Life in foster care - part 2

The strangest thing about my time living in foster care was that we never did much as a family.

We had meals together at 7:30 AM, 1:00 PM (weekends and school holidays only) and 6:00 PM but it was a bit like living in a cheap Bed & Breakfast place and not much like living with people who cared about you. There was a 7 day rota for meals so I always knew what I was going to have to eat every single day. I can remember that on Sunday it was always a chicken, on Monday it was always cold chicken with boiled potatoes and on Friday it was always fish.

They had a car (a Vauxhall), but no garage, so it was always parked on the street outside their house. My Foster Dad used to car to go to his job in Luton but apart from that it was almost never used. I really truly cannot remember ever going anywhere in the car with them but I supposed I must have. In the evening when I finished my school work I usually went out to hang around with friends but sometimes I would sit with my foster parents and watch some TV in their front room. They had a colour TV with just 3 channels, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV.

If I wanted to go the cinema or to watch St Albans City or Luton Town play football I paid for myself and went on my own or with friends. It was never suggested that the three of us would go together or that they would pay for me. I don't think they ever went away, even for a single night, during all the time I lived with them.

But I don't want people to think that my foster parents were nasty or cruel. They were not. It was just the way it was when you went into foster care. It was a business to them, they were paid to look after me - not to look out for me. I used to get visited by a social worker. Sometimes at school and sometimes at my foster home. I never bothered complaining about things which meant their visits were short which is how I wanted them to be.

My foster parents only did fostering for 1 year after I had left. This had a girl for 12 months, I think she was called Toni. I heard that Toni was "too much" for them to cope with so she was moved somewhere else and they stopped doing fostering altogether.

They will both be dead and buried years ago so I cannot ask them for their memories of those days.