One of my favourite songs from the People Have Names album is “Pick a Story” and I was so pleased when Louis McCullagh, photographer and film maker asked if he could use the song in a short film he was making about a young boy within the care system. The film is sceening in the Manchester/Salford film festival in November and in Australia in March and it highlights the fact that thousands of children enter the care system every year and how many have to move from foster home to foster home, mostly transporting their clothes and belongings in a black bin liner. To find out more about the film visit Call me Son and click on the screen

WHAT WOULD IMPROVE THE LIVES OF CHILDREN IN CARE?

The answer is relatively simple. More foster parents. In the UK about 10,000 new foster parents are required. Fostering is undertaken by a wide range of people but at any one time when a social worker is looking for somewhere to place a child their options can be very restricted due to lack of foster parents.

The child’s placement can be far from ideal. It may mean splitting them from siblings, being placed far away from their home area, being placed with foster parents who are not ideal (different ethnic background, religion, social interests, expertise, length of placement eg may only do respite fostering etc.)

Getting a good matched placement where the child can have stability would be perfect. The lack of stability creates “problem” children.

WHY ARE CHILDREN MOVED?

It might be cheaper for the local health board to use another foster home, the match with the foster carers may not be good, bad behaviour, the foster carers may only do short term, the foster carer is stopping fostering, social worker may wish to move the child back closer to original home area, foster carers circumstances change e.g. illness, job, moving home.

In the 10 years to 2006 the number of children in care per 10,000 children in the UK increased by 19%.

17% of children are placed over 21 miles from their original home.

Under 1% of children over 10 are placed for adoption, 18% of kids 1-4yrs old are placed for adoption. If you are 12 you aren’t going to get adopted.

A recent survey in Scotland found 40% of children in care had run away at some time.

The rate of staff leaving social work varies between 10.8% to 24.7% depending on where you are located. Each worker would have about 20 children in their files to look after. The statutory minimum visits they make are once per month but this could be once a week or more.

47.5% of all placements are 3 months or less.

All is not bad, a higher percentage of children in care are now put into foster care (as opposed to residential homes/schools) in recent years. The percentage has gone up from 66% to 70%.

62% of all kids are in care because of abuse and neglect a further 25% because of their parents leaving or what is termed having a dysfunctional family. One scenario might be that the mother may have a new partner who now wants his own family and so the existing kids are not wanted.

Going into care is a very traumatic experience. Trying to understand why it is happening. Meeting new people with new rules in a new environment. The child may be ashamed of its unfashionable clothing, split up from his or her siblings. Maybe only seeing them infrequently. Changing school, losing friends. Trying to fit in with new groups of people. Being moved. Thinking always that it is your fault.

Children want to be with their own family, however some do realise that fostering is the best option for them.

When in care 1000′s of these children/young people are being moved around and around.

Children in care can be different in some ways .They may not know their father and/or mother and so they might fantasise about them, that they are rich, really cool, wonderful e.g. like David Beckham etc. They may equate love with material things and be very materialistic. They may have no personal history, no photos, no one to tell them what they were like when they were small. Longterm being in care and the instability it brings can be very destructive to young lives.

I came across this recently in some old papers. Tom, you’re funny.

The Alternative Biography

Gay Byrne: Juliet, you have a lot of younger fans out there, many of whom are aspiring songwriters and performers. Maybe you would tell us how a young girl from mid-Ulster got started in the music industry?

Juliet: Well now Gay, it all started in Dromore, near Omagh when I was a young thing and I in the bath of a Saturday night. I was getting ready to go to the local Youth Club disco and my sister wanted to have a bath too. Anyways, didn’t I start singing so as to drown out the sound of me sister banging on the door and telling me to get out of the effing bath as she had to do her hair and get the conditioner in and all that. To cut a long story short, wasn’t there a man from the local pipe and drum band looking in the bathroom window at the time and didn’t he hear me singing and offered me an audition. So down I goes the next morning to the hall with me parents and 68 other members of the family to see what sort of sound I could knock out with the acoustics and all that you know. But wasn’t yer man knocked down and killed by a tractor on the way to the hall by a guy who happened to be involved with the Beatles in the early days. So he heard about my plight and offered to get that sticky paper put on the bathroom window to stop anyone looking in again like you know.
So at this stage I knew I had a bit of a voice do ye see so I decided that if I started a band and wore some fairly exposed clothing and made all the bits jump around at the same time I’d have a fair to middlin’ chance gettin’ an ould record deal like the Spice Girls or All Saints or some of them other girl power-trip thingies. I wrote to a lot of people from the showband era seeking their advice but they were all dead so I knew if I acted the show-band goat there wouldn’t be much longevity in it for me. It was then I decided to go down the Joannie Baez-road because most of them are still nearly alive if you follow me.
I advertised in the Buy and Sell for a guitar or a banjo and this guy from Westmeath rang to say he had a guitar that he wasn’t using since he gave up playing the hurling. He was looking for £40 for the guitar but I bargained him to £50 and two free tickets to my first gig. Now that I had the guitar I was in business but there wasn’t much of a sound out of it on account of the strings being missing. But I got a couple of lengths of fishing line from the uncle and sure there was a great ould rattle off it after that.
I got the band together from some guys who were on early release. The judge said he’d commute the rest of their sentences since they had to listen to me sing every night. I decided I’d have to write my own songs on account of there was nothing left to do a cover version of after Boyzone robbed them all. I find it easy to write you know like from all the beautiful things around. I just get the dictionary and pick out about forty pairs of rhyming words and stick them on the end of a line. Then I fill up the rest of the line with words like cloud, heart, leaves, heart, crying, heart, nature, heart, love, heart, beautiful and heart. Then I get some great ideas for melodies from the phone. When you ring Eircom and you don’t get through, you get some fierce nice sounds altogether and I harness them into a tune and put the lyrics to them and off I goes into the recording studio for a while with me spring water and a bag of doughnuts. Sure you wouldn’t know who you’d meet in there. Anyone from Philemena Begley to Elvis I can tell you. Once you’ve cut one album the rest are fairly handy.
I can honestly say if it weren’t for the ould music I’d probably be doing something daft like temporary typing in the civil service or teaching wee children how to speak properly or personal assistant to some minority political figure. But music has been good to me. I know when I get up in the morning there’ll be cornflakes in the press, satchets of ketchup and sugar in the bowl and tiny bottles of shampoo in the bathroom and other luxuries I only ever dreamed of before.

Please allow time for these videos to stream before playing. They are also available at www.youtube.com

Invisible to the Eye from Juliet Turner on Vimeo.

People Have Names from Juliet Turner on Vimeo.

Belfast Central from Juliet Turner on Vimeo.

Pizza and Wine from Juliet Turner on Vimeo.

Tuesday Night Ladies from Juliet Turner on Vimeo.