The new placements, of four siblings, were a bit of a handful at meal times. We sat up to the table on the first evening with 5 Looked After Children and our own two. It was crowded but manageable. The first thing we noticed was that they had a very fractured sibling relationship. They constantly talked over each other and were very quick to put each other down. We heard how Mum had struggled with the four of them and that Mum had another baby with her new partner. The children said they didn’t get to see much of Dad but they had regular contact with paternal relatives. Maternal family was very female orientated and the lone boy of the group seemed to bear responsibility for most of the problems with the family. One thing that was certain and that was the four siblings did not have a great relationship with Mum’s new partner. We were told a number of stories regarding how the children were punished by their step dad and none of them were acceptable. These included being locked in room for several days, being hit by a hair brush and, on one occasion, one of the young people being told to walk home from a restaurant that was two miles away as the young person hadn’t finished their main course.

As previously stated, food appeared to be a major issue and watching them eat their food was quite an experience. First of all it was the speed that they ate. It seemed that they were afraid that someone was going to take their food away. Also obvious was the fact that they looked at each other’s meals to see if someone had more chips, potatoes or anything else on their plate. But we were comforted in the fact that we only had them for a weekend and then we could get back normality. The weekend went off without any major issues. We had family over on Sunday and the eldest sibling told an eighty one year old relative that she was bi-sexual to which the relative replied ‘oh that’s nice dear’. There was a real need for the children to get attention in whatever way they could either by trying to shock or misbehaving. We kept a close watch on the young girl we had on placement long term from the previous sibling group we cared for. We wanted to make sure that there was no sign of bullying or her being picked on. So we got through to Monday with no real major incident and the kid’s Social Worker turned up on Monday and crammed them all into his car. We did breathe a sigh of relief as they turned at the end of the road and we then started a tidy up and made sure everything was back to normal.

We sat down for a coffee and were chatting when the phone went. It was the Social Worker. Mum was refusing to take the children back and could they come back to us. We told the Social Worker that he needed to talk to our Agency and we would then have a discussion around taking them back. About an hour later we received a call from Placements, at our agency, asking if we would take the children back while the Social Worker set up a plan with Mum for the children to be returned. So we agreed we would take them back as a short term placement and then prepared ourselves for the children’s return.

Web Support and Security by 39D Services LTD
Share This