Post by Editor on Jun 28, 2013 6:37:18 GMT
The foster mum who took in a 'vulnerable' boy of 16 - only to find he was a drunken asylum-seeking thug of 26
Susan Johnson became a foster mother after her daughter left home
But she has faced 'a cavalier attitude to her safety' from the care system
Twice she has had foster 'children' she was incapable of caring for
One Afghan 'boy' turned out to be chain-smoking man of 26
Another British 15-year-old emptied her bank account of £1,000
But she continues to foster, despite her family's objections
By SUSAN JOHNSON
PUBLISHED: 22:28, 27 June 2013 | UPDATED: 23:35, 27 June 2013
The aggression in the voice on the other side of my spare bedroom door was both startling and frightening — not least because it was supposed to be coming from a young boy.
I’d knocked respectfully before delivering clean washing to my foster son, Farood.
‘Keep out,’ he snarled back in a deep, threatening baritone.
I was beginning to think this ‘poor, vulnerable, 16-year-old lad’, as he was described by social services, who had asked me to look after him, was not all he seemed.
Lucky escape: Foster mother Susan, whose identity, we have disguised, had a 26-year-old Afghan asylum seeker placed with her after he claimed to be a 16-year-old boy when he was picked up by authorities
Since his arrival 12 days earlier, Farood, an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan, had behaved disgracefully. He constantly reeked of alcohol and treated my house like a hostel rather than a home, coming and going as he pleased.
But it was his physical strength and raw aggression that I found the most frightening.
I’m a 60-year-old widow and retired school secretary, only 5ft tall, and I live on my own. This ‘boy’ on the other hand, was more than 6ft tall, stocky and had a demeanour and physical strength beyond his supposed years.
Where there should have been spots, there was stubble.
Where I’d expected a cowed and frightened child in need of love and a good meal, I found the arrogance and, quite frankly, terrifying swagger of a grown man.
Intimidated and frightened, I quickly stopped trying to enforce any house rules. I could almost see the aggression that bubbled off Farood, how could I match his brute physicality?
Even when I found condoms left casually on his bedside table and received a complaint from my neighbour about him leering at her teenage daughter over the garden fence while he smoked endless cigarettes, I felt powerless to act.
But when I tried to raise my concerns with my key worker — that Farood wasn’t the 16-year-old I’d been told he was — I was fobbed off.
‘Just hang on to him for a couple more days,’ I was told, with the assurance everything was being done to look into Farood’s background and find a more permanent placement.
'After more than a week of sleepless nights wondering whether I was safe in my own bed, I begged, pleaded and insisted that Farood was rehomed'
Finally, after more than a week of sleepless nights wondering whether I was safe in my own bed, I begged, pleaded and insisted that Farood was rehomed — I watched him being driven away, racked with guilt and a sense of failure.
Weeks later, however, that guilt turned to anger when I discovered, to my horror, that all my suspicions about this ‘cuckoo’ in my nest were correct. I learned from my social workers that Farood was in fact 26, not 16.
Police had accessed criminal records in his home country that showed he’d previously been in trouble for theft and brawling. He was now in a detention centre while the Home Office considered his asylum application.
No one had even thought to assess all this before placing him under my roof a year ago. I still shudder when I think what could have happened. And no one has ever apologised to me for the danger I was placed in.
This was a million miles from what I’d ever imagined the reality of being a foster mother would be.
I went into fostering three years ago because I wanted to help improve disadvantaged children’s lives.
After retiring, and watching my own daughter leave home, I was at a loose end, loath to pass the next 20 years attending endless coffee mornings and volunteering in the local charity shop. I still felt I had plenty to give.
Wooed by recruitment posters of smiling, photogenic children, I got in touch with my local council’s fostering unit. Those posters showed images of happy families — the foster parents often a similar age to myself — alongside emotive words suggesting that someone like me could really make a difference.
There are currently around 78,000 British children in the care system — around 62,000 are accommodated in the UK’s 50,000 foster homes.
But research by the charity Fostering Network has shown a shortfall of around 9,000 foster parents — hence the billboard recruitment drives up and down the country like the one that pulled me in.
The local authority placed me on a training scheme, which lasted a year. It was to prepare me for a world that was sickening to even consider.
I attended courses, with question-and-answer sessions and training videos. I was warned I might need to become a temporary parent to youngsters who were victims of terrible neglect; starved or beaten by the very people meant to protect them. Members of their own family might even have raped them.
Understandably, I expected a challenge, but I was determined to work hard and do my best.
What I hadn’t anticipated was the sheer incompetence and cavalier attitude to my safety that was shown by my employers.
I discovered that, instead of the valued linchpin in a fragmented society, I was the lowest common denominator in a system that was broken. A system that seems to gloss over children’s problems in an attempt to make them sound appealing to potential foster parents, and fulfil ‘targets’.
Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2350260/The-foster-mum-took-vulnerable-boy-16--drunken-asylum-seeking-thug-26.html#ixzz2XUSAxV8r
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Susan Johnson became a foster mother after her daughter left home
But she has faced 'a cavalier attitude to her safety' from the care system
Twice she has had foster 'children' she was incapable of caring for
One Afghan 'boy' turned out to be chain-smoking man of 26
Another British 15-year-old emptied her bank account of £1,000
But she continues to foster, despite her family's objections
By SUSAN JOHNSON
PUBLISHED: 22:28, 27 June 2013 | UPDATED: 23:35, 27 June 2013
The aggression in the voice on the other side of my spare bedroom door was both startling and frightening — not least because it was supposed to be coming from a young boy.
I’d knocked respectfully before delivering clean washing to my foster son, Farood.
‘Keep out,’ he snarled back in a deep, threatening baritone.
I was beginning to think this ‘poor, vulnerable, 16-year-old lad’, as he was described by social services, who had asked me to look after him, was not all he seemed.
Lucky escape: Foster mother Susan, whose identity, we have disguised, had a 26-year-old Afghan asylum seeker placed with her after he claimed to be a 16-year-old boy when he was picked up by authorities
Since his arrival 12 days earlier, Farood, an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan, had behaved disgracefully. He constantly reeked of alcohol and treated my house like a hostel rather than a home, coming and going as he pleased.
But it was his physical strength and raw aggression that I found the most frightening.
I’m a 60-year-old widow and retired school secretary, only 5ft tall, and I live on my own. This ‘boy’ on the other hand, was more than 6ft tall, stocky and had a demeanour and physical strength beyond his supposed years.
Where there should have been spots, there was stubble.
Where I’d expected a cowed and frightened child in need of love and a good meal, I found the arrogance and, quite frankly, terrifying swagger of a grown man.
Intimidated and frightened, I quickly stopped trying to enforce any house rules. I could almost see the aggression that bubbled off Farood, how could I match his brute physicality?
Even when I found condoms left casually on his bedside table and received a complaint from my neighbour about him leering at her teenage daughter over the garden fence while he smoked endless cigarettes, I felt powerless to act.
But when I tried to raise my concerns with my key worker — that Farood wasn’t the 16-year-old I’d been told he was — I was fobbed off.
‘Just hang on to him for a couple more days,’ I was told, with the assurance everything was being done to look into Farood’s background and find a more permanent placement.
'After more than a week of sleepless nights wondering whether I was safe in my own bed, I begged, pleaded and insisted that Farood was rehomed'
Finally, after more than a week of sleepless nights wondering whether I was safe in my own bed, I begged, pleaded and insisted that Farood was rehomed — I watched him being driven away, racked with guilt and a sense of failure.
Weeks later, however, that guilt turned to anger when I discovered, to my horror, that all my suspicions about this ‘cuckoo’ in my nest were correct. I learned from my social workers that Farood was in fact 26, not 16.
Police had accessed criminal records in his home country that showed he’d previously been in trouble for theft and brawling. He was now in a detention centre while the Home Office considered his asylum application.
No one had even thought to assess all this before placing him under my roof a year ago. I still shudder when I think what could have happened. And no one has ever apologised to me for the danger I was placed in.
This was a million miles from what I’d ever imagined the reality of being a foster mother would be.
I went into fostering three years ago because I wanted to help improve disadvantaged children’s lives.
After retiring, and watching my own daughter leave home, I was at a loose end, loath to pass the next 20 years attending endless coffee mornings and volunteering in the local charity shop. I still felt I had plenty to give.
Wooed by recruitment posters of smiling, photogenic children, I got in touch with my local council’s fostering unit. Those posters showed images of happy families — the foster parents often a similar age to myself — alongside emotive words suggesting that someone like me could really make a difference.
There are currently around 78,000 British children in the care system — around 62,000 are accommodated in the UK’s 50,000 foster homes.
But research by the charity Fostering Network has shown a shortfall of around 9,000 foster parents — hence the billboard recruitment drives up and down the country like the one that pulled me in.
The local authority placed me on a training scheme, which lasted a year. It was to prepare me for a world that was sickening to even consider.
I attended courses, with question-and-answer sessions and training videos. I was warned I might need to become a temporary parent to youngsters who were victims of terrible neglect; starved or beaten by the very people meant to protect them. Members of their own family might even have raped them.
Understandably, I expected a challenge, but I was determined to work hard and do my best.
What I hadn’t anticipated was the sheer incompetence and cavalier attitude to my safety that was shown by my employers.
I discovered that, instead of the valued linchpin in a fragmented society, I was the lowest common denominator in a system that was broken. A system that seems to gloss over children’s problems in an attempt to make them sound appealing to potential foster parents, and fulfil ‘targets’.
Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2350260/The-foster-mum-took-vulnerable-boy-16--drunken-asylum-seeking-thug-26.html#ixzz2XUSAxV8r
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