Читать книгу Trapped: The Terrifying True Story of a Secret World of Abuse онлайн | страница 4

Sniggers swept around the room.

Ellie held out one manicured hand, tucking a stray tendril of shiny blonde hair behind her ear with the other. ‘I take it that some of you feel uncomfortable with what I’ve just said?’

Glancing around, I noticed several of the women nodding their heads. Most of the men sat with their legs sprawled wide, one or two with dreamy expressions on their faces.

‘Surely it’s our job to discourage risky behaviour?’ I ventured. Social workers were keen to encourage foster carers to show Looked After Children the same quality of care as their own families. I was certain that I wouldn’t provide bags with rocks inside for my own children, Emily and Jamie, freeing them to get high in the knowledge that Health & Safety procedures had been adhered to by their attentive mother.

Ellie smiled, shaking her head. ‘I know it’s not easy to stomach but it’s our responsibility to safeguard these children. They’re damaged – most of them need something just to get through the day. Showing disapproval will simply drive their behaviour underground. Having to hide their addiction,’ she tilted her dainty hand in mid-air, rocking it slightly from side to side, ‘might just be enough to tip them over the edge.’

After a buffet lunch courtesy of the local authority, Ellie moved on to drug classifications and how to recognise paraphernalia among seemingly innocent everyday objects such as empty fizzy drink cans. It was fascinating but her comment about damaged children needing a prop to survive kept playing over in my mind. I felt a longing to soothe the turmoil a child must feel to treat their body with such disregard. The uncomfortable feeling reminded me of why I had decided to register as a foster carer. Like many of my fellow carers, I was drawn to it.

For the rest of the afternoon the class was held rapt, not only by Ellie’s dynamic teaching style but also the shocking nature of the facts she was imparting. Between the 20 or so carers present we had chalked up a collective experience of over 200 years of fostering, yet most of us were unaware that the latest trend for self-harmers was to insert diazepam capsules into the cuts in their skin for rapid absorption, or that wheelie bins often went missing because they offered an ideal confined space for solvent abuse.