What I wish I’d known when I went into care.
When I was taken into care, it felt like everything happened so quickly; I had no time to process what was happening or even think about asking any questions about now and the future. I also felt as though I was very unprepared for a lot that happened afterwards, looking back there is a lot of things I wish I’d known or been warned about. Here I’m going to talk about a few of them.
Coming into care might not fix everything you felt was wrong.
If you’ve come into the care of your local authority, the chances are you’ve left a toxic home environment. Whilst this will hopefully mean that at least in terms of location you are in a safer, calmer place and not be faced with the same stresses you were before, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll feel better mentally. I still struggled with my feelings about the whole situation for a long time after I went into care, and for me it got far worse before it got better. Things won’t go from being somewhat horrible to perfect overnight, and it’s ok to struggle with that, and also feel disappointed that things are still really hard.
There will be meetings, Lots of them.
You’ll have to go to, or at least provide your thoughts for, a lot of meetings like Placement Planning meetings, Personal Education Planning meetings, Health Assessments and Looked After Child Reviews. It can be really overwhelming sometimes, and to be honest they can be a bit boring. If attending these meetings is something you really can’t bear, you can ask if you can write down your thoughts for the people that need them or see if you could have an Advocate, which is somebody who can speak for you if you can’t, or don’t want to.
You’ll be asked to tell your story repeatedly, which can be painful.
Especially if you’re quite young when you go into care, the chances are you’ll have more than one Social Worker. When you get a new Social Worker, or any other kind of worker, they’ll probably ask you questions about your life, before and now, and how you feel. It can be really hurtful to remember things you don’t want to and talk about them. Even more so with someone you barely know and haven’t had the chance to build trust with yet. For me, it got easier each time I had to retell those things, I almost became desensitized to my own trauma. It can be helpful to write it down so you don’t have to say it over and over again if its too hard, or ask somebody you trust to tell them for you. If you have somebody you can really trust, it might be helpful to talk through with them the feelings this brings up for you afterwards, or write it down if you don’t want to share those feelings with anyone else.
Some of these people genuinely do care about you.
Personally, I struggled with the idea that anybody could genuinely care about me. The way I saw it, is if those who were meant to care for me and protect me forever didn’t do that, how on Earth could anyone else? The truth is though, some of the people you come across, whether they’re your Carer or a professional, genuinely care about what happens to you. It can be tough to let people in, because you don’t want to trust anybody and don’t feel able to. If you can learn to trust them, and let them in, some of them really can help you and make a positive difference to your life.
It’s sad and It’s hard, but there can be some positives to this.
For me, there was nothing easy about coming into care. It was all so strange and scary. It made things tougher for me in some ways, which made me feel worse in some capacity than I had done previously. I spent a long time feeling sorry for myself because of everything that went on. When I came to realise that this presented me with an opportunity to turn my life around, heal from what I’d been through and make a difference, I was able to come to accept the situation and build a life for myself on my own terms.
There is so much more I could write, so much more I wish I’d known at the time, but I don’t want to ramble for too long. If there is anything else you’d like to know about or any questions you have about coming into care, please feel free to get in touch and we will try to answer the best we can, from our point of view as care experienced people.
Thank you for reading.
Rhianna Xx
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