I was born in Bromley in 1972 and placed in care three years later to a white family in Kent. They already had two foster children and three biological sons of their own who were much older and had left home. I went into care with my half-brother Leroy, who is a year younger than me, and we settled into the family quite quickly. I stayed with the family until I was 18, and my brother stayed there until he was 32. As a three-year-old you can't really comprehend much. I haven't got memories of being happy or sad before I was put into care, but the memories I do have are quite vague. People often talk about the before and after care, but there's not much talk about what happens in between. I remember traveling at night in the back of someone's car to this new world I was going to and thinking, "where am I going?" I just couldn't understand it and it was quite a traumatic experience.
We grew up in a little village in the Kent countryside surrounded by three or four farms, and we had a lot of freedom. We would go out to play with our friends for hours. In those days people didn't bat an eyelid as long as you came home at dinner time. It was a relatively happy childhood, despite the obvious trauma and the hyper vigilance that I now know I was suffering. You might go to a good family, but you go into that family with your trauma. I didn't understand what I was trying to deal with at the time, and I didn't get much help with it because trauma wasn't really understood or talked about in the way it is today. I've spent all my life trying to make sense of things through counselling, therapeutic therapies, meditation, and talking to other people with experience in mental health. I'm working backwards which is helping me to better understand myself as a person, as well as in my current role as a foster carer.
I recently appeared in the BBC's DNA Family Secrets series - season 2 episode 5, if you want to give it a watch - which uses DNA testing to reveal missing or unknown relatives and solve family secrets. In lockdown I was flicking through social media and saw the opportunity to look into your DNA pop up so I applied for it. I put some details down, sent it off and didn't think anything of it. A couple of weeks later I got a call from one of the researchers and I told him my story. He told me not to get offended if I didn't get a call back because a lot of people had applied. Twenty minutes later they were back in touch and, after speaking to the producers, I was invited to be part of the show. It took a year of filming for the 20-minute episode, but they've done a really good job and what you see is authentic.
It's filled with a lot of integrity and warmth, and the way they handle the storytelling behind it was the reason I wanted to move forward with it. The show is hosted by Stacey Dooley who is very open and down to earth. Turi King, who does the DNA, is the professor who discovered the remains of King Richard III in Leicester, and she's awesome. With the team wrapped around me I felt held and supported, and they were really interested in my story which I'd never had before. I didn't think it would be big enough or interesting enough for people to want to hear it, and when I saw my story myself played out on screen it was quite healing.
which is helping me to better understand myself as a person, as well as in my current role as a foster carer.
I recently appeared in the BBC's DNA Family Secrets series - season 2 episode 5, if you want to give it a watch - which uses DNA testing to reveal missing or unknown relatives and solve family secrets. In lockdown I was flicking through social media and saw the opportunity to look into your DNA pop up so I applied for it. I put some details down, sent it off and didn't think anything of it. A couple of weeks later I got a call from one of the researchers and I told him my story. He told me not to get offended if I didn't get a call back because a lot of people had applied. Twenty minutes later they were back in touch and, after speaking to the producers, I was invited to be part of the show. It took a year of filming for the 20-minute episode, but they've done a really good job and what you see is authentic.
It's filled with a lot of integrity and warmth, and the way they handle the storytelling behind it was the reason I wanted to move forward with it. The show is hosted by Stacey Dooley who is very open and down to earth. Turi King, who does the DNA, is the professor who discovered the remains of King Richard III in Leicester, and she's awesome. With the team wrapped around me I felt held and supported, and they were really interested in my story which I'd never had before. I didn't think it would be big enough or interesting enough for people to want to hear it, and when I saw my story myself played out on screen it was quite healing.
When I grew up I was told that my dad was Jamaican. I don't remember the name they gave me because it wasn't even real. When they tested my DNA for the show, they said that I needed to be prepared because in the seventies a lot of kids in care were lied to about who their fathers were, especially mixed race children. It turns out that my Dad is actually from the Seychelles, so he wasn't who I was told he was at all. This has given me much more of a sense of where I'm from and has filled me up in a way that I never would have expected. It was like I've been carrying this gap, this emptiness, around with me without really understanding what it was. This is starting to get smaller because I feel like I'm getting closer to my identity. I’ve found out that I've got a half-brother on my Dad's side too.
Identity can be difficult, especially for black children living in white families. Although I had a lot of love and support, it came with its challenges. Being part of DNA Family Secrets helped me open up and face my past, which was therapeutic in terms of understanding what happened to me and how I got to where I am. There's lots of processing, and the story doesn't end at the DNA but rather begins there because it opens up whole new doors to explore. It's given me the confidence to talk about myself and my experiences, and hopefully my story can help other people as well as the children that I foster.
We've got shame free policy in our house, and my favourite thing about being a foster carer is giving a child that environment where they can be themselves. It's also important to give them love, which is a word that we don't use often enough. Ultimately, that's what kids need. Before I started fostering someone told me to make sure that I don't love them because when they leave it's going be really hard on me. I said, how can you have a child come into your house and spend time with them, nurture them, help them grow and not love them? Some people see this response as a negative, and people with this view in the care system are told that they aren't being professional. I understand professional boundaries, but how can you not love a child especially when that's ultimately what they need?
As a young teen, I knew I was gay. When you looked at the media, you would see gay comedians building an entire persona around their sexuality to make people laugh at them. It was the only way they felt that they could be accepted by heterosexual people. Those were the role models that I grew up with. Healthy role models for young gay black men are starting to explode, like the incredible Ncuti Gatwa playing the new Doctor Who, and it's great to see them unashamedly being themselves. For young kids growing up in care, like our recent placement who is an amazing, talented kid, role models like this are absolute because it helps normalise who they are and who they aspire to be. Seeing this particular child interested in different people who were gay or trans made me realise what I missed out on. When he was leaving us, I told him that he needed to know that whilst he had learned a lot being with us, we had learned just as much being with him. It's a two way thing.
What I've learned about being a foster carer is to make sure you've got a fantastic network around you. That can be friends, family, and especially other foster carers. When I started fostering I found that some of the people I thought would be there for me dropped away. I've had friends who were there from the beginning on my journey, but when the child arrived they apologised and said they couldn't do it because it brought up things within themselves. My advice is to get a really strong network of other foster cares around you who can give you advice and support when you need it.
If you'd like to learn more about Matthew's story and enquire about any speaking opportunities, please contact him on: [email protected]
