Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Cathy's casual writing style allows the reader to feel as if they are sitting across from her listening to her tell the story. She always explains unfamiliar fostering jargon, procedures, and processes in easily digestible terms to eliminate any disconnect or confusion. Cathy also brings an interesting perspective to light throughout her memoirs. She is able to perfectly capture and balance the perspectives of herself as the foster carer, her children, the foster children, and the foster children's families. Cathy is very diplomatic in the way that she discusses and interacts with the families of the children she looks after, a characteristic which shines brightly throughout this particular story. Cathy tries to comfort the girls, but they are inconsolable. They just want their mummy and daddy, who they love dearly. I thought you might say that,’ Joy admitted. ‘But I wanted to ask. So can you take the younger two? Angie and Polly are six and four years old.’ Excellent. And you are all well?’ Joy asked. It wasn’t simply a polite question but had gained real significance since the start of the pandemic. All foster carers in the UK have an SSW whose role it is to support and monitor the foster carer and their family in all aspects of fostering. Most referrals for children who come into care come to the foster carer through the SSW. Joy was in her early fifties, of average height and build, and had a wealth of experience. I found her caring, efficient and level-headed, although like everyone in children’s services at present she was working flat out and was slightly stressed as a result of the pandemic.
Since other Goodreaders have indicated that the book is not up to Glass’ usual standard I will withhold recommendations until after reading some of her earlier books. No,’ I confirmed. ‘Paula and I are fine.’ There was just my daughter Paula still living at home with me. I had divorced many years ago and my son, Adrian, lived with his wife, Kirsty, and my other daughter Lucy lived with her partner, Darren. We saw them as much as we were allowed, in line with the present restrictions. That was Bradley’s cinematographer, Nisa East, she explains. “I was driving in my little Honda Civic right behind their car, driving and texting, and Nisa saying, ‘It’s getting really hot and heavy in here. You sure you want me to keep filming?’ And I said, ‘It’s not up to me, it’s up to Fox and Robert. Let them guide you.’ So much of being a film-maker is energy work. But what was most profound about that scene is that people have come to me and said it wasn’t till that moment that they understood how much was lost.” There are grounds for hope, she believes. One is the fact that racial injustice and America’s prison-industrial complex are now mainstream topics. “They’re being talked about in the media in the same way that Batman is being talked about, right?” Attitudes are changing: John Bel Edwards, Louisiana’s governor since 2016, campaigned on prison reform and has granted 116 of the 164 clemency appeals made to him; his predecessor, Bobby Jindal, pardoned just 83 out of 738 during the previous eight years.It is clear that the assault story was made up as there were multiple witness testimonies of where the father and the daughter both were at the supposed assault time, no physical evidence at all, and at the end the daughter admitted she made it up because she hates her step-dad and wanted to live with her bio-dad. Good. I’ve had a referral for a sibling group of three girls,’ Joy continued, getting to the real reason for her call. ‘We’d obviously like to keep them together if possible, and it’s preferable if they are placed in an all-female household.’ But the challenge of reunification was “only the beginning of the next chapter, the next hurdle, the next set of fears”, she said. “Will I get asylum? How can I prove my case? Will my child and I be separated ever again?” As a film-maker, “you just felt that [fear] every minute”. But where did it all start? Dr Richard Gardner, an American child psychiatrist, created the concept and produced a series of self-published books on parental alienation syndrome in the 1980s. He testified in more than 400 custody cases, discrediting allegations of domestic abuse or child sex abuse and recommending transfer of residence from one parent to another. He believed that 90% of mothers alleging child sexual abuse were liars who brainwashed their children, and that paedophilia “is a widespread and accepted practice among literally billions of people”. Gardner and the “syndrome” were discredited by the late 1990s.
Read for book club. I would not have read it otherwise. Not good literature or story. I man just look at the cover. Cathy Glass is hands-down my favorite author. I have read and re-read her fostering memoirs over and over again. Her latest certainly did not disappoint.
See also
I don’t go out looking for stories; I meet people. I develop relationships with them, and that’s how the projects come to fruition,” says Bradley, who is currently in her native California, but has lived in Louisiana for the past 10 years. She doesn’t feel her approach is any better than the factual documentary one. The two can work in tandem to highlight the issues at hand. Besides, she adds, “don’t you think that emotions are facts? Facts don’t always become emotional, but I think in our bodies and our minds, the things that we feel become the truth.” The girls appear to have been well looked after, but as they settle and start to talk life at home, it becomes clear something is badly wrong. Then a chance remark sets in motion a chain of events that eventually changes everything. The girls were inconsolable for days, not helped by only being allowed to see their mother online because of covid restrictions and concerns that she may frighten them into not telling the truth. But gradually they began to settle and as they did they talked more of life at home where there were a lot of arguments between Ashleigh and their parents.
I feel like this is such an unusual event to happen, and it was honestly difficult to read about a story where the "child" (a fourteen year old) is actually at fault as opposed to the adult. I'm so used to assuming that the authority figure is at fault (which is usually the case!!) and I found it hard to adjust my views as more information that he was innocent became clear. Joe and Maureen Hannigan. By outward appearances, they appear to be stable, dedicated, church-going parents who have earned the respect of their flag-waving community by participating in selfless civic endeavors. But behind closed doors we get to see an entirely darker side. They have absolutely no idea what it means to have a father in the house,” Rich muses to the camera. And we see Rich herself grow from a regretful but spirited young woman into a resilient, complex older one – albeit with vulnerabilities still close to the surface. In one memorable scene, she stands before her church congregation and asks for forgiveness from all those she has made suffer. It’s just one of many scenes that’s missing from collective notions of crime and incarceration.Another more lasting reason is time itself. The progress that has been made over generations is visible in Time. Fox Rich’s mother told her to dress nicely and try to make a good impression in court, and discouraged her from fighting for Robert’s release. Fox herself chose to take on the system. Now Freedom, one of her twins, is a political science student, studying the criminal justice system with a view to having a hand in transforming it. “I’m incredibly optimistic,” says Bradley. “I think we have to be. The system wins when we stop being optimistic.” In addition, the children are faced with behavior that's erratic and unpredictable. They feel as if they're forced to walk on eggshells in their own home for fear of upsetting mom & day. Then with no reasonable explanation Joe & Maureen unleash their rage and abuse. Soon, Chris, Brian and Daniel feel anxiety when coming into the "home" from school because they don't know what's waiting for them. I don't like to perpetuate the idea that false reports occur, because the system makes it difficult enough for children and women to be believed as it is. But this story was gut-wrenching.
This system breaks you apart. It is designed just like slavery to tear you apart. And instead of using the whip, they use mother time … The experience itself is just like when they used to hang people but barely hang them, and leave their feet just tiptoeing around in the mud.” These are the words of Sibil Fox Rich, compelling subject of new documentary Time. She is talking about the US prison system, of which she has some experience. In 1997 she and her husband Robert Richardson were convicted of a bank robbery in Louisiana. She got 13 years but was released after three and a half; Robert was dissuaded by his lawyer from taking a plea deal. He got 60 years. From the moment Joe and Maureen use the dinner table as "do as we say" chaos and browbeating their adopted children, a deep gratitude came over me for the caring, giving, treating me as a human being kind of mom & dad that I appreciated all the way through my life.Angie, 6 and her sister Polly, 4, are utterly distraught when they arrive to stay with foster carer Cathy Glass. Their older half sister Ashleigh has accused their father of something horrible and the two young sisters have been removed from home to keep them safe. There is someone who can take Ashleigh if we can’t keep them together. She’s a single carer who has just returned to fostering after a long break so doesn’t feel up to taking all three girls as her first placement.’
Great Deal 
New Comment