poor foster carers

It has often occurred to me – and the police’s line of questioning simply confirms this – that foster caring, especially caring for troubled wards of the state, is the sort of job that few sensible people would take up. Thus it’s left to the mad, bad and dangerous to know, at least that might be the perception. And no doubt there are foster carers just like that.
Many have said to me ‘it’s not a job I’d do’, and they’ve mixed a sort of admiring, praising talk with just a smidgeon of puzzlement.
I took on the job, partly because I was confident I’d never find myself in the position I now find myself in, but also because I’m a poor dilettante who wanted to remove the stain of unemployability. I could continue my dilettante existence under just a little less pressure. But I find that as always, it’s the poor and the vulnerable, the easy-to-target, who do in fact get targeted. They do the work that nobody else wants to do, and they get punished for it. It seems almost harshly Darwinian.