Like in my run fatgirl run blog this first post is going to be a veeeery long one talking about everything in my education and career up until now.
I suppose the most significant aspect has been that I am dyslexic. Wether or not that should have been the most significant thing I don't know but it has been. These days they say there is one child diagnosed with dyslexia for every classroom in britain and there are many more undiagnosed. Teachers know what dyslexia is and are trained and they have people in school who specalise in it and know the best way to help the children and I doubt there are many people these days who actually think dyslexia is the same thing as stupid.
Unfortunately I wasn't a child with dyslexia in 2009 I was a 12 year old diagnosed in 1982 and never met or knew of another person with dyslexia until well into adulthood and teachers knew nothing about it other than it meant I was stupid and couldn't do anything.
Anyway that is jumping ahead as that didn't happen until I was 12 though it is relevant as I was still dyslexic before I was diagnosed.
The main problems in my younger days was my emotional problems. The problems at home. I was never taught to believe in myself. I was taught that I was useless and stupid and would always fail... so I did. I was a bizarre child, because of all the things going on behind the scenes, the things no one knew about. Although looking back now as a trained foster carer I can see I had just about every sign of an abused child going. I was practically screaming at everyone around me to help me but not one single person in authority (teachers mainly) every questioned it. As far as I was concerned I was a freak who shouldn't exist, that is who I was and that was the same in the classroom.
So, no great suprise that I did quite badly.
I grew up in Huddersfield, a comprehensive area. I thought the way it was there was the same everywhere. I didn't think that things like Grammar schools or single sex schools still existed. They were things from story books like Malory Towers. Then just before the end of junior school we moved to Brighouse, a grammar school area. I had 2 weeks warning that I would be taking the 11+. When I was first told I thouht they were talking about a vaccination.
Apparently my parents had 2 options. They could choose option 1 - If I pass I go to Grammar school and if I fail I go to the school for people who fail (can't remember what it's called) or they could choose option 2 - pass or fail it makes no difference I go to a school full of people who took that option and would be more like the school I would have gone to in Huddersfield but there would be no possibility of Grammar school.
My parents chose option 2 because they didn't think there was any chance I would pass. Well you know what? I did pass. That is something looking back I'm very proud of. Everyone else who took that exam knew they were going to take it their entire life and had been prepared for it at school for years. I had to go and sit in the headmasters office and take it on my own not having known of it's existance 2 weeks earlier and I passed. It baffles me now looking back that that didn't tell me I'm not stupid but it didn't. I still believed I was.
I was lucky, because it was so late and they already had the numbers for the schools and I was going to have to be fitted in wherever I went and they had space at the grammar school they made an exception for me and allowed me to go to Brighouse Girls Grammar school.
It took me quite a while to accept that I was actually going to be going to an all girls grammar school and it wasn't some bizarre dream.
The thing is though nothing had changed. My home situation was still the same and I was still the same and I'm not sure it would have made any difference whatever school I was at. Though perhaps my dyslexia wouldn't have been spotted if I hadn't been at a grammar school. I was still the stupid, wierd, smelly, attention seeking freak.
In the first year a teacher spotted the signs of dyslexia (but not abuse apparently) and sent me to be tested. I was diagnosed as dyslexic and then ... nothing. It never seemed to occure to anyone that there was anything beyond diagnosis. Back then people didn't know about dyslexia so didn't understand. When I was caught daydreaming instead of doing my work I would be shouted at and punished. They didn't understand that I had a short attention span and wasn't doing it on purpose and usually wouldn't even know that I had slipped into daydreaming until the shouting brought me out of it. If we were told to read something and then were asked questions and I couldn't answer any of them I was called stupid. They didn't know that the dyslexia means I can't absorb information as I read it unless I have the time and opportuntiy to read it through several times until it 'clicks'.
If you know you can't do something and will fail then what is the point? So, I skived, I messed around. Pretty much anything rather then do any actual work. So it is no suprise that I left school at 16 with no real qualifications, except maths (It may be blowing my own trumpet but I've always been good at maths and Mr Peak was an excellent teacher. It would have taken serious effort for me to have failed Maths but the skiving and all the rest of it was responsible for me getting a C not the A mr Peak predicted) and did a YTS in a dry cleaners.
After leaving school and more importantly leaving home things did improve for me but not by a huge amount. I still had major issues and no self confidence. As I had got my RSA stage one typing I went into clerical work but always junior, low paid jobs. No career just stumbling from one thing to another.
1991 was the year when the event that changed everything happened. The birth of my son. When he was born I was a single mother living on benefits on the worst council estate in Halifax, where I'd been put after being in a homeless hostal whilst pregnant and I had nothing.
When I made the decision to keep Stephen and not put him up for adoption (which at the time I truly believed would be doing the best thing for him but couldn't go through with it) I also decided that if I was going to keep him I had to make sure he doesn't suffer for me being a single mother. I knew that meant I had to get a good job and that meant I needed qualifications.
As I had already started down the clerical route it seemed the obvious way to continue so that is what I did. I went to college and did one secretarial course after another. It was quite a revelation because I put everything I had into those courses. I never forgot for a moment I was doing it for Stephen and it was the first time I had ever really tried at anything.
The revelation was that I was top of the class every time. The tutors were singing my praises. They used to take my work and ask if they could use it to replace what they already had that people were marking their work from because mine was better. when it came to taking the exams
Typing stage 2 part 1 - distinction
Typing stage 2 part 2 - distinction
Typing stage 3 part 1 - pass (I was devistated and wanted to retake but wasn't allowed because I'd passed)
Typing stage 3 part 2 - distinction.
The typing was what I started with but then went on to shorthand and word processing and continued with the distinctions. When I was doing shorthand I used to spend hours every day going through the books, listening to the dictation tapes and practicing, testing myself. When I started the first shorthand course there was over 30 people, it was packed. By the end of the course there were 5 people left, 4 people took the exam and 3 passed, I was the only one to get distinction. one of the 3 dropped out during the second course leaving 2 of us who took the second exam. I was the only one to pass and move on to the 3rd level.
Ok so it was only secretarial stuff but it was the first time I had ever succeded at anything and to suceed so well beating everyone it started me questioning the stupid thing. I started to think that maybe I was intelligant and maybe I could do things.
It could quite easily have gone differently though. When I started that first typing course I told the tutor that I'm dyslexic so she sent me to see someone who was supposed to support and advise me. The support and advice I received was that I was being unrealistic aiming at being a secretary and perhaps I could look at something like catering or something along those lines? If I hadn't been doing it for Stephen I would have just quit and given up there an then. I'm so glad I didn't.
When Stephen started school I went back to work and my qualifications made all the differnce I had hoped they would. I started by going to a temping agency. I was only there for 2 months before I had a much better job with much better pay at the probation service and it just went from strength to strength from there.
Then I got my job at the hospital and it was the best moment when I was given my name badge that said 'Helen Turner - Medical Secretary' I had an overwhelming urge to go back to the college and find that man who told me I was being unrealistic and show him that badge and suggest that maybe he was the one in the wrong career. I didn't though.
However I didn't stay a Medical Secretary for too long because I was promoted to Chronic Pain Management Programme Co-ordinator.
Having got as far up the secretarial ladder as is pretty much possible I then quit to become a foster carer. That was a very much following my heart decision. I had wanted to be a foster carer since I was 17 but had never been in a possition to do it until now but it was a big risk as at that time it was unpaid. Luckily it has since become a paid job enabling me to continue whereas I would have had to return to paid work otherwise.
And that is what I have been doing ever since. It is 9 years this month since my first foster child walked through the door and there have been around 30 since then. The next one is due to arrive next Friday.
Change is on the horizen though, there are a couple of issues. One is that I'm starting to become disallusioned with fostering. Fostering is not just looking after children. There is so much more to it. I still want to help the children as much as ever but the other aspects to it that are so stressful and difficult, Mainly dealing with social services messing things up and taking advantage, after 9 years they've worn me down. I'm starting to think 'I've had enough'. I remember a few years ago my link worker asking me how long I think I will be a foster carer for and I said 'forever, It's what I always wanted to do, I can't imagine ever giving up' I'm sorry to say that is no longer the case. I can't now see myself being a foster carer for too much longer.
The other thing is that moment in 2006 when everything changed that I have talked about so much in other blogs. I made a list of missed opportunities and regrets and vowed to make up for ever single one of them. On that list is the fact that I regret that I did so badly at school now that I know I am capable of so much more and the fact that I have never been to university.
These are things that are still on the list and yet to be corrected.
