SUPER MUM! Jean has cared for 636 children

Next month she will receive a Kidscape Children's Champion Award. Rebecca Drought reports on Jean's lifetime labour of love

CHILDREN are the centre of Jean Forrest's life.

She can remember almost every one of the 636 she has fostered as well as the details of their often tragic lives.

The pensioner never stops, and even today, with her natural children grown up and with kids of their own, she is looking after two babies for social services.

There is a double buggy in the porch and children's toys are strewn across chairs in the sitting room waiting to be wrapped for Christmas.

Into this warm and happy home in Tristram Close, Sompting, hundreds of children have been invited and given love and hope.

Many of those who came to Jean and her husband Tim had suffered appalling hardship and cruelty in their short lives and she is unable to stop the tears as she recalls some of them.

"One little girl, she must have been about three, didn't know what a cuddle was," she said.

"She was very small for her age and was like a shadow following me around. It is so sad to think of the lives they had.

"Children had been beaten and burned, sexually abused and neglected. It has broken my heart over the years but God has kept me going and I believe that's why I am here, to help them.

"Some of the children have never owned their own knickers, pyjamas or slippers, let alone dolls and toys and I have had children who were underfed and who put their arms around their food to stop people stealing it.

"It does get to me from time to time but I just have to love them, care for them and make sure they know there is a safe place for them in the world because a lot of them don't know that."

When she first started fostering 37 years ago, Jean was warned not to get emotionally involved with the children she looked after.

She said: "I didn't believe in that and I had many cross words with people about it. What is the point in only going part of the way to helping these children?"

However, getting involved has meant it has been harder to say goodbye to the children when they were moved on, some of whom she cared for from a few weeks old to when they were school age. Jean found comfort in the fact most of them were found permanent homes with adoptive parents.

She said: "It's never easy to hand over children, each child is their own special person and I love them for their individual qualities.

"When I first started fostering, the agency staff would come and take the child and I would never hear any more about them, but thankfully the system has changed and now we have visits between the families in the run up to the hand over. I know it is the best decision for them."

At any one time Jean has had up to ten children living with her and then she ran an open house to their friends and often cooked tea for 20 youngsters.

Many would find it too much to cope with, but Jean has a natural sense of calm.

No minor inconvenience, like once having 40 children for dinner, is enough to ruffle her feathers.

"I just made an enormous stew and made them queue up to get it in two sittings," she said.

"If I had a pound for every nappy I've changed, I'd be a billionaire."

Sitting in a large soft armchair in the corner of her sitting room, which is littered with family photographs and Christmas cards from friends and family, Jean laughs as she remembers how she ran her household in organised chaos.

She dealt with troublesome children by exhausting them on 12-hour-long outings to the beach, the Downs or swimming pool.

She has very few house rules and believes disruptive children can be taught by example.

She said: "The only real rule I had was that children couldn't play with another child's personal toys without asking first and this counted for all of them, whatever age."

Jean is a woman who could take almost anything in her stride - she has always had to.

The oldest of four children, as a youngster she often had to make do with secondhand clothes and not enough food after her father suffered a brain haemorrhage when she was 11 and was unable to work.

She said: "I left school at 15 because my mother needed my income to help keep my brothers and sisters.

"My mother had three jobs to hold the family together and lived on three spoonfuls of porridge and two of puffed wheat a day for two years."

Jean met her future husband, Tim Forrest, at a New Year's Eve dance in Worthing Assembly Hall when she was 16.

A year later she had married the 21-year-old Royal Navy sailor and a year after that she lost her first baby when she was eight months pregnant.

When Tim came home from an overseas posting the couple's four children, Jill, David, Wendy and Jenny were born in four-and-a-half years, but Jean wanted a much larger family.

She said: "When Jenny, the youngest, was two I wanted more children but we just couldn't afford it.

"I had seen a film about the lives of a brother and sister whose mother was killed by their father. They were put in a children's home and then fostered.

"It made a huge impression on my mind and I suggested to Tim that we look after someone else's children."

As the years ticked by Jean and Tim looked after more and more children, offering a loving home for as long as was needed to as many children as possible as well as caring for her own four and her ten grandchildren.

She said: "People think I have a halo and wings but I don't, I just love being a mum. Having children running around the house doesn't bother me, it is like having the radio on all the time, it's just there and it takes a lot for me to lose my patience. I believe there is peace and quiet to be found even in a noisy environment. The sound of children is natural and peaceful. It's only not peaceful when there is an argument.

"When they put their little arms around you for a cuddle there is nothing like it in the world."

Jean's own children, who also include two adopted sons, Justin and Philip, who are both now 19, accepted the constant train of other youngsters taking up their mother's time without question.

She is very proud of them for that and the fact they have all gone on to take a role in the caring professions.

She said: "My natural children have had to share me with others from the year dot, but I have always tried to make sure I made special time with each of them on their own.

"I still do now they are grown up and have children of their own."

Tim died of a heart attack two years ago but Jean has no thoughts of retirement. She just has a dream that one day she will travel the world.

She said: "I've had a wonderful life and have done what I wanted more than anything, and that was to be mum to lots of children."

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