Joy's story
Across the UK, there are thousands of children waiting for adoptive families, foster carers and short break carers. 8 year-old Joy was one of these children. Read more about how Joy’s life has changed since she has been living with a foster family.
'We, as a family, had fostered for ten years when we first met our little girl, as we have now come to think of her. We thought we knew all there was to know about fostering. We have since realised that we knew very little and, together with our little girl, have learned about a whole new world - a world which is an emotional roller-coaster, a world of despair and of great hope, of love, of dependency, tears and laughter and of realising that each tiny step into this new world is really a major step. Watching this little girl grow and blossom, has given us such joy that it seems appropriate to call her Joy for the moment.
Joy first came to us she was eight years old. For seven of those eight years, she had suffered abuse, neglect and deprivation and as a result came to us a very frightened, disturbed and very damaged little girl, such as we had never realised existed. She had no speech and so no way of expressing her needs or feelings. She had special needs in every area of her life.
When we first met Joy we were almost sure we would not be able to manage her, but there was a part of us that had at least to try. This little girl needed nurturing from having had virtually none. She needed someone to love and care for her, someone to recognise her needs, someone she could learn to trust and most of all someone to show her that the world was a good and happy place to be in.
So, after many sleepless nights and a lot of soul searching, we finally took Joy home to our family. We believed we would probably manage for a couple of weeks at the most but we needed at least to have given her our best effort.
Joy has been with us now for 14 months and has etched a very special place in our hearts, which will always belong to her, no matter what happens in the future.
I wonder sometimes where our values of life came from before Joy, what did we do for entertainment, where did we get such pleasure from such little things? We might have opened up a whole new world for Joy, but she has equally opened up a whole new world for us and I know all our hard work is changing her life. We now get the most beautiful smiles along with the most menacing smiles. We now get hugs and kisses. It is very slow building up a relationship; she does not know about those things and it is all about trust, and not surprisingly, she finds this hard. It is a very slow process but she is beginning to trust us a little more each day and putting her hand out to me when she is afraid and trust me, to take that hand is worth more to me than any amount of hugs and kisses.
Working with a child with so many special needs is always going to be difficult. There is no miracle cure, there are no shortcuts. It is very much a spiral - you move forwards, you move backwards. It can be very disappointing, but it can also be exhilarating. Yes, Joy has changed our lives completely, she has turned them upside down, but she has also touched our hearts with her courage and achievement and her spirit. We hope that we have changed her life as much as she has changed ours.'
Change a child’s life by becoming a carer through Barnardo’s. Find out more about fostering, adoption or short break care.