My 14 year foster care hell

My 14 year foster care hell - Community - lep.co.uk

Published on Mon Jan 31 08:42:34 GMT 2011

A desperate teenage mother is calling for an overhaul of social services after speaking out about her 14 year foster care hell.

Preston-born Lyndsey Keenan, 18, says she has been “shipped” from home to home and town to town, often into abusive households, since she was taken into care when she was four years old.

She has lived with 22 families in towns and cities around the country, including London, Bournemouth, Worthing, Seaford, the Isle of Wight and various towns in the south, despite national guidelines urging authorities to keep cared-for children close to home.

She was even split from her two younger brothers who were adopted by a family in Bristol because she claims social workers said it would be “unlikely” a family would adopt all three of them.

She hasn’t seen her siblings for more than 10 years.

Now 18 and able to speak legally about her plight, she says she has been “abandoned” by social services to care for her son Lex, one, who is blind and suffers severe disabilities.

The teenager, who lives in West Sussex, more than 200 miles from her birth home, says more needs to be done to protect vulnerable children.

She said: “Thousands of people like me are slipping through the cracks of the system and we are left with nothing and no proper homes.

“It is no wonder people think that people in care are all mess ups.

“We’re being left to fend for ourselves and being dumped anywhere they can find.

“My whole life has been horrible to be honest and nobody cares and now I’m left totally alone with a sick child. It shouldn’t be like this.”

Lyndsey and her two brothers were taken from their natural mother, who had drinking problems, in 1996 and were placed with Lancashire County Council’s social services.

The siblings were initially placed with a foster family in Preston before her brothers were adopted.

Lyndsey remembers: “I didn’t really know what was happening, I was too young, but I remember being held back at the door as they took my brothers off in a taxi. I knew I would probably never see them again. I felt so alone.”

Lyndsey was moved to other foster homes and respite centres in the area before going to live with a family in the Isle of Wight.

Growing up she struggled to settle or make permanent relationships as social workers moved her to various short and long-term placements. Her foster carers included Jewish families, American couples, devout Catholics and Italian immigrants – none from mixed-race backgrounds like her.

During one placement, Lyndsey and two other children were quickly removed from a home after the father was investigated for allegedly sexually abusing children. Lyndsey was not involved.

She was removed from another placement when a family member of her foster carer spat in her face because of her race. She was taken from another home because her carer was an alcoholic, she says.

When she was five-years-old, she claims she was locked in her room at another home, hit and forced to sleep in her own urine if she wet the bed.

“I used to have nightmares every night,” she said. “I was terrified.”

Lyndsey claims one family tried to adopt her but social services denied their application because they planned to move to America.

“I became really shy,” Lyndsey said. “I didn’t want to come out of my shell and make friends again because I knew that come a few weeks or months I’d have to do it all again. It has a real effect on how you see yourself and it got to the point that I couldn’t take any more. I couldn’t take the moving any more. I couldn’t be let down again.”

She now lives in her own flat in West Sussex, with her 10-month-old son Lex. The tot was born with 90% sight loss and pituitary gland problems, which has left him with missing fingers and complex learning problems.

She said: “He has a lot of problems. I’m all alone hundreds of miles from where I’m from – I feel totally isolated.

“The system shouldn’t be allowed to do this to people.

A spokesperson for Lancashire County Council’s social services said they were aware of Lyndsey’s case and confirmed she had been placed with numerous families.

Faith Mann, Lancashire County Council’s director for targeted and early intervention services for children and young people, said: “It saddens me to hear of a young person who has experienced problems during their time in care.

“We try to achieve stability for children, but there are sometimes factors beyond our control such as placement breakdown and the young person’s own wishes which make this difficult. Procedures have been updated in the past 20 years. The county council’s performance in placement stability was recently rated as good.”