A LACK of understanding still surrounds the child-in-care system, according to parents of children in foster care.
Speaking to The Clare Champion, two mothers who found themselves unable to cope with their circumstances due to illness recall believing that their children were being taken into care for a short time and would not be there permanently.
“I didn’t understand the full implications of fostering. I thought my children are going but they will be back in a couple of weeks. I didn’t know that they had to be settled and it would be very hard to get them back and that without real family support they wouldn’t come back,” Margaret* says.
Margaret suffered from depression and feels that her family and friends judged her when she found herself unable to cope.
“There is a big stigma about it. A lot of your family would frown on you. My friends would know but they wouldn’t mention it to me. Some friends I wouldn’t socialise with anymore because I would feel there is a stigma there. I would avoid them,” she reveals.
According to advocacy worker Helen Walsh there, is also much confusion about people whose children are in care.
“It is important to realise that children come into care for various different reasons. The parent might be struggling with an illness or there may be other reasons like protection worries the HSE may have, there may be addiction in the home, there may be domestic violence that children are living with,” she says.
Helen works with the Clare Advocacy Service.
“The forefront of our work is that we don’t judge anyone. Because of the stigma that exists around having children in care, some parents may feel judged.
“Having a child taken into care can affect a person’s confidence as a parent because their role as a parent is taken away from them. There would also be a sense of loss and a lot of hurt and anger and grief that parents experience,” she concludes.

Mother ‘broken hearted’ after children taken into care

Accepting that your child is happy in another family is a painful realisation and one that can be very hard for parents of children in care.
“My daughter is fairly settled. I have a big difficulty about it. My children are still my children and I feel no-one can rear them as well as I can. My daughter has a routine and is happy and is easy to rear for her foster family. It is another kettle of fish when she comes back here. She can be difficult enough,” Margaret* explains.
Another consequence of having a child taken into care is the lack of opportunity to make memories together.
“I don’t ever really recall my children having special memories,” Margaret reveals.
After her children were born, Margaret experienced tragedy in her life and admits that following this she made some bad decisions.
“When the children went into care, it was horrific really. I went real cold and froze and felt like that for a long number of years. My emotions just froze,” she recalls.
“I was alone and broken-hearted and totally lacking in confidence and belief in myself and unable to cope really. I don’t think my family really understood. They got on with their own lives and you can’t expect people to be doing things for you all the time,” Margaret continues.
Margaret struggled with depression down through the years, something that compounded her situation and that of her children.
“I had no coping mechanisms. There was a stigma. I felt I had no support. No one understood me. They didn’t understand what I would say or what I felt,” she remembers.
For Margaret, her spirituality has helped her overcome depression. Her son now lives with her and she speaks to her daughter regularly.
“They are angry from time to time, verbally. I just take it. They have the right to be. My daughter is a teenager. She doesn’t communicate that much. When she is in the house she likes to be on her own. She doesn’t invite her friends around. I think at the moment her relationships are geared to where she is living and the people around her,” Margaret says.
“I think counselling is important, vital really for children in care. They should get it at some stage of another. I think it is important to be open too with them. My son always thought well ‘mam’s sick, that is all’, but my daughter would also ask me about it and would want to find out more about it. They went to psychologists when they were young but I think it would be important to do it again,” she says.
Margaret attended the first part of the My child, my role? programme run by the Clare Advocacy Service.
“I would absolutely recommend it. You have the support of other mothers with children in care, you learn so much. Information is given to you and you know who to ring and what to do and you have emotional support too. It even has social benefits because you are meeting people,” she concludes.

‘I was very upset and angry with myself’

Nineteen years ago, Mary* could not have imagined her life as it has unfolded up to today. She had a supportive partner and was pregnant with her first child. At the time, she was surprised but excited. She went on to have three more children. Today, all of her children are in the care of foster families.
After the birth of her children, Mary’s partner became abusive towards her and she went to a refuge. It was there that she first made contact with a social worker. She left her partner while maintaining contact with social services.
“The social worker would come to the house. They were asking how I was managing or coping. At that time, I thought I was managing okay. A couple of years down the line, I realised I wasn’t managing. I felt myself I wasn’t coping. This was very distressing. I just said ‘I’m not coping well’. At first I thought they would just take the kids until I got back on my feet. I was the lowest of the low. I looked at myself and thought I was awful. It is hard to describe how low I was and not coping,” Mary says.
“It is hard for me to remember the older ones being taken into care and how I felt because the younger ones kept me occupied,” she explains.
Mary visited her older children while they were in care and says she found them to be happy. She admits feeling sorry that she wasn’t able to provide the care for them that they required. Soon her younger children too were fostered. “When they left, I was very upset and angry with myself. I went from having four children in the house to having none. It left me with a lot of time to think about things,” Mary remembers.
“I suppose a small part of me was relieved and part of me was angry. I was relieved because I knew they were going to go to a good place. It is hard to explain. I was angry because they were my children and I didn’t want to be separated from them,” she recalls.
Mary recently took part in the first module of the Clare Advocacy Service programme, My child, my role?, something that she felt was of great benefit to her. “It showed me things that you could do with the children when you visited them or when they came to you overnight. I also learned how to communicate with the children,” she explains.
Particularly enjoyable for Mary was learning how to find out what her children wanted to do with their time together. “The only way I can say it is that I didn’t know what the kids would have been interested in doing.”
“I love meeting the other people on the course and I learn things from them as well as from the teachers and it is nice to meet people in the same boat as yourself and realise you are not the only one out there,” she continued.
Mary has regular visits with her children, as well as phone contact with them. “I have a good relationship with my children. They are very clever. They aren’t angry at me. They understand. I think they are happy. I’m happy when they are happy,” she concluded.

* Mothers’ names have been changed.

Programme offering support for parents

Having a child taken into care is a lonely experience. A lack of understanding can cause friends and family to distance themselves, leaving the parent feeling isolated, emotional and confused.
The Clare Advocacy Service is a free, confidential, voluntary service that has been offering a helping hand to people in such circumstances for more than 10 years.
Last October, the service began a programme aimed at helping these parents develop their relationship with their children and educating them about the childcare system. Next week, the organisation begins the second module of that programme, My child, my role?
“Coping with the reality of children going into care can be both traumatic and upsetting for parents. Their physical, emotional and psychological well-being can become deeply affected,” explained Eleanor Comber, advocacy worker with the service.
“We decided to run the programme because we deal with parents who are no longer in a parenting role because when a child goes into care, the HSE takes on that role.
“This can be confusing for the natural parents. They are still the child’s parents and they always will be their parents but they are not in that role so the question that leaves them with is ‘well what is my role?’,” added fellow advocacy worker Helen Walsh.
My child, my role? attempts to offer parents space in a safe group setting with other parents who have children in care to allow them the opportunity to become stronger individuals, to develop skills that will help them maintain loving relationships with their children and will enable them work more positively with key people involved in their children’s care.
It is also about encouraging parents to realise how they can take a more active and positive part in their child’s life while in care.
The first module, which was delivered over eight weeks from October to December 2009, included promoting positive access visits, incorporating having fun and getting active with the child, children’s arts, crafts and activities, promoting positive communication between the parent and their child, working towards quality access time, forming and adapting to new relationships and promoting positive communication with key people in the child’s life.
“When parents are allowed a space to help themselves realise that positive changes can be made to allow them grow stronger as individuals, coping with their children being in care may become more manageable,” Eleanor outlined.
“The programme is there to help these parents become familiar with the care system. They will be informed of their own legal rights as parents, the rights of the child and the various roles that are in the HSE when children go into care,” Helen added.
“Part of our role in Clare Advocacy Service would be to provide support for parents in relation to their children in care and to encourage them to remain involved with their children while in care. We also endeavour to empower parents to arrive at their own solutions to the difficulties that may have occurred for them because of their children being in care,” she continued.
The advocacy service also encourages parents to overcome difficulties such as relationship problems or addiction, which may have influenced the need for their children to go into care.
According to Helen, information and skills learned during the first module of the course are proving helpful for parents who took part in it.
“The module that was delivered before Christmas involved promoting quality access visits with the child and from that module, parents have gained confidence in how they can be with their children and have fun with their children and they would have also developed good listening skills, learning to listen to their children and enjoy their time with them,” she recalled.
The next module of the My child, my role? programme for parents with children in care is called Understanding the Child in Care System.
It will run over four Thursdays in February, beginning on Thursday, February 4 and takes place in Clarecare, Harmony Row, Ennis, for two hours from 10.30am.
The module will cover understanding what happens as a family goes through the Child in Care System, the roles and responsibilities of the HSE with regard to children in care, the court system and legal rights of parents with children in care and the role of the advocacy service and advocacy workers.
For more information on the programme, contact Clare Advocacy Service, Clarecare on 065 6828178.