A weekend with some "looked after children"

Too tired to post last night after a weekend with some of Southampton's more troubled kids. Again, in the New Forest, but rather than young offenders, these kids were drawn from the local council's group of "looked after children" (aka kids in care). These kids are at the core of what dreamwall does. Their "corporate parent" is Southampton City Council and they are all in foster care or children's homes. There are 200 of these young people in Southampton and dreamwall has worked with most of them in the age range 10 - 16.

First some facts and figures that I find troubling and speak to why dreamwall was founded:

• There are 40,000 looked after children in England
• A looked after child is ...
• ... 10 times more likely to have special educational needs
• ... 11 times more likely to get less than 1 GCSE
• ... 4 times more likely to be unemployed on school leaving
• Finally, although 1% of all children are looked after, the prison population in England comprises 23% people who have been "looked after". Makes a bit of a mockery of the term really

Back to the weekend. Of the 15 kids I spent my time with, perhaps 2 or 3 were born with genetic problems such as Aspergers (part of the autistic spectrum) and perhaps they found their way into care because of parents' ability to cope with that. The others had no genetic problems; what the had were problems that stemmed from the environment in which they were brought up. Many had lacked care and human interaction in their early, formative years and were now unable to function as you would expect a 12 year old to.

To give you an idea, there was the kid who dearly wanted to write all the answers to a quiz we did on Saturday afternoon. He could write, but it looked like it was from an infant school child. I did not see him spell one word correctly. He was 12 and at a state secondary school where he was bullied by the other children. Another kid would speak barely at all, he was painfully shy and he could not interact with others; he was bullied too. Others were angry, others confused, others could not share, others craved attention and approval. They did not know a life that most of us took for granted. This was nurture, or lack of it, not nature. Basically, society let them down.

For a positive, I look to the difference that some people can make and how well some kids respond. Most of the older kids have been with dreamwall for a couple of years or more. Most of them were moving towards the "normal kid". Many become dreamwall's young leaders, volunteers who act as peer mentors during their weekends; they do it because dreamwall is a family to them and they want to help the younger members of their family. Some go on to become paid staff where dreamwall is a weekend job whilst they are at college. Every one of the young leaders and paid staff is in education or training, taking control of their life, moving on. The contrast with these kids versus last week's is the emotional scarring they carry with them. The scarring can be treated with a sticking plaster or it can be treated by a top-flight plastic surgeon over many years of reconstructive surgery. My guys are the latter.

High point of the weekend was hearing every single kid ask when the next dreamwall get together would be and that, for them, dreamwall was their safest environment and a family to them. Low point was me figuring out what that meant about the rest of their lives and what had gone before.