A Fostering Journey 66

We had agreed with the social worker that she would contact Mum the evening before each contact to check that she would be there after her no show on the first contact. She reminded Mum that contact would be stopped if she didn’t show some level of responsibility about her children. The next contact was organised and Mum confirmed her attendance, even asking if the Local Authority could fund a travel card for her, which, apparently, was agreed. We had the usual manic morning getting our own kids off to school, dressing and feeding the babies and heading off to the wonders of the rush hour on the A205. Although we had left the same time as we had the previous week the traffic appeared a lot worse and we found out, on our Sat Nav, there had been accident elsewhere and the traffic was coming our way instead. We called the LA Social Worker to update her and she was stuck in the same traffic. She had called Mum but, worryingly, there hadn’t been an answer. We finally arrived about 30 minutes late and saw the Social Workers car in the car park. We turned up to utter pandemonium. Mum had arrived but wasn’t alone. She had turned up with the guy who had kicked off at the Local Authority offices when we had the meeting. The Social Worker had said that the contact was for her and the children only but, neither she, nor her friend, had taken this very well. We took the babies into another room as they were both awake and we didn’t them to witness any unpleasantness. I left the babies with my wife and went to support the Social Worker, who was actually dealing with situation quite well. They both then turned their venom on me as they knew they weren’t getting anywhere with the Social Worker. I just stood there and let them sound off and they soon realised they weren’t getting any reaction from me either. The Social Worker and I went into the room where my wife was with the babies and sat and chatted for five minutes just to allow things to calm down. However when we went back out Mum and her friend had disappeared. A member of staff told us that Mum had said that we could **** ourselves and that she would be making a complaint about how she had been treated. So, we sat and had a coffee with the Social Worker and headed off into the busy streets of South East London, another wasted journey. Whilst we were sat in traffic my wife contacted our Supervising Social Worker (SSW) and updated them on what had happened this time. We were asked to confirm it all in an email when we returned home so she had it in writing in case she needed to discuss the situation with anyone else. We got home, hot, bothered and with two very hungry children. We unloaded the car and fed and changed the babies. They both fell asleep, even though they had slept most of the journey home, and we decided to have a quick nap too. We woke up to the sound of the postman arriving and we got up off the sofa and did some chores while the babies slept. The babies woke each other up and we got them out of their cots and into the lounge where we had a little chair for each of them. They had lunch and then we had some time trying to encourage the eldest to crawl and roll over.