Parents, Disability and Choices

I am a member of a British online group for foster carers, discussing issues, seeking advice and disseminating information.
It's a fantastic group who support each other through bad times with empathy, sympathy and practical advice and share their good times with humour and delight.

An exceptionally good carer, who looks after, on a daily basis a child with profound difficulties has had parts of their blog taken out of context and used by others, including the media to make points against the birth mother of the child and in particular her decision to give up her child for someone else to look after.

In fact they are two women who passionately care about the child and work together in friendship to do the best for the child.
I sincerely hope that others views will not poison this situation.

I also am close in friendship with the mother of a young person we have in our family. Together, despite the miles that are between our homes, we plan and work to enable the child to have the best of all worlds and to ensure he achieves the potential that is so clearly his to take.

This is not an exceptional situation but it is not necessarily the norm either.
The authority responsible for the child finds this state of affaires uncomfortable.
Perhaps they are uncomfortable because they are used to taking children into care and out of neglect and abuse and defacto see parents in a negative way, somehow lacking and semi-bad.
They see themselves as good and using their power to help.
Parents can sometimes fight hard and dirty for the care of their children, often feeling that their only option is to threaten. This all acts in a way which emphasises the good /bad discourse which often spill into actions.

The mother of the young child in our care has always worked quietly with the services for herself and her child. She is intelligent and articulate and with help has managed to find advocates when her voice was frail and weak. She has managed, with smiles and a quiet voice to hold firmly to the remnants of her bond with her child and stoically travel, weekly, the many miles put in her way with the purpose of deterring her.

It is easy to villify others in pursuit of personal ideals and beliefs than to way up the difficult descisions that others have been forced to make and understand compassionately the emotional complexity and roller coaster associated with making those descisions.

In a previous existence i have worked with adults who have learning difficulties providing community care and respite.
I have seen parents battle on well into old age with their offspring needing constant care, love and attention. Often they have done this with very little support and advice. They have put their lives and work into the twilight zone of limbo and poverty. Family relationships often flounder when the odds are so drastically stacked against them. Anger, desperation and tiredness take their toll.

New advances in medicine, a better understanding of the difficulties posed for these young people and a greater tolerance within society should have made it better for these parents and their offspring..... I guess it is a little too late for this particular group and they are often left feeling critisized and undervalued. They are often misunderstood by the very people who have born children with difficulties today.

Sometimes, doing the best for your child involves giving their care to another.
That someone, however much they come to love the child will always be one very tiny step distant and that, often is all it takes to enable effective help to be given.

Should we villify one mother and worship another.......?