybody else is peripheral because that's, I paid anybody. That's not true. Yeah, I

Tim:

agree.

Patrice:

Um, and I mean, you know, of course I do in my own, you know, because of my own background. Um, and I, I think I was at a school recently and I was talking about one of my young adult books called Indigo Donut, and I kind of wrote that, wrote most of my books, and I'm furious about something. And Indigo is 17. She's been in foster care. She, it's a sort of slight traumatic backstory, but I wrote it 'cause I was furious at that time that children who were 17, uh, foster children who were 17, were supposed to leave their foster homes. Yeah. When it got to 18. Unless they're in residential care. And I just thought, hang on, I've got a teenage child. I could never imagine saying to them, okay, you're 17, go now. Yeah. How can we treat children that way? So like really angry Yeah. About that. And I talked, I was talked a little bit about that, but also how this, um, how Indigo has got siblings named after colors of the rainbow. Rainbow, like scarlet coral pri rose till blue bone together. But they were all taken away from the mum. At birth. So Indigo knows she's part of this rainbow but has not met most of her siblings. So I talked a little bit about that, and then there was a young woman who was like, I think was she eight, who waited to talk to me afterwards to say that actually she was in foster care, that she had many siblings that she didn't know. Also talks about another book called, is that Your Mama? A picture book I'll talk about in a moment, but about how children are often asked intrusive questions by adults Yeah. About their families. And I talked about that. And she wanted to say that, you know, she's often had foster carers who a different ethnic group from her uhhuh. And the questions were also, more importantly, she talked about wanting to be a writer. And I just said, you know that for her, coming from her background. The degree of empathy and insight that she would have would be fabulous. Yeah. The things that she would write about would be, you know, so wonderful that she really should be right. You know, she should be a writer. So I think books can do that as well as reflecting experiences and creating conversations. They can tell people who never thought that they could be a writer, that actually they would be the best writers.

Tim:

And I think if you can show. From a place of experience, there's nothing more authentic than that. Yeah. And I think you can pick that up obviously when you speak to people, but also through, uh, the pages of a book as well. I think that's very apparent. Um, could you share a little bit, Patrice, just about your role in foster care and the kind of work you're involved with now? Sure.

Patrice:

Yeah, I, before I became a full-time writer, I worked for a few different sort of charities, not-for-profit organizations that supported, um, families and children or social justice. So I spent a long time with an organization called National Children's Bureau working around sort of policy and practice, a lot of it around early years and about how we give children, young children. A voice. Yeah. And how we support nursery workers to understand that children come from all different backgrounds, but actually what happens from very young is that. Um, children kind of learn what is seen to be as, you know, a hierarchy, whether it's white people at top and black people at bottom, married, couples at top, you know, all of that. And as nursery workers, we, we can change that. Mm-hmm. And we can support all children. And, um, uh, I worked for another organization called Family Rights Group that worked with families, uh, involved with social services. So. I run a project firm, but also support, um, interviewed kinship carers, so friends and family looking after children. Uh, also, uh, care experience young people as well about their experiences, um, in care. Um, so I've done lots of bits and pieces like that. Also, another organization that worked with organization supporting the families of prisoners. Mm-hmm. And if you think about, you know, how many young people are being looked after by friends or family?'cause maybe their parents or parent carer is in, is in prison. Yeah. Um, and even last week, uh, for National Literacy Trust, um, I've been delivering workshops in women's prisons. Um. And a project called Reconnect to support, um, them and how you create stories for children or with children and for children. Mm-hmm. So I took in one of my books there and we, we sort of talked about that as, as, as well. So lots of different ways I've kind of come into it, but a lot of it, I suppose starts off with my own experience Yeah. As well. And also again, talking about being angry about, still angry about how even in children's books now. We still have that nuclear family quite often as default in books. Yeah. And I think we should do a lot better.

Tim:

Yeah. I just, I wanna ask you about recommendations and book recommendations. We'll do that in just a second, but I can tell you're very passionate about what you write. And you spoke a little bit about feeling this anger before writing. Do you find. As a process writing about these subject matters. You're ahead of me here, aren't you as a process, it's therapeutic to you, or do you, what does the physical, as, you know, act of writing do for you?

Patrice:

That's an interesting, because I, I, it might be therapeutic, I don't know, but I think the problem is it's so easy to feel helpless.

Tim:

Yeah.

Patrice:

And I think if you can write a story. Where you give someone humanity, um, then. Because I go into a lot of schools and I talk about myself because I think if I'm putting myself out there, I don't want to write about children who are fostered as a sort of slightly sensational voyeuristic thing. It's coming from, you know, experience. Mm-hmm. Um, also my biological father, uh, was in prison for months. Um, he forged a check with nothing, but he's in prison, which meant that he couldn't be a nurse anymore, which meant he became. Homeless and he, he was on the streets and died in his, uh, late forties. Mm-hmm. So there's quite a lot of bereavement in my books. There's quite a lot of imprisoned parents in my books. And again, I think. I'm at an age now. I feel I can talk about the experience of that. And by doing that, particularly in schools which are in poorer areas, it feels really important to talk to that.'cause I absolutely know that there are gonna be children who are care experienced and they're gonna be children that experienced family imprisonments. Yeah. Uh, children are, you know, so you can, they don't, you know, when you have something difficult like that, you quite often lock it inside you, don't you? Yeah. You don't want to share it 'cause it makes you feel vulnerable. Yeah. But. Just one to read it in a book and know that you feel seen is such an amazing thing. You know, you're not alone. And two, to someone like me stand up and say, you know. As a, as a working class woman for film fight, and I've done all these and overcome an author and I write, I write about these things because I'm passionate about things. I want to give people who've had all those challenges. Humanity. Um, I think that maybe that's the therapy. I dunno. Yeah. But I just think it can help and it can change, even if it's just a little bit, it can change somebody's world just a little bit.

Tim:

A hundred percent agree. And I think I work in mental health, in support and the biggest power and the biggest tool, if you like, we have in our toolbox, if you like, our mental health toolkit is lived experience. Yeah. And if you've got that, you can show true empathy, you can help people. That's my theory anyway. Yeah. Um, right. Let's end Patrice, just by saying this, if you could recommend just one book, this is a hard question. I know. Or let's give you two. Um. Kind of your own or someone else's for foster care is listening to this or anyone really thinking about fostering. What would it be and why?

Patrice:

Okay. I'm gonna do two books because that have been both because they're different ends of the spectrum. So the first one is a picture book. Is that your mama?

Tim:

Yeah.

Patrice:

And I, because, um, my child's, particularly when they were a baby, looked very differently. They much fairer than me. They looked, you know, long, straight hair, but I just thought. We're not in Sussex now. We're in London. Yeah. It is not unusual, but I would be with my child, literally in a supermarket and strangers would tap me on the shoulder and go, is that your baby? Like, no, I stole them from super drugs because that's my baby. That literally happened, um, all the time as in Trinidad once with them and about four, and we're just like minding our own business. Walking along the street, it was rush hour and Trinidad. A woman slowed her car and as she slowed, she wound down the window, said, uh oh. Is she yours? How would that make your life better? So that literally happened. It's just like, how, what? Right.

Tim:

Does somebody else have to ask you that? That's

Patrice:

what I, I know it's about people. I keep it in my head. Yeah, exactly. Um, so it happened so much. It starts to undermine, you know, you, um, so when I announced that I was writing that book, that's a book that I had the most responses to on social media. So you'd get adults who. Probably a mixed heritage said that happened all their time when they were children. But also what you got was parents now of children. So particular women who were South Asian or East Asian said they were often mistaken as a nanny all the time. But also you've got children living with grandparents, children who were fostered, children who adopted children are biological, but just don't look at their parents. So my youngest brother. Looks very, very different from Angelo. So all the time it gets a, who's that old bloke you with? Actually, that's my dad and it's should I carry around my DNA results? But yeah, literally what I wanted to do was write a book that gave small children a tool to respond to that. And it was very difficult because children are often told, be polite to adults. Adults are always right. They're not, sometimes it's none of their business. So. I've got a little girl called Josie, Elizabeth, mom and dad and brothers and grandma, and they all look very different. And at home it's fine until they go out and it's like, is that your mama? Is that your mom? So she starts to look quite undermined. Yeah, eventually. Um. She has a globe, um, puts little stickers in all parts of the world where she has friends and family, and then she has a t-shirt of the gold star to remind her who she is. Mm. I thought still we need to go a bit further because it's not about her, it's about other people. And then they go to the park and the ice cream man gives the ice cream and she can see it happening. But he looks at mom and he looks at her and he looks at her. And says, is that your mama? And what she knows is that she can say, thank you politely for the ice cream, and then walk away without, not, without answering his question. So he has that power of silence.

Tim:

That's the power. That's the power, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Actually

Patrice:

it is you. You

Tim:

take that into, you decide whether you wanna answer that question or not. Exactly. And if you don't wanna eat. Yeah,

Patrice:

exactly.

Tim:

So that's the other one. What Great message.

Patrice:

The other one, your other end is one called the, so that's called,

Tim:

is that your mama?

Patrice:

Is that your mama? Yeah. That's by Scholastic. Yeah.

Tim:

And the second one, and the

Patrice:

second one is called Needle. Okay. So Needle won the Little Rebels Award prize, which is a prizes that promotes sort of social, uh, adjusted. I'm actually shortlisted for the, uh, Carnegie Award as well. And it's. Published by Barrington Stoke, amazing publisher. Every single book they publish is uh, dyslexia friendly. Oh, word. So they're short. Uh, they edit your words to look, make sure that they almost like get stumbled over. They look at the font, they look at the. Paper and you know, so they sell it for reluctant readers, but therefore, you know, for everybody. But they, every single book is dyslexia friendly. So this is about a black girl called Charlene, she's 15. She's, uh, it's called Needle'cause she knits a lot and that's quite therapeutic to her. That's her way of almost like a meditation. Her mum died two years ago and she's been separated from her younger sister, who's called Candy. So Candy lives with, with her dad. Charlene hasn't got a dad, so she's in foster care. Mm-hmm. She really wants to see. Candy and candy used to love dinosaurs, so she's knitting a blanket with a dinosaur in it for, for candy. She's with her foster mom, Annie. And it got on really well actually. But today Charlene has had a bad day. So, uh, she goes into school and, uh, it's supply teacher, uh, actually supply teacher's really good. They're great. But there's that one girl in class who knows how to whine Charlene up. Yeah. And she does. And Charlene sort of. Burst and, uh, gets taken out and has to sit by the, by the head. Then later, um, whether she meets up with her mates and they're in, I dunno, like a super drugs and'cause they're allowed, the security guard is following them around. Yeah. And her mate throws her little pot of foundation. She drops at, it breaks. So Charlene gets in trouble for that. Bad day gets back home. Um, and then Blake, her foster mom's son is back from university, annoyed that Charlene has his room and he unravels her blanket. So she dubs him in a web above her, his hand, just with a knitting needle. Mm-hmm. But because she won't say sorry. She gets drawn into the criminal justice system. So it's her voice. And it came about because during lockdown was part from an advisory group for the Howard League for penal reform, right? So they do a lot of criminal justice reform. And, uh, then, then legal director, um, Laura, Laura James wanted to write a anti-racist guide for lawyers because of the disproportionate amount of black people in, um. In different levels of the criminal justice system. Mm-hmm. And lo Laura's white, so she wanted to assemble a group, so it's on Zoom and it was like barrister, solicitor, magistrate lecture. Hi, I'm Patrice Ma. Yeah. Um, but there was one guy there, uh, Gary Green, who's now a barrister, now a King's Council, working class black guy from from London who didn't get into law until he was 30. And he talked about being expelled from school. All the time. And how annoyed his mom got with was getting at him. And he said that once he and some friends were badmouthing a teacher and he was the only one who got picked on by the teachers and he was told he had to write a letter saying he was sorry. Mm-hmm. So he wrote a letter saying, dear Mr. And Mrs. Soandso, uh, I've been told to say I'm sorry, but I'm not. And we talked about. That whole idea again, it's like well just say you're sorry, but what if you're not, you've told me not to lie. Do I lie? Do I say I'm sorry? Yeah. And the idea, if you can lie and pretend to show remorse in a criminal justice system, then you are okay. But Charlene's not, sorry, but that means she gets taken away from her foster Mar. She put some residential care. Um, and I wanted to write from a first person point of view, from quite a loud black 15-year-old girl. The one, the girls and the children who are quite vulnerable 'cause they're. Experiencing grief and are frightened, but they're seen as acting out. Yeah. So they get penalized for that. Yeah. Um, and I wanted to, that was, and had also the treated as adults quite often when the children, so I wanted to show that. And actually that book now gets used to train solicitors Oh wow. In vulnerable children. Um, so yeah. One prizes, you know, all of those things. And it was really a way to give her a voice, you know. So again, I think for foster carers. It's a way of just showing that when teenagers feel vulnerable and experiencing bereavement and possibly racism as well, they actually will act out. And so it is a way of, of exploring that in a safe way, I think for people who read that

Tim:

some amazing, uh, stories and messages for people who are interested in becoming foster carers. Who are foster carers right now. So, and I think those two stories as well, was it intended that they. They, they sort of line up in their messaging a little bit, don't they? The girl. At the ice cream van who's made a decision that she didn't wanna answer a question, and the needle, the girl who didn't wanna respond, how she's been told to, to the criminal justice system. I guess it's a similar message, isn't it? It's like, yeah. Empowerment and identity.

Patrice:

Yeah. And I think, you know, having worked partly, I suppose in children's rights organizations, but also. No, I do passionate believe that we don't listen to children enough. Yeah. And that from a young age, you're trying to shape them into a certain mold. Yeah. And uh, so again, through writing and writing books with children and teenagers who are the main characters, you can give them that voices. And because books are a safe way to explore difficult subjects, that's not only just for. Young readers. I think that's for adults as well. So it's basically me shouting at adults, but in a safe way.

Tim:

Yeah. Perfect. Listen, thank you so much Patrice, for coming in today and talking to us. We're definitely gonna check out those two books. Is that Your Mama A Needle? And the rest of your work as well. Thank you for coming in.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for inviting me.

Tim:

It's a.

Speaker 3:

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.