Tania’ s devoted her life to her family —and THIRTY foster children. Now, with terminal cancer, her huge brood are dedicating their lives to making her last days her happiest
FAMILy dinners in Tania Scott’s household have always been a rather overcrowded affair. The dining table can barely cope — even when fully extended — and there’s enough food to feed an army.
Tania, 52, and her husband Mick, 53, have four children Callum, 29, Brad, 26, Corey, 21, and daughter Cara, 14, plus their partners and now their first grandchild, four-month- old baby Ray.
But that’s just the start of it, because Tania is also a foster mum and substitute mother to a huge number of young people who at one time or another desperately needed her help.
Now largely grown up, they still squeeze around the table every Mother’s Day to celebrate the woman they all call ‘Mum’.
Over the years, Tania has fostered 30 children and forged unbreakable bonds with many more she cared for as a childminder.
And that’s not to mention all the nieces, nephews and school friends who regarded Tania as an honorary mum, as she always guaranteed a sympathetic ear and an endless supply of choc ices at her house in Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
It can be hard to keep track of who’s who — but then it doesn’t matter, because Tania has always treated them all as her own.
‘I love children, and if I could have kept every single one of the kids we fostered, I would have,’ she says. ‘After our first son Callum was born I wondered if I could ever love another child as much, but it couldn’t have been easier. It made no difference if they were my children or not, there was more than enough space in my heart for all of them.’
This year, there was an added poignancy to the Scott family’s Mother’s Day celebrations, and a new urgency to the desire for everyone to gather and show Tania how much she is loved. Because in September 2016 she was diagnosed with a rare aggressive cancer — transitional cell carcinoma of the urethra — and had to have a kidney removed and undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
In January this year, all her children, biological or otherwise, were devastated to be told that treatment had failed and the cancer was incurable.
The family is hoping fundraising will help pay for immunotherapy — if she qualifies for the procedure — and alternative treatments to prolong her life.
For the past six weeks Tania has been staying at a local hospice, where staff can help her manage her pain, but she was allowed home on Mother’s Day to spend the day with her sizeable extended family. She was too ill, however, to take part in their annual walk through Ashridge Forest in hertfordshire before their traditional lunch at home.
Still, she insists that she will be living back home soon. No one knows how much time she has left, or if she will live to see another Mother’s Day, but, buoyed by love, she insists: ‘ I’m not going anywhere in a hurry. They can’t get rid of me just yet.’
Tania has not asked doctors for a prognosis, and refuses to research her cancer on the internet, because what matters to her is filling every second she has left with joyful memories for her family.
‘ When the cancer was first diagnosed, I was determined to fight it and was convinced I could beat it,’ she says. ‘ But with each progress scan the news was not good. For a long time I kept it from the children, because my job as a mum has always been to put them first and I didn’t want to upset them.
‘So during chemo and radiotherapy I put on my make-up and a smile — if you didn’t know I had cancer you wouldn’t have even guessed I was ill.
‘When I lost my hair during chemo, I wore a turban decorated with jewels, so I just looked a bit eccentric, but in January I realised it wasn’t fair to keep the truth from them.’
For every single one of them, the knowledge that Tania’s cancer is incurable is almost impossible to bear. She is their rock and the beating heart of the family.
As she speaks with cheerful dignity about what the future holds, her son Corey can’t stop the tears from falling and she envelopes him with one of her big, warm hugs.
‘Look at me,’ she says, reaching for a tissue. ‘Wiping your tears away as if you were still a little boy.’
After a lifetime dedicated to her children, however, her family is now determined to put Tania first.
They hope to help her complete a ‘Living Life List’ of all the things she was either too busy or couldn’t afford to do when they were growing up.
They have set up a Just Giving fundraising page and in just three weeks have raised more than £14,000, which has left Tania so humbled she looks close to tears herself.
The list is extensive, to say the least. Some are defiantly ambitious — such as taking a helicopter ride over Niagara Falls — while others are as simple as watching a caterpillar turn into a butterfly. Top of the list, however, is a family holiday.
‘If I only get to do one thing from that list, then it would be one last family holiday with everyone there,’ says Tania. ‘ My family is the most important thing of all, always has been, and I want to leave them with happy memories.’
That is precisely what she has offered to so many needy children over the years. Paige, 21, is just one of Tania’s many ‘daughters’, a former foster child who still treasures their close bond. She says: ‘This woman is literally the kindest human being I’ve had the opportunity to get to know in my life. She has spent her life putting others first.’
Maddy and Phoebe Wright, now aged 17 and 13, were four years and four months old when Tania first started childminding them.
Their mother remembers being reassured that she could trust her to ‘treat my own baby like her own.’ Maddy recalls: ‘We always felt part of Tania’s big family. She had her own children, foster children and other minded children, but treated us all with the same love.
‘We felt like the other children were like our brothers and sisters.’
Tania and Mick, a Metropolitan police officer, have been together for 31 years. They first decided to foster when their two elder sons were very young.
‘Mick is one of eight children and always wanted a big family. We just felt we had something to offer children less fortunate than our own,’ says Tania, who five years ago did a social work degree and, until her cancer diagnosis, was working in child protection.
‘We certainly didn’t do it for the money. I think we got £30 a week for each child, and it was often a real financial struggle. We just had a happy home and love to spare.’
Two of their foster children were young babies, emergency placements who would later go on to be adopted. In the early years, they only accepted under eights, as they felt they didn’t yet have experience of older children who may have more complex needs.
Some placements were short, some longer. Sometimes it was weekend respite care to help biological parents who were ill or in crisis. Some of the children were vulnerable, their early years chaotic or marked by neglect or abuse.
‘Our first baby was a little girl who came to us just before Christmas, and I remember being so excited because it was before my own daughter was born,’ says Tania.
‘I didn’t have any girl clothes and I went out and had a lovely time buying little outfits and a gorgeous little red dress for her to wear for Christmas. It broke my heart to say goodbye to every child when they were adopted or went back to their families, sometimes to circumstances that weren’t ideal, I hope every single one felt loved and secure with us.’
her own sons Brad, a retail manager, and Corey, who works in customer services, insist they never once resented sharing their Mum.
Brad simply says she was ‘the best mum ever’. There was always an open door and no sleepover request was ever turned down, even when the house was full to the rafters.
Corey says: ‘It felt normal because it’s all we’ve ever known since we were young. We never felt we missed out and it was a case of the more the merrier. It was always a very social house, full of children, family and
friends. It was good for us, because it made us very aware from a young age that some children were less fortunate than us. It made us more understanding.’
As for Tania’s mother Stella, 84, she, too, treated every single child as if they were her own. One of Tania’s foster children, Chelsea, 24 and now a successful police officer, joins us and says: ‘Tania’s my mum. That’s what I call her and that’s what she is. There’s no difference between me and her own children. They are my brothers and sister, and Stella’s my Nan.’
Chelsea was 11 when she and her two brothers arrived at Tania’s house. Tania affectionately recalls: ‘Chelsea was our most difficult foster child ever and just look at her now! When she first arrived, the first thing she said was “I thought you’d be old”. I think she was quite shocked to discover that we were relatively young. I remember one Mother’s Day when, annoyed for some reason, she insisted on wearing an all-white outfit for our walk in Ashbridge Forest and was determined to get it as muddy as she possibly could!’
At 13, Chelsea went to live with her grandmother in Ireland, while her brothers went to new adoptive families. Still, she returned every summer to spend her holidays with the Scott family.
Four years later, when her grandmother died, Tania remembers Chelsea turning up on her doorstep, instinctively making her way back to the only really happy family she’d ever known.
Tania helped Chelsea secure her own accommodation and couldn’t be prouder of her now. She loves it when shop assistants mistake them for mother and daughter.
Sophie Jones, 27, who was a friend of one of the Scott children, says: ‘There is nothing that Tania wouldn’t take on.
‘One of my best memories is of there being 13 children in the house at one time, such a happy time. It was such an open house and everyone was welcome.
‘Tania is amazing at making you feel like you can talk to her about anything, no matter your background or your situation, she always had time to listen.
‘Tania is a role model to us all. She’s a fabulous woman who’ll take on any challenge, good or bad, big or small.’
OTHER family friends cluster to add their praises — Beth Warren, 16, Chloe Nicholas, 27, and hayley Bean, 29 all talk about how Tania’s selflessness and sense of fun has inspired and helped them.
None of them can bear to think of Tania Scott not being around in years to come.
Some are coping with her diagnosis better than others. All of them are signed up to making Tania’s Living Life List happen.
Tania herself can’t wait — with her typical fearlessness, and a big smile, she rattles off a list of all she hopes to achieve in the time now left to her.
The catalogue includes riding a horse on a beach, going to a jazz club, making a cocktail, flying business class, learning to play the saxophone, mastering the pottery wheel, milking a cow, exploring a cave, floating in an air balloon, spending the night in a zoo, visiting her niece in America to meet her newborn grand-nephew, watching a sunset from a beautiful beach, paragliding, punting, learning a magic trick, watching tennis at Wimbledon, yachting, playing roulette at a casino, spending the day dog-racing and having a professional makeover by a stylist.
For now, though, the whole — very extended — family are just enjoying being together.
Tania smothers her grandson ray, her eldest Callum’s child, with kisses. Another of her many fans, he gurgles and giggles back.
‘I couldn’t have asked for a better life,’ says Tania, as she tries to decide where to take her family on holiday.
‘Now it’s all about creating as many happy memories for them as I can, while I still have time, but I’m not ready to go yet.
‘It’s not me I worry about, it’s my family. They have always come first.’