professional MOM

We have a lot of acronyms in community paeds - there is CCC (complex communication clinic), CHC (child health clinic), PAC (physical assessment clinic), DAC (developmental assessment clinic) and LAC (looked-after children) clinic. This last one I attended today. Looked-after children are children who are under Care Orders, many of whom live with foster parents. They might have been abused, or their parents might be mentally ill or in prison. All of them need Medicals, theoretically within 28 days of the Order being issued. (not always possible in practice - I am told we have a backlog of about 70)

I saw a lovely little Vietnamese boy today. He was accompanied by 3 adults: mom, tall with dyed brown hair, silver high-heeled sandals and a couple of nasty keloid scars; mom's 'friend', a short middle-aged vietnamese woman with chipped red nail polish; and foster mom, an overweight white woman with straw-like hair scraped back into an Essex facelift and a chunky gold pendant - MOM in capital letters encrusted with fake diamonds. Just in case we didn't know who she was. But she had a kindly face, and seemed very sensible - she'd obviously done this all before.

Which got me thinking - why do people become foster parents? They are paid a small sum of money for their trouble, but I am told it is barely enough to feed the child in question. (on the other hand, they do get tax breaks) Is it pure altruism? Some fostering organisations would have you believe so:

"if you are able to guide and support and care for the children we place with you, you will not only have achieved something remarkable for yourself, you will have changed lives for the better - forever." -Community Foster Care

The truth is that fostered children have a dismal outlook (I suppose the quote above is qualified with an 'if'). I guess even biological parents are not completely free of selfish motivation for having a child, and adopters can sometimes be looking for something to fill a void in their own lives. But why would someone make a career of taking in a series of damaged children?