I was eight years old, nearly nine when I first entered Foster Care. My mother became unwell and couldn’t look after me anymore; my dad had divorced my mum and was living in Cirencester with my step-mum. He had no spare rooms. I went to primary school as if it was a normal day, but I didn’t expect at lunchtime to be called to reception. There was a lady there, blonde hair, very tall, and dressed smartly. She said that I needed to go with her; she also said that my mum had gone into hospital and that I was going into care. I didn’t quite understand what she meant.
I went to Stanley Road Primary School. My only memories include playing basketball with the Worcester Wolves Basketball team. They had a player called Ty Shaw who used to wear number 10. I also remember visiting the University of Worcester as a school to meet the basketball players. Another memory was when I starred in the school play of ‘The Snow Queen.’ I was a sprite; I remember that we had to sing a song. It was something like: ‘Sprites so Nasty, Sprites so cold..’
That is the only bit of the song that I can remember. My final memory is where we had to dress up in different religions’ forms of dress and I had to sing in the background with two other girls. My teacher was Mrs Croasdell; she taught me English maths and science I think. Other teachers included my dance teacher, Mrs Dennison and the Head Teacher of the school, Mrs Potter, but when I first started primary school it was Mrs Dunn.
Our uniform was a red jumper, white shirt and trousers. Some girls wore summer dresses in the summer, and others wore skirts rather than trousers.
After my social worker had told me about my mum, I went back to my mum’s, packed a few bags, my sister did too, and we went with our social worker to a house. There were two people living there.. They had a dog called Brandy. My sister was with me too, the couple were very welcoming, and told us their names. I said mine but very quietly; I was very shy. My sister did all of the talking for me from then on, we stayed there a while, eight months to be exact. We got used to walking with their dog Brandy and being part of their family. We went to Aberystwyth with them