Hartley - Tiny prisoners : two siblings trapped in a world of abuse, one woman determined to free them

This book is dedicated to Elliot and Evie and all the children who have passed through my home. Its been a privilege to have cared for you and to be able to share your stories. And to the children who live with me now. Thank you for your determination, strength and joy and for sharing your lives with me.

I wanted to write this book to give people an honest account about what its like to be a foster carer. To talk about some of the challenges I face on a day-to-day basis and some of the children Ive helped.

My main concern throughout all this is to protect the children that have been in my care. For this reason all names and identifying details have been changed, including my own, and no locations have been included. But I can assure you that all my stories are based on real-life cases told from my own experiences.

Being a foster carer is a privilege and I couldnt imagine doing anything else. My house is never quiet but I wouldnt have it any other way. I hope perhaps my stories inspire other people to consider fostering as new carers are always desperately needed.

Maggie Hartley

Shed just put the telly on and had settled down with a cuppa and a cigarette to watch Loose Women when there was a faint knock at the door. She tutted, got up and peeped through the spy hole.

A pale face and big, frightened blue eyes stared up at her. It was the little lad from next door.

Thats strange, she thought, as she took the chain off and opened the door to him. What was he doing wandering around outside on his own? He couldnt have been more than three. His clothes were filthy and tatty, and she noticed he didnt have any shoes or socks on.

What is it, sweetheart? she asked, holding out her hand and leading him into the hallway.

Its my mummy, he told her. She wont wake up.

He handed her an empty container of prescription tablets but something else had caught her eye. Leading all the way behind him up the path and now on her hall tiles was a trail of tiny bloody footprints. His feet were covered in blood.

She grabbed her keys and picked him up. God only knows where his baby sister was.

Dont you worry, little one, she told him. Its going to be OK.

But as she ran round to next door following the trail of wet blood, she wasnt so sure that it was.

After Id waved the social workers car off down the driveway, I closed the front door and breathed a sigh of relief.

Phew, Im glad theyve gone, said my ten-year-old daughter Tess, echoing my thoughts exactly. They were really strange.

Wed just said goodbye to two teenage girls aged fourteen and fifteen called Hannah and Hayley. They looked a bit like twins as they were so close in age. Both chubby, with bright red hair and thick glasses, they would stare at you with deadpan faces. It had been an emergency twenty-one-day placement as their previous foster carers couldnt cope with their bizarre behaviour and Id agreed to take them in while Social Services looked for another long-term placement for them. As a foster carer for the past twenty years, I was used to dealing with stroppies, as I fondly nicknamed difficult teens in fact I secretly relished the challenge. But even I had to admit it had been a tricky few weeks.

Their behaviour had been odd to say the least. They didnt say much to me but they would walk around the house talking to people who werent there. There was a Miffy mobile hung up in their bedroom that Id forgotten to take down after a baby Id looked after had left, and the girls had told us that the mobile had been saying things to them. Social workers couldnt agree whether the girls had significant mental health problems or they were just making it all up to freak people out. Sadly I thought a lot of it had been put on to get attention. I think they hoped that if they behaved in such a strange way no one would want to look after them, and theyd be allowed to go back and live with their birth mother. Whatever the reason, I knew three weeks wasnt enough time to even begin to tackle their issues. It hadnt been easy having them in the house, especially after school and at weekends when all my other children were at home.

The girls had left by 10 a.m. but there was no time to sit down and put my feet up. As a busy foster carer, I knew from experience that as soon as one placement left sometimes it was only a matter of hours before there was another child, or children, waiting to take their place. So I got to work stripping the two single beds in the room where Hannah and Hayley had been and gave it a good clean. Id helped them pack that morning and tidied up as Id gone along, so thankfully it wasnt in too much of a state. I was lucky as for the past five years Id lived in a roomy detached Victorian house that I called the Tardis. It didnt look that big from the outside but it had six bedrooms and was spread out over three floors. Cleaning it was a nightmare and it was permanently freezing cold, but all that space meant I had two spare bedrooms especially for foster children.

In my forties, I was a single mum to my six-year-old biological son Pete, then there was ten-year-old Tess and her nine-year-old sister Sam Id been fostering for fourteen years when theyd come to live with me, when they were three and four, and they had never left. Id been granted permanency, which meant that it had been agreed at a Social Services panel that they would remain with me for ever. I was hoping to adopt them but none of us felt like there was any rush as I already looked upon them as my own children. Theyd come to live with us when Pete was a year old and he couldnt remember a time without them. As far as he was concerned, they were his sisters.

Id seen their photos in a well-known fostering magazine that I subscribed to, and had been intrigued by Sams disabilities as well as falling in love with Tesss beautiful blonde curly hair, so Id found out more about them. Theyd come from a family of four children. Two of the children had died from cot death at just a few weeks old and Sam had been left with brain injuries after her birth parents had tried to smother her when she was a month old something theyd tried to blame on Tess who was only thirteen months old at the time. Sam had been left with cerebral palsy global and development delay, which meant she would always have the mental age of a toddler and she was autistic and half blind. After that there had been questions about whether their siblings had actually died of cot death, but nothing could be proven.

Her disabilities didnt faze me and something inside me just told me I wanted to give these two children a home after everything theyd been through. Before they came to me theyd been moved fifteen times. Theyd even been adopted but the couple had changed their mind after a few weeks and theyd been sent back. These poor kids had faced so much upheaval, trauma and rejection in their lives but I knew 100 per cent I wanted to foster them, and amazingly I had space as two children were about to leave me and go back to live with their birth parents. It was one of those things I like to think was meant to be, and now I couldnt imagine our family without them in it.