I taught you for almost two years and attended at least 15 meetings about you, as your pastoral head of house at a London secondary school. What you don’t know is that I often thought about the idea of fostering you.
How shocked would my boyfriend have been if I had brought you home – a “problem child” of almost 13? A couple who worked long hours, lived a hectic lifestyle and often ate cereal for dinner – could we have offered you much better?
Deep down, I knew it wasn’t to be, despite often feeling scared that I might suddenly suggest it in a meeting about you. I desperately wanted you to have some stability; I wanted to be in your corner.
Most of our meetings involved social workers wearing worried looks, concerned about where they might place you next, all the while pretending they knew you. At each meeting they would always reiterate that, for you, school was the only constant in your life, and I knew that to be true.
Whenever you had to change homes or had a fallout with the newest caregivers, school would help pick up the pieces. I used my free lessons to work with you; I chatted to your teachers to check you were fine, gave you the thumbs up if I saw you doing well.
Inevitably, though, you were not doing well. You could not focus or stay in a lesson for any extended period, you screamed in the faces of your peers and teachers – and often in mine. I understood; how could you focus when you didn’t know whose house you would be moved to next? How could you concentrate while you were so angry at not being given a voice?
It’s been more than five years now and I still think about you. A sudden decision had you moved to a residential home for difficult girls a long way away. You were gone in two days. All the work we had done together, and the bit of my heart you had taken, were not a consideration.
You will be almost 18 now, I think. I always wonder what has happened to you. I hope you are happy and turning into a successful young woman.
I still wonder if I should have suggested you come to live with us, and if that would have been better. I wish I could shake the feeling that I could have done more.
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