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Lucy is the last film of the series Young children in brief separation. Except for John, who was for nine days in a residential nursery, the other four children were all fostered at the Robertson's home while their mother was having a second baby. The aim of this research was to explore how the stress of an early separation might be modified and the risks to development minimised by the responsive attention of a single mother substitute, as opposed to multiple caretaking.
Lucy gives us an opportunity for reflecting on issues that were less prominent in Jane, Kate and Thomas. It highlights in particular some of the problems inherent in the beginning and ending of a fostering relationship.
When Mrs. Robertson visits Lucy in her home, before the mother's confinement, we see a very cautious little girl who never smiles. Her mother also comes across as lacking in vitality and rather cut off. She is described as being in a rather subdued mood in the latter stages of her pregnancy.
Lucy brings her cautiousness with her when she first goes to the Robertsons’. She whimpers a little in her sleep during the first night in their house, but otherwise she does not make herself much heard. Her vocabulary is restricted to two words: “Thank you” and “Quackers”. “Quackers” is a hard rubber duck, her favourite toy. She has no soft labial sound for mummy. This seems significant in a twenty-one-month-old who can already manage the difficult “Quackers”.
It sems to me that Lucy started her very good experience with the Robertsons, relying on poorer internal resources than those which John, four months younger than she, had when he first entered the residential nursery. He seemed to keep the hope going and persisted in the attempt to establish a close relationship with one of the nurses. It took a while for him to give up. His initial capacity for trust and his expectation to find containment were much greater than Lucy's.
Lucy does not reach out very much at first, she even struck me at times