I love people watching, and meeting new people. Admittedly some will find me odd and some will find me ok, that’s life I suppose. Today I met two people of importance. They were both kind, understanding, and showed empathy. I spoke to them regarding my grandsons. I am fully aware that children’s services have a very demanding job load, and children’s needs must always come first. Social workers depend on far too much feedback from over keen support workers and obsessed foster carers. In my opinion, this leads to children not seeing their family, or worse being adopted. Any social worker will happily say that children will always come first. Never a truer word was spoken, but what are these children told? mummy didn’t want you. These children could have been raised by their families. Instead, social workers decide to have them needlessly adopted. All it takes is a report from a psychiatrist fabricated feedback from a foster carer backed up by a support worker and you won’t see your child again unless they decide they want to see you 18 years later. Social workers mainly target mothers with special needs, with support these mothers can successfully raise their children. I wasn’t raised by my mother, and I feel that I wasn’t attached or nurtured by my grandmother as well as I should have been. I always felt there was something missing from my life. I never told my grandmother any of my problems. A teacher beat me up quite badly at my junior school. I would have been around 8 to 9 years old, she slapped me around my face she even pulled my hair, all because she claims I laughed at her. I didn’t tell my grandmother any of this, she never knew that the headteachers were caning me because I was late for school. The saddest of all I never once told my grandmother that 2 young men who were known to our family were knocking me over and, dragging me through the woods and repeatedly raped me from 10 years old upwards. Around 5 years ago my birth mother posted 4 letters my grandmother had written to her saying that I was both lazy and dirty. I was sad and disappointed that she had said such nasty things about me. I would never write or say anything unkind about my children because I am their mother and I love them. I have spoken to quite a few adopted children who claim they were adopted because their mothers didn’t want them, but then neither did the women who adopted them. I once said to a psychiatrist I knew of a poor family of twelve children who had done so much better than me, his reply was they had their mother whereas you didn’t.by Dorothy Maude.