Sponsored by
My 14 year foster care hell
let down: Lyndsey Keenan with son Lex, feels let down
A desperate teenage mother is calling for an overhaul of social services after speaking out about her 14 year foster care hell.
Preston-born Lyndsey Keenan, 18, says she has been “shipped” from home to home and town to town, often into abusive households, since she was taken into care when she was four years old.
She has lived with 22 families in towns and cities around the country, including London, Bournemouth, Worthing, Seaford, the Isle of Wight and various towns in the south, despite national guidelines urging authorities to keep cared-for children close to home.
She was even split from her two younger brothers who were adopted by a family in Bristol because she claims social workers said it would be “unlikely” a family would adopt all three of them.
She hasn’t seen her siblings for more than 10 years.
Now 18 and able to speak legally about her plight, she says she has been “abandoned” by social services to care for her son Lex, one, who is blind and suffers severe disabilities.
The teenager, who lives in West Sussex, more than 200 miles from her birth home, says more needs to be done to protect vulnerable children.
She said: “Thousands of people like me are slipping through the cracks of the system and we are left with nothing and no proper homes.
“It is no wonder people think that people in care are all mess ups.
“We’re being left to fend for ourselves and being dumped anywhere they can find.
“My whole life has been horrible to be honest and nobody cares and now I’m left totally alone with a sick child. It shouldn’t be like this.”
Lyndsey and her two brothers were taken from their natural mother, who had drinking problems, in 1996 and were placed with Lancashire County Council’s social services.
The siblings were initially placed with a foster family in Preston before her brothers were adopted.
Lyndsey remembers: “I didn’t really know what was happening, I was too young, but I remember being held back at the door as they took my brothers off in a taxi. I knew I would probably never see them again. I felt so alone.”
Lyndsey was moved to other foster homes and respite centres in the area before going to live with a family in the Isle of Wight.
Growing up she struggled to settle or make permanent relationships as social workers moved her to various short and long-term placements. Her foster carers included Jewish families, American couples, devout Catholics and Italian immigrants – none from mixed-race backgrounds like her.
During one placement, Lyndsey and two other children were quickly removed from a home after the father was investigated for allegedly sexually abusing children. Lyndsey was not involved.
She was removed from another placement when a family member of her foster carer spat in her face because of her race. She was taken from another home because her carer was an alcoholic, she says.
When she was five-years-old, she claims she was locked in her room at another home, hit and forced to sleep in her own urine if she wet the bed.
“I used to have nightmares every night,” she said. “I was terrified.”
Lyndsey claims one family tried to adopt her but social services denied their application because they planned to move to America.
“I became really shy,” Lyndsey said. “I didn’t want to come out of my shell and make friends again because I knew that come a few weeks or months I’d have to do it all again. It has a real effect on how you see yourself and it got to the point that I couldn’t take any more. I couldn’t take the moving any more. I couldn’t be let down again.”
She now lives in her own flat in West Sussex, with her 10-month-old son Lex. The tot was born with 90% sight loss and pituitary gland problems, which has left him with missing fingers and complex learning problems.
She said: “He has a lot of problems. I’m all alone hundreds of miles from where I’m from – I feel totally isolated.
“The system shouldn’t be allowed to do this to people.
A spokesperson for Lancashire County Council’s social services said they were aware of Lyndsey’s case and confirmed she had been placed with numerous families.
Faith Mann, Lancashire County Council’s director for targeted and early intervention services for children and young people, said: “It saddens me to hear of a young person who has experienced problems during their time in care.
“We try to achieve stability for children, but there are sometimes factors beyond our control such as placement breakdown and the young person’s own wishes which make this difficult. Procedures have been updated in the past 20 years. The county council’s performance in placement stability was recently rated as good.”
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Preston
Wednesday 22 February 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 11 C to 12 C
Wind Speed: 40 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 14 C
Wind Speed: 23 mph
Wind direction: South west
Comments
There are 2 comments to this article
Page 1 of 1
Xerxes
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 10:26 AMI fostered a 14 year old boy who had been through over 40 foster carers. I was appalled at how bad many of the foster carers were, people living on welfare can get 50,000 tax free pounds a year to foster 3 kids. they lock their kitchens, buy clothes from charity shops and never take the kids on holiday using "respite" care. Social workers like these type of people because they never make trouble, don't get upset when social workers make bad decisions. This poor girl has had more than a million pounds of tax payers money spent on her to create a dreadful ordeal. The younger brother of the 14 year old lad was taken away from us at the last minute by 2 tatooed men [private contractors] when he was 14, put in a private children's home costing the taxpayers 4,500 a week. The system is corrupt and evil. The home was a 12 hour round trip from where his [then over 18] sibling lived. They wouldn't tell us where he was for ages then it was impossible to phone him. He had no school. I managed to eventually see him in the children's home. He was suicidal, there were 2 boys in the home, another boy had committed suicide rather than return to the home. The social services spent a hundred thousand pounds on legal fees to try and prevent a newspaper running the story of the boys suicide. Foster carers like myself are not liked by social services as we occasionally challenge them. The 1000 pound a week dole bludgers are much preferred. The boy's older brother lived with us until he was 22 he now has a well paid job with a solicitor. The younger brother had no school from age 14, has no job now and no prospects, he lives on welfare. This abuse goes on every day of the week, the press can't print the stories until the kid is 18. By then it is all stale.
Edwina
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 12:31 AMThis is a very sad story and really shows how incompetent social services are, and not just in Lancashire. They really are worse than uselss. There is a problem with recruiting foster carers and social workers, which is a lot to do with pay, the depressing nature of the job and being treated like sh*t. This in turn leads to unsuitable people becoming foster carers and social workers because 'anybody will do'. On top of all that privatisation has been sneaked into social services and some people are making a very lot of money out of other people's misery with lucrative local authority contracts given to private agencies to find homes for people like Lyndsey. One such contract, for little more than a rented bed for a single individual, is currently costing £100,000 per year. I expect a very lot of money has been spent in Lyndsey's name too but she hasn't seen any of it.
Page 1 of 1
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.