The Boy No One Loved and Crying for Help 2-in-1 Collection. Casey Watson

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СКАЧАТЬ seemed so screamingly clear to me that Justin’s most deep-rooted problem – in the here and now of his current life – was not just the trauma of what had gone before, painful though that all was, but the soul-sapping reality of continued rejection by the person who was supposed to love him unconditionally for all time. His mother. His mother, who did not love him at all, it seemed to me. Who had decided at age five that he was some sort of monster. And God only knew what would happen if she lost her other boys. It was too terrible a prospect to even contemplate.

      ‘No, the main thing now,’ Gloria said, ‘in light of the new information is for us to pull together and support Justin the best way we can. Simon?’ She turned to the fostering programme supervisor, who’d up to now said very little. ‘You’re going to run through this for us, aren’t you?’

      ‘Absolutely,’ he said, moving his coffee cup to one side and opening a file he’d brought with him. I liked Simon, as did Mike. He’d been one of our assessors during our foster training. He was a no-nonsense Liverpudlian with a real warmth about him, and what seemed a really genuine desire to help the kids. He was also one of those rarities within the system who would cut corners if he had to, bypass the red tape, even at the risk of landing himself in deep water.

      ‘My feeling,’ he said now, ‘is that Justin could really benefit from some extra, one-on-one contact from one of our support workers, Sandie, the idea being that they can begin meeting once a week, and hopefully build a relationship, gradually, that will take him through into his next mainstream foster placement –’ he glanced at me here – ‘which is obviously still the ongoing plan. The hope is that she’ll become someone he trusts and can talk openly to, of course.’

      I took all this on board, and John and I exchanged glances. The idea was that, as foster carers, we became very close to the situation and, in being so, our job was to act as parents, not counsellors. We’d been told that as such we should play ‘mum and dad’ and leave the professional therapy to the professionals. I absolutely understood the thinking, but, as Simon knew, because we’d discussed it during training, I didn’t necessarily agree with it. As parents, we all take on many roles with our own children, and I felt – as did Mike – that the same logic applied; there was no reason why foster care couldn’t be simply an extension of this.

      But whatever the arguments about the boundaries between parent and counsellor, this was extra support and friendship for Justin, and that could never be a bad thing. I nodded and gave Simon a quick smile.

      He smiled back. ‘We’re also going to allocate a skills worker to him. Someone who can take him out and about into the wider community, and hopefully engage his interest in some new hobbies and team activities, as a means of helping him form proper friendships.’

      I really did like the idea of this because, right away, I could see how much Justin would get from this extra, focussed-on-fun-instead-of-talking kind of attention. He’d be excited, I knew, and I’d enjoy telling him about it.

      ‘So there you have it,’ Simon finished. ‘Let’s hope it reaps some benefits. At the very least, if we can continue to make progress with his schoolwork, and all things social, he’s definitely moving in the right direction.’

      Twenty failed placements already, I thought. And now a child-protection investigation for his mother, to boot. Could it really be that simple to make progress? I wasn’t sure I believed that, but I truly hoped so.

      The meeting was adjourned soon after, and everyone started preparing to leave, but John, I noticed, didn’t put on his jacket.

      ‘Couple of things to tell you,’ he said, as everyone filed back out through the front door. ‘Any chance of another cup of tea?’

      We went back into the kitchen, John carrying the tray of crockery, and I set about re-filling the kettle.

      ‘I’ve tracked down one of Justin’s previous social workers,’ he said, joining me at the sink and transferring cups and saucers to the dishwasher for me. ‘He’s retired now, so I went and paid him a visit personally. Just to see if there was anything else I could dig up.’

      I rinsed out our mugs ready for a fresh brew. Him tea, and me my drug of choice, another coffee. ‘And?’ I said.

      ‘And I think the consensus is that Justin’s been telling you the truth. It’s pretty much the exact same thing he told this chap back then. Back when he was … oh, about six or seven.’

      ‘But that wasn’t on his file,’ I pointed out.

      John shook his head. ‘No, you’re right, it wasn’t. Seems this chap at the time pretty much dismissed it.’

      ‘Dismissed it? What, all that stuff about performing oral sex on the drug dealer? About the dog? About setting the house alight? He was five. Why would he lie about something like that? God, could there have been a greater cry for help?’

      ‘I know.’ John frowned. ‘But apparently – and I quote – he just “thought he was being fanciful”. Told me he was always lying. And used to say a lot of stuff that was obviously untrue, like when – aged 5 – he beat up his mum’s boyfriend with a pool cue, and how he used to smoke cannabis and so on.’

      I tried to picture Justin the little boy and this notion of him ‘always lying’, and how risky a business it was to just assume something like that. I wasn’t naive – I knew better than to believe everything children said, but, still, there is a difference between a kid telling you that he beat someone up in a fight, and the other kinds of horrible things that Justin had disclosed. It didn’t take a genius to realise that a child of five wouldn’t know such things. Not unless he had actually witnessed them.

      I was so sad. How different might his future have been if he’d been properly listened to when he was still young enough to benefit from someone actually believing him? Instead, it seemed, it hadn’t even been recorded. He’d already, it seemed, been given up on. ‘But I’m still on it,’ John promised, as the kettle boiled. ‘I’ll keep you posted.’

      And John had obviously meant what he’d said, for there was more. That lunchtime, not an hour after he’d left, an email came through:

      Casey, just thought you should know I have located some more old files relating to Justin. They had been boxed up and stored away on one of the occasions that he was living back with his mum. It seems that when he was taken back into care, the old material, for some strange reason, didn’t appear with his new records!!! Honestly, heads should roll for this but probably won’t. Anyway, when Justin was seven he was placed with a single carer in her 30s. Coral Summers. She had two young children of her own, a girl of 5 and a boy of 6. Justin had been with them for just two months when Coral requested that he be immediately removed. Apparently he had taken a lighter and got the six-year-old to help him hold down the little girl whilst he started to burn her. Coral heard her daughter screaming and found the three of them in Justin’s room. I don’t want to alarm you but as I delve further into this, I am beginning to think that this lighter thing is starting to look as though it is a common thread throughout his past, which would seem to further corroborate what I said further. I will let you know if I uncover anything else. Speak to you soon, JF

      This new information, strangely, didn’t faze me at all. If anything, it simply cemented my determination to stop this damning cycle – this business of everything Justin said about the horrors of his early childhood seeming to fall on deaf ears. Challenging though he must have been to deal with – I recalled again those twenty failed placements – I simply couldn’t understand why there’d been no continuity in caring for him. Except perhaps it wasn’t so difficult to understand why. He’d been shunted СКАЧАТЬ