Mother gives backing to runaway foster parents

POLICE were today closing in on a fleeing foster couple after they wrote a letter begging to be allowed to remain with their two foster children.

Jeff and Jennifer Bramley have been on the run with Jade Bennett, five, and Hannah, three, since last September.

Since the letter was sent the children's natural mother has spoken of her support for the couple. Jackie Bennett, who gave up the girls because she felt unable to cope but had always insisted she wanted them back, wrote in an open letter to the Bramleys: "I will try to see if I can get you to keep my children." She asks the Bramleys to give themselves up, saying: "I want my children to be settled in one place, in one school, with a loving family like yourselves." She admits she is still "annoyed" at the couple but says she "sym-pathises" with their plight and asks for a face-to-face meeting to discuss why the couple were told they could not adopt the girls. "Can you tell Jade and Hannah that mummy loves them very much and I will always miss them," she says, before ending the letter, published in The Express." The Bramleys, who have looked after the children since March, explained in the letter that they were forced to flee their home in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, because the children were about to be taken from them by social services. In the handwritten, unsigned letter, posted from Nottingham on Monday, the Bramleys say: "We write this letter to tell the plight of a family that love each other and wishes to stay together. Jade and Hannah were told about us and told we would be their mummy and daddy, after we had met the girls several times in their foster home, they came to live with us. They soon grew to love us as their mummy and daddy as we grew to love them as our daughters. "We are two good, honest, caring people who are willing to give up our home, our family and friends and jobs to maintain Jade and Hannah's happiness in keeping them with the parents they love and desperately want to share their lives with." Police say they are taking the letter seriously because it contains information only the couple would know. Detectives have held back five paragraphs as part of their investigation. The letter follows reports of a recent sighting of the family on the North Yorkshire Railway between Pickering and Grosmont.

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