Sophie
*Name and distinguishing features changed to protect identity
The above photo is credited to Polybags
Context: This was a post from my Facebook Diary of a Disabled PhD Student way back in May 2023, which forms part of my PhD thesis. The post is now a stand-alone published article below.
Post 19 - Black Bags follow *Sophie (names and distinguishing features changed) – 5.5.2023
I watched a TikTok video by Slaney, who shares her experiences of being in care in the U.K. (public profile). She’s hopefully going to write a book. I hope she does. Maybe she could include the links to her VLogs in the book as there’s something about the oral storytelling- when it’s delivered well like hers! I feel her book would be very educational for the care system. She talked in a post about having to use black bags when moving placement when she was a child in care. She’s roughly now in her 20s, so care for her wasn’t that long ago. Her Vlog is here: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJub845y/. The number of comments sharing similar stories is very positive to sharing similar struggles and experiences as somewhat of a support system.
My mind wanders back to *Sophie (name changed). She influenced me to later work with children in care. Me and Sophie sat next to each other from the start of Year 10 (age 14) in Science at school, some thirty years ago. The best thing about that boring class by Mr *Force (name changed). Sophie came to Beaumont Leys School, Leicester, at the end of Year 9 with her sister in Year 7. ‘’I’m in foster care,’’ Sophie said within the first 5 minutes, almost like on script. I guess she was used to being able to tell her story fast, all her trauma, as a matter of fact, as there was so much of it. She liked the boys, striving for love. ‘’I want a baby’’, she said. I tried convincing her to wait, but her mind was set on it.
We went around to the foster carers one day after school. They had a separate living room from the children. I thought it was a bit odd, but maybe it was a playroom? Evidently not. I stood behind Sophie as she opened ‘their’ living room door. A woman and her husband, about 50, sat watching TV with a glass of wine in their hand. Seeing their precise age was difficult because they had their backs turned to us. They grunted back to Sophie. They didn’t say, ‘Get out. I’m not interested’, but you felt it in their atmosphere and body language. Clean house, don’t get me wrong. Bedroom full of bunk beds. Quite a lot of foster kids are in the house. Sophie didn’t say anything bad about these carers. They were indeed the best she’s ever had, enabling her to have a stable foster ‘placement’ with 100% school attendance. But little attention or love, so maybe that’s why she was striving for it elsewhere. It’s also worth noting that Jenny Malloy, author of Hackney Child, a care leaver who advises Local Authorities now and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate, says the word ‘placement’ sounds cold and ‘home’ is more appropriate. More information about Jenny’s work is here: https://www.ccinform.co.uk/author/jennymalloy/
One day, Sophie wasn’t at school. One day turned into more. Couldn’t see her sister either. ‘’Sophie’s foster carers have given up fostering. She’s moved to a children’s home in Wigston’’, Mr Force said. Split up from her sister, who went elsewhere. A few weeks passed ‘’Have you heard anything from Sophie at all?’’ Mr Force says. My blank expression back. ‘’She’s still registered at this school, which means she’s not registered with her new one yet, and we haven’t been notified she isn’t coming here anymore’’ (as I later found out, children can travel across town to remain at the same school when changing care/foster homes).
Winter turns into spring in Year 10. I went with two friends to the Odeon Cinema at the back of Lee Circle, Leicester city centre in the 90s (not there any more). ‘’Hello’’, a voice hit me when approaching the cinema steps. I thought, who is this saying hello to me? I looked confused for a second. ‘’It’s me, Sophie,’’ she said whilst hugging a guy on the cinema step outside. I thought, crikey, she’s changed. I didn’t know what to say. ‘’You ok?’’, I said. Sophie smiled back. She didn’t say she was ok. She didn’t say no. Is that what children's homes do to children, I thought?
‘’They put my clothes in bin bags’’ came out randomly from Sophie on the cinema step. Not the inbuilt trauma but the fact they put her clothes in bin bags. Which became the added new layer on top of existing trauma.
Some years later, I moved away for work and then returned to Leicester. I was now early ’20s and around the early 2000s, back in Leicester. I was supervising contacts between children and their parents while they were going through care proceedings within social work. i.e. the children were removed from their parents due to alleged abuse or neglect, placed into foster care, and saw their parents for supervised contact. I was the person from the council supervising. At the time, I could use many private rooms at Family Centres, which enabled parents to play with their children in an informal setting and children have access to toys. The communities wouldn’t necessarily know the parent was there for contact, as the Family Centres had nurseries in other parts of the building. So, this approach also minimised the stigma parents faced. Unfortunately, this arrangement stopped when Sure Starts took over Family Centres under the Labour government around 2003. And there we are, thinking Conservatives are Scrooges. Sophie walked by the Family Centre reception area to collect one of her children from the nursery one day. We actually bumped into each other a few weeks earlier at Greyfriars social services office (now moved), but she assumed I was a parent, I think, and I was with a family, so I didn’t really speak. A few weeks later, we started a conversation at the Family Centre as I headed out after supervising a contact there. It took her five minutes to establish I was working for social services, not as a parent. Sophie looked shocked. ‘’I never thought you would go to the other side,’’ she said. Which always stuck with me, and maybe another story for another time to go deeper.
Around the same time as bumping into Sophie, I worked with a family where the four children were split up in different foster placements all over Leicester. It could be the other side of the country with logistics. I supervised the contact between siblings and their parents and sometimes took the children back to the foster carers. *Tanisha (name changed) had been through five foster homes in a short time without her fault. One day, a message came to me that her foster carer couldn’t have her anymore as a family emergency happened, and Tanisha had to leave the same day. I sometimes helped social workers out with other tasks apart from contacts. So, seeing as I knew the children, I went to collect her stuff. Tanisha went to school that morning, not knowing by tea time she would be living in another home with another family dynamics to learn.
Tanisha was told by a teacher who knew her well at school that she would be moving. The taxi that normally took her back was diverted to the new placement after school. I don’t think her Social Worker went, but maybe they did. My task was to collect Tanisha’s stuff from her old placement and take her belongings to her new home. Perhaps I should have been sent to move Tanisha instead of collecting her belongings, as she knew me and my car. But for some reason, I wasn’t. Maybe logistics, and no one seemed to want to move her stuff. Perhaps it was even a Friday afternoon, and no one was available. So, I was sent to move Tanisha’s stuff. Nothing had been packed when I got to her ‘old placement’. The male foster carer handed me black bags as the woman went to a family emergency. He looked very uncomfortable with the whole ‘fostering’ word, never mind doing any foster caring. I should have refused to use the black bags. But the pressure was on.
‘’Haven’t you got any suitcases?’’ I asked him, and he must have said no.
I should have held my ground and made him part with one of the numerous £12.99 suitcases the family owned. Or I should have gone to Wilkinsons (shop now shut) and brought a suitcase myself. But I didn’t.
I filled everything of Tanisha’s world possessions scattered all over the bedroom in these thin, plastic-smelling bags. There was a crumpled-up photo of all four siblings together at their mum's house, all smiling. I put it in my handbag to give her later, not in the bin bag. I have never felt so bad in my life. When I took the black bags to Tanisha’s new placement/home, I don’t think Tanisha said anything. Sometimes, there are no words to express all that. It sometimes then comes out in behaviour.
Some years later, climbing the career ladder to hell working in social care and commissioning meant I quality assured children homes and foster placements used by the local authority social care (social services). By then, there was a ‘charter’ (policy) that no child in care should use bin bags to move placements. ‘’We will ensure all children in care are given a suitcase and hold bags,’’ speeches and policy guidelines stated. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad as it says the child will inevitably move, which is indeed bad. But at least they won’t have those bl**dy black bags. Well, so I thought. Numerous cases over the next few years, especially the 16-18-year-olds I came across, still had to use blag bags, not suitcases, to move. At that point, I realised it was not about money or agreeing on essential common sense things. Because everyone agreed using black bags is a bad idea. Various backgrounds decided over the years that blag bin bags shouldn't be used, but they continued to be used. This was indeed a phenomenon I was observing in other areas of life.
Was the lack of change in practice about disorganisation, lack of coordination/ connection, communication, and the evil social construct of time? I’m sure things have improved as time progresses?
You might be wondering, what have black bags, Sophie and Tanisha got to do with disability and chronic health? Well, Sophie and Tanisha actually had disabilities protected under English legislation. But you never heard about their disabilities. They ‘looked’ like any other child and wouldn’t necessarily see their disability. They weren’t in any specialist home. Sometimes, their health information wasn’t even passed through the different homes they went to live in. All people knew them as ‘the children in care’. The black bags situation might have compounded their disability, the added layer of ‘survival’. Black bags are indeed meant to take the rubbish out. Not children.