1 of 98,000 kids
I want to start my first post the same way I start every time I share my story; I consider myself one of the lucky kids, and despite all the sadness others feel about my story I do not regret a single thing that has happened to me.
I’m not going to delve into too much detail about my early life because it’s something I have little to no recolation of and I don’t want to upset or offend anyone for getting details wrong, what I will talk about though is thing I know for certain and events I have clear memories of.
I was born March 2004 in Rochdale, which is a small town in Greater Manchester and things were somewhat normal for my first few months of life, that’s what I’ve been told anyway. Unfortunately for everyone involved both my parents had mental health issues that neither of them ever fully overcame, my mum spent some time in a mental health hospital and my dad took his own life when I was four. As a result, my Nan took guardianship of me and raised me until I was nine, during this time I’d say I had a pretty normal childhood; but then she got sick. I think, as a response to the heavy emotions I felt at the time, my brain has buried most of my memories of her so deep that I can’t full access them, but in my heart, I know that little me felt responsible to care for her the best any kid could. Just months before my tenth birthday I moved back in with my mum – this was a big deal for both her and my Nan as they never got along- within weeks we were homeless and struggled to find anywhere local to live. We moved into a block of council flats in the next town over, conveniently the same town my mums partner lived in. This doesn’t sound far but to nine-year-old me it was a million miles away from everything I knew and everyone I loved, three years later my Nan, who I honestly consider to be my mum in so many ways, passed.
I don’t think there’s any need to go into detail about what happened in the years between me moving to Heywood and being taken into foster care, but due to my mums’ circumstances with housing, substance abuse, her choice in relationship and our own abusive relationship social services decided it was best to remove me from her care. I was Thirteen.
The memory of meeting my foster-parents for the first time will never leave me; I had never been so nervous to just ‘pop round for some tea’ before. Walking into their home for the first time was a surreal experience, I had never stepped in a house so nice before, so clean and so homely, it was completely foreign to little me who for the most part had only known council houses and hand me down furniture. It’s important you know that I am not a quiet girl, I’ve been told my whole life I could talk for Britain and that I often take up too much space with my opinions and stories, but for once in my life I was silent. It was spaghetti bolognaise, which is key because the mother -we’ll call her M and her husband A for privacy reasons- had made a point of making something a picky eater like me couldn’t refuse. It was a few days later that I packed my bags, and by bags I mean the stereotypical 'foster kid' black bin bags and a collection of any bag we could shove my belongings into, and moved in.
I was happy there,I’d never really had dinner round the table, or new Nike trainers, or family outings before. It was the most amazing feeling to feel like a part of a family when I had grown up feeling so out of place and unwanted in my own. Unfortunately, not all good things are made to last, and this was one of them. That’s a story for another post though.
So that’s it, in its simplest form the story of how I came to be 1 of the 98,000 foster children in the UK. There is a lot more to talk about, but I thought it was important to share where it all started.
POV of a Foster Kid, Jess x
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