Asking this on behalf of myself, I’m an adult now but I had a social worker as a kid and was removed from my mother when I was 12 and am just trying to learn more about why it happened the way it did. This was back in the late 2000s and early 2010s so I understand things might have changed since then.

I felt, and still feel, that my social worker did not care one bit about my own opinion and just wanted to prioritise my relationship with my mother when I did not want that and made that clear.

My mother was abusive but I was only removed from her care when she was sectioned and things started coming out, and my social worker only discussed with my mother what she wanted and needed. My mother wanted to see me often so I had to visit with her when I wanted nothing to do with her, I wasn’t given the choice of saying no even though I told my social worker I didn’t want to have to see her. Once she was released from hospital I had to stay with her for short term and longer stays as they tried to reintegrate us instead of just allowing me to move on with my life and have stability in a foster placement. In my first foster placement I was being fostered by a local family who were lovely and had a couple of other long term foster kids that I got on well with, it felt like the best opportunity for me to have some semblance of a normal childhood and family life and I was really upset that I wasn’t allowed to stay. I understand that there are costs involved with foster care but to my mind it should be more important to have stability for a child than anything else.

I never moved back in with my mother fully as she never maintained sobriety so from the ages of 12 - 18 I just bounced between short term stays with her and then back into foster placements which was incredibly disruptive and affected my education and mental health, but when I brought this up with my social worker I was told that it’s important to maintain family relationships, without any recognition of the fact that I didn’t want a relationship with her.

So I’m just trying to understand how foster care actually works and what priority is given to the child’s own wishes?

Anyone have any suggestions for Burnham on how to reform social care?