Foster Carers

Neale Hanvey Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this enormously important debate, which is a personal debate for me. My contribution will not be about policy. I have a responsibility and a privilege to give a fraternal address from Scotland.

The route into care in Scotland is very different, but the needs and complexities of the children are similar, and they always must come first. I will talk a little bit about my route into foster care as a carer. I will not talk about our family because I am fiercely protective of my children.

My partner and I have been together for nearly 30 years. We lived in London for many years and we spoke often about our options to have a family. We had three protracted and ultimately failed surrogacy attempts, but it was always clear to me that the genetics of the child were not important. What was important was the provision of a loving home and providing a role model or someone who would believe in the child. I do not know whether there is evidence for this principle, but I believe it. Just one person believing in a young person who has experienced trauma or difficulty in their early years can lift them out of that dreadful dark hole and give them a bright future.

I have been involved, in one form or another, in the care of children and young people since being a volunteer with the then Scottish Society for the Mentally Handicapped when I was at school. I have been a nurse for most of my career, specialising in adolescent cancer. When we returned to Scotland, as a gay couple we discovered that we could foster and adopt, so we threw ourselves into that process and ultimately chose to foster. There are two principal reasons why we made that choice: the support that would be available to us directly through Barnardo’s, which is now a partner organisation, and the support that would be available, because no one can know what will happen with a placement, to the young people that came to us. I would be lying, which is not in vogue at the moment, if I did not say it was an enormous challenge. The first two years really stretched us. I am not talking from personal experience with our kids, but children who have been through multiple placements, suffered abuse and neglect, lived in deprivation and been traumatised come with complex needs. Foster carers have to surrender themselves to that, because if they expect a child to come into their home and surrender themselves to the carers, but they are not prepared to make that commitment themselves, then ultimately the placement could fail.

There is lots of support to help foster carers through that, and we have been incredibly fortunate with the team around the child, the relationship with our social workers and the tremendous gift that having a family has been. The rewards are immeasurable. We participate in three principal areas of care: short-term care, respite care and ultimately long-term permanent care. I could not have had a better experience. It has been the most humbling and enriching experience of my life, without any question or equivocation.

Young people who come into care arrive with difficult challenges to face, whether developmental delay or academic deficits. It is grounded in evidence that young people who are care-experienced can struggle academically, but what will surprise many people who make assumptions is that in reality if people invest their time, energy and commitment in that young person, they can turn that right around. Achieving that depends on more people coming forward, because without good-quality foster carers, there is no placement. The main focus of my comments is to support that drive from the Fostering Network.

I just want to tell a little story. Co-incidentally, yesterday morning on Radio 4 there was a piece featuring Sinéad Browne, a care-experienced person who studied law and threw herself into her education to find solace from her experience. She has formed a fantastic organisation called Compliments of The House. I can only precis what a wonderful story it is, and I thoroughly recommend anybody who is interested to catch up on that piece by listening to it on the BBC Sounds app.

To go back to what I said at the beginning of my speech, it takes only one person to believe in a young person in order to make a difference, but the biggest and most important challenge is getting that young person to believe in themselves, that they matter and that their future matters. For me, that is the essence of what it has meant to be that person. It is not about providing a physical space. It is about providing a home where there is parenting, love, safety and care. The policy parts around that are obvious—funding, training, recruitment and stability—but the journey can be exceptional, and I just want to share that with everyone. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]