‘Come on, finish your dinner,’ I encouraged. ‘Then we can phone your mother.’
With a huff and sigh Aimee leant forward and, picking up her knife and fork, began eating the fish. ‘Won’t have to eat this stuff when I go home,’ she said.
I knew from Kristen that the chances of Amy being returned home were slim to non-existent, but it wasn’t the right time to start explaining this to Aimee. When Aimee had been with me for longer and was used to being in care and away from her mother I would, as I had with other children I’d fostered, gently introduce the possibility that the judge might decide she would be better off being looked after in care rather than living with her mother. It’s always a difficult conversation to have with a child, and strictly speaking the child’s social worker is supposed to discuss this with the child, but more often it is left to the foster carer, who often has a better relationship with the child than the social worker does. Children in foster care have so much to cope with and their lives aren’t made any easier by the care system, which often seems to follow the ‘letter of the law’ while disregarding the realistic and compassionate.
Aimee squirted another liberal helping of tomato ketchup on to her plate, which allowed her to eat the rest of her fish and peas. Once we’d finished eating, I left Paula and Lucy to clear the table while I took Aimee into the sitting room to phone her mother.
‘Have you ever used a telephone before?’ I asked, reaching for the phone and setting it between us on the sofa.
Aimee nodded. ‘Me mum’s mobile,’ she said.
‘This phone is a little different and it has a loudspeaker. You won’t have to put it to your ear when you talk to your mother. I press this button and we will both be able to hear what your mother is saying, and she’ll be able to hear us.’ I gave a demonstration of the phone on speaker by pressing the ‘hands-free’ button. We could hear the dialling tone. ‘I’ll key in the numbers and tell your mother who it is, and then you’ll speak to her,’ I said. Aimee nodded.
Opening my fostering folder, I found the form with Susan’s mobile number and keyed in the digits. We heard her phone ringing and then after about six rings Susan’s voice answered.
‘Hello,’ she said, sounding very tired. I wondered if she’d been asleep.
‘Hello, Susan,’ I said. ‘It’s Cathy, Aimee’s carer. I have Aimee beside me, ready to speak to you.’
Susan didn’t say anything and Aimee didn’t either.
‘Say hello to your mum,’ I encouraged Aimee.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Aimee said in a similar small voice to her mother’s.
‘Hi, love. How are you?’ Susan asked.
Aimee didn’t reply.
‘Tell your mother you’re OK and what you’ve been doing today,’ I suggested.
‘Nothing,’ Aimee said. ‘I ain’t been doing nothing.’
‘Haven’t you?’ Susan exclaimed, her voice rising as she latched on to her daughter’s complaint.
‘Tell your mum we went shopping,’ I said quietly to Aimee. ‘Then we played games all afternoon.’
‘I haven’t been doing anything all day,’ Aimee said again. ‘I’m so bored.’
I didn’t want Susan thinking her daughter had been left all day doing nothing. Apart from it not being true it could have been upsetting for Susan to hear.
‘We went shopping this morning,’ I said. ‘And then Aimee has been doing puzzles and playing games all afternoon.’
‘No I haven’t,’ Aimee said defiantly.
‘Who asked you?’ Susan demanded of me. ‘This is my phone contact, with my daughter, so keep your bleeding nose out.’
Aimee grinned. ‘That’s right, Mum. You tell her!’
I could have quite happily cut the phone call there and then but as a foster carer I knew I couldn’t do that. The judge had ruled that Aimee should speak to her mother on the phone and I should facilitate this. Aimee telling her mother lies about me or her mother swearing at me didn’t justify ending the phone contact.
‘Talk to your mother, then,’ I said evenly to Aimee as she fell silent and Susan was silent too. ‘Tell her what you’ve been doing.’
‘I want to come home,’ Aimee said. ‘I’m unhappy.’
‘I knew you were unhappy,’ Susan said, seizing on another possible complaint. ‘What’s that woman been doing to you?’
‘I can’t watch television all day,’ Aimee lamented.
‘That ain’t fair,’ Susan sympathized.
‘She won’t let me watch the programmes I want,’ Aimee continued. ‘You know, the ones I used to watch with you.’
‘I’ll report her,’ Susan said, ignoring the fact that I could hear her. ‘She’s not stopping you watching television, it’s inhuman.’
‘And I have to eat yucky food,’ Aimee persisted, winding up her mother even more. ‘And she won’t give me biscuits until I’ve eaten it.’
‘That’s cruel,’ Susan responded. ‘She ain’t feeding you proper.’
‘No, she ain’t,’ Aimee agreed. ‘You report her, then I can come home.’ Despite my already explaining to Aimee that complaining about me wouldn’t return her home she persisted in this belief.
Aimee’s complaints were so ridiculous that they could have been laughable, expect of course it wasn’t funny. I was quietly seething and upset.
‘Of course I’m feeding Aimee,’ I said to Susan, unable to sit there any longer and just accept it. ‘She’s had three good meals today, and pudding and some biscuits. She’s also had some fruit.’
‘Who asked you?’ Susan snapped down the phone at me.
Aimee smirked.
And so the conversation continued, with Aimee making untrue allegations about my care of her and Susan fuelling the situation by reacting to them. I didn’t interrupt to protest my innocence again or correct all the lies Aimee was telling her mother; there was no point. Susan wanted to believe what her daughter was saying and my interrupting would just make her angrier. I was therefore forced to sit by for another twenty minutes and listen to Aimee and her mother criticizing me, my home, my care of Aimee, my daughters, the food I cooked, and the routine and boundaries I’d put in place for Aimee’s good. Aimee avoided saying anything positive, including the fact that I’d bought her a wardrobeful of new clothes that morning and I’d spent all afternoon playing with her. I knew why she was saying these things – the psychology that lay behind it; I’d seen it before in other children I’d fostered. In Aimee’s eyes as well as possibly getting her moved (although not home) if she criticized me it lessened the significance of the inadequate care her mother had given her. No child wants to believe that their parents have failed and that a stranger is now looking after them better than their parents did. Criticizing me, in Aimee’s eyes, raised her mother’s status. But while I understood the psychology behind Aimee’s denigration of me, it didn’t make hearing it any better. Foster carers invest a lot in the children they look after and take criticism of the care they give the child personally.
Eventually Aimee ran out of derogatory comments and complaints, which gave Susan a chance to tell her that their dog, Hatchet, which I knew to be a Rottweiler, had bitten another dog in the park that morning and the owner had called the police. Mother and daughter seemed to find this very amusing.
‘I won’t be going to that park for a while,’ Susan said, laughing.
‘No,’ Aimee chuckled. ‘You might get caught.’
Finally Susan said she had to go and I breathed a sigh of relief. The length of phone contact is sometimes stipulated in the care plan but it hadn’t been in Aimee’s case, so that I had to let their conversation run its course. They’d been on the phone for about thirty minutes.
‘You have to phone tomorrow,’ Susan told Aimee before they said goodbye. ‘It’s Sunday and you have to phone me.’
‘Do you hear that?’ Aimee demanded rudely of me.
‘She’ll phone at about the same time,’ I confirmed to Susan.
‘Right. And make sure you giv
e her the biscuits she wants and stop starving her. I don’t want her losing weight.’ Aimee needed to lose some weight but I wasn’t going to say that to Susan. Mother and daughter said goodbye and I was finally able to press ‘hands-free’ to end the call.
I stayed where I was on the sofa, with Aimee beside me. She’d fallen silent now and was looking at me a little sheepishly. I guessed she was wondering what my reaction would be now her mother had gone.
‘You can’t hit me,’ she said. ‘You’re not allowed to.’
‘Of course I’m not going to hit you,’ I said. ‘I never hit anyone, let alone a child. But why did you tell your mother all those things that weren’t true?’
Aimee shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I do and it won’t help. I know you love your mum and want to be with her but the judge has decided you should be looked after by me for the time being. We don’t know how long that will be but making up lies won’t help.’
‘Yes it will,’ Aimee said defiantly. ‘I’m not listening to you any more.’ She pressed her hands over her ears and screwed up her eyes so that she couldn’t hear or see me.
I returned the phone to the corner table and, standing, left the room. I went into the kitchen, where Lucy and Paula were leaning against the worktops talking quietly. As I entered they both looked at me, concerned, so I guessed they’d overheard some of what Aimee had said to her mother.
‘Are you all right, Mum?’ Paula asked.
I sighed. ‘I guess so.’
‘Shall I talk to Aimee?’ Lucy offered. ‘Point out the error of her ways.’ She smiled.
‘No, don’t worry yourself. It’s early days yet. She’s got a lot to cope with. She’s angry. Things will improve, I’m sure.’
Both girls came over and gave me a big hug – we call it a group hug, where we hug in a small circle. Adrian used to join in when he was younger and lived at home, and most foster children join in eventually. I felt the warmth of their embrace and it was just what I needed to get me back on track and ready to face Aimee again. Tomorrow was another day.
Chapter Twelve
Craig
Sunday evening’s phone contact was no better than Saturday’s. Despite the fact that Aimee had had a good day, which had included a visit to our local park, where she’d fed the ducks (a new experience for her), followed by a hot chocolate in the park’s café, which she liked even more than feeding the ducks, Aimee couldn’t find a single positive thing to tell her mother and made up more complaints. Susan reacted as she had done the previous evening by over-reacting, and reassuring Aimee she would be reporting me to the social services, her solicitor, Aimee’s father and I suspected anyone else who would listen. The only positive element in the phone call was that, having spoken to her mother on the phone the previous evening for over thirty minutes, once Aimee had reassured her mother that she’d been bored all day, had been forced to have a wash and had been force-fed ‘muck’, while being denied biscuits and television, she ran out of things to say. Susan told Aimee that Hatchet had bitten her that afternoon but that he hadn’t meant to as he’d only been playing. Aimee agreed Hatchet wasn’t to blame and remembered all the times he’d bitten her and how they’d made sure the social worker didn’t know. Susan seemed to finish the conversation quickly then; I guessed she was concerned at what else Aimee might remember and I would hear and pass on to the social worker. Susan told Aimee she’d see her the following evening at contact and they said goodbye.
As soon as I’d pressed ‘hands-free’ to sever the call Aimee clapped her hands over her ears so that she couldn’t hear the lecture about lying she thought I would give her. She needn’t have bothered, for I didn’t intend repeating myself by saying what I’d already said the previous evening, although I was sad Aimee had told her mother more untruths. I consoled myself that fortunately Aimee’s complaints were so ludicrous that if Susan did report me as she’d threatened, no one would take her seriously – or so I thought.
The following day after I’d taken Aimee to school I went straight home, with the intention of phoning Jill and advising her of the disclosures Aimee had made on Friday about Craig abusing her and being responsible for the bruises. Jill would then phone Kristen, who would contact the police.
It was 9.30 when I arrived home and, grabbing a coffee, I went through to the sitting room. I took my fostering folder from the shelf and, opening it, sat on the sofa with my coffee within reach, ready to make the call. But before I had a chance to key in the numbers the phone rang. It was Jill.
‘I was just about to phone you,’ I said.
‘I’m not surprised, after what Aimee has told her mother,’ Jill said, her voice serious. ‘It’s just as well you’re an experienced carer and we know you well or we would have been forced to remove the child.’
‘You’re not serious?’ I gasped, my mouth going dry and my heart starting to pound. ‘You’re never taking Susan’s complaints seriously?’
‘The complaints are coming from Aimee, through her mother, so we need to investigate. I know how that makes you feel, Cathy, but Susan has had kids in care for twenty-five years and she knows how the system works. She knows her rights and she knows which buttons to press to cause maximum trouble. She was on the phone to Kristen first thing this morning and Kristen’s manager has asked for some explanations.’
I was shocked and hurt. I’d assumed that Aimee’s/Susan’s complaints would be dismissed for what they were: an angry and upset mother and child making a desperate bid to be reunited. Now I was having to defend myself.
‘Let’s deal with the television first,’ Jill continued evenly. ‘Aimee has told her mother that you do not allow her to watch any of her favourite television programmes. Why?’
‘Jill!’ I said, my voice rising. ‘Her favourite programmes aren’t children’s programmes. They’re adult programmes which are shown late at night and not at all suitable for a child of eight.’ I then reeled off a list of programmes that Aimee had told me she’d regularly watched with her mother and were her favourites, all of which were unsuitable.
‘OK, slow down. I’m writing this,’ Jill said.
‘And Susan allowed Aimee to watch adult DVDs,’ I added, without pausing. ‘Bloody horror movies and ones portraying sado-masochistic sex!’
‘Susan didn’t mention DVDs.’
‘No, but I am.’
‘All right, calm down. I’ll make a note.’ Jill wrote while I took a deep breath and tried to control my anger. Not only were my honesty and integrity being called into account but so were my parenting and fostering skills. Of course Aimee could watch television, but only what was age appropriate. Young minds can so easily be damaged by watching cruel and violent images.
‘Now the food?’ Jill continued. ‘What’s causing Aimee so many problems?’
I took another deep breath. ‘Jill, as you know when Aimee was at home with her mother her diet consisted of dry toast and biscuits. She appears to be addicted to sweet things, especially biscuits, and demands them continuously. She’s used to eating a packet of biscuits at one sitting instead of a meal. I’m rationing her intake of sweet things and she has one or two biscuits after her meal.’ I stopped while Jill wrote.
‘And the meals you’re providing?’ Jill queried. ‘Aimee told her mother she doesn’t like the food and you’re forcing her to eat it.’
‘Jill! For goodness sake!’ I exclaimed. ‘You surely know me better than that. I’m giving Aimee the same meals I cook for the rest of us. I encourage her to eat them but I don’t force her!’ But to Aimee, who’d done exactly as she’d wanted to before coming into care and had never been asked to sit at a table and eat a meal, it could have seemed as though I was ‘forcing’ her.
‘Cathy, I’m sorry,’ Jill said, ‘but Aimee has made the complaint, so I have to ask the questions. Tell me exactly what you’ve given her to eat and then I can tell Kristen, who can reassure Susan.’
Silently fuming, I thought back and recalled what I’d g
iven Aimee to eat since she’d arrived, and I told Jill. I also said that I’d told Aimee she could have a biscuit once she’d eaten her meal, and that although Aimee had moaned about the food on her plate, once she’d tried it she’d found she liked it and she hardly left anything.
‘Thanks,’ Jill said. She then went on to the next complaint, which was about washing – that I was forcing Aimee to get into the bath against her will.
‘I help her in,’ I said, ‘because she’s not used to a bath, having never had one at home.’ I then explained in detail how I ran the bath to the right temperature and helped Aimee climb in while Jill, on the other end of the phone, made notes. After that Jill moved on to the next complaint, which was that I was putting Aimee to bed very early, in the afternoon, and so the list continued. As patiently as I could I answered each allegation, explaining and justifying what I was doing to help Aimee. In all the years I’d worked with Jill it was the only time I’d been annoyed with her, and it crossed my mind that Susan had already succeeded in setting the professionals involved in her case against each other.
Some twenty minutes later Jill finally came to the end of her list. ‘Thank you, Cathy. I think that’s it,’ she said.
‘Fantastic,’ I said, not bothering to hide my sarcasm. ‘Can I now tell you why I was going to phone you?’
‘Sure, go ahead,’ Jill said lightly.
‘Aimee has been abused by her mother’s boyfriend, Craig. The bruises she has all over her body were caused by him.’
‘What!’ Jill exclaimed. ‘You should have said sooner.’
‘You didn’t give me a chance. You were too busy with Susan’s complaints.’
‘Point taken,’ she said. ‘So what exactly has Aimee told you?’
I looked down at the fostering folder in my lap and, opening it, was finally able to tell Jill of Aimee’s disclosures. I began by setting the scene, saying that Aimee had told me in the car after contact on Friday. I explained we’d been talking about Christmas when Aimee had said last Christmas hadn’t been nice for her. Using Aimee’s words, which I’d written down, I said that Aimee had told me she and her mother had stayed at Craig’s over Christmas and Craig had given her corned beef for dinner. When Aimee had said she didn’t like the food Craig had shouted at her, called her a rude bitch, then grabbed her by the throat and ‘belted me all over with his fist’. I continued with Aimee’s account of how Craig had killed kittens in front of her by breaking their necks.