This week we’ll be running posts that celebrate families we don’t discuss often enough — Child-Free, adoptive families, and families made of friends — to name a few.
So now that you’re ready to read a great adventure novel — a gripping and dangerous story, surely — let me clarify: this is a tale about the lives of two men and their (highly opinionated) son. I do think it’s worth telling, but it’s a simple one about our little family.
Whenever we introduced James as our son, we’re immediately asked, “So, when did you adopt him?” From there we usually issue a dismissive response that doesn’t articulate our relationship and lives, and we end up finding ourselves telling the story of how we became foster carers (as they’re called in Australia), and in turn, a family. I hope that by telling this side to our story, more people will become motivated to become foster carers as well.
There are some days you’ll always remember clearly, and the day we decided to become foster carers is one of them. Lacking in the natural beauty you may be expecting for a day like that, we were actually driving home from the movies on a Saturday afternoon, chatting about our future. We were heading toward the pointy end of a decade and an engagement just shy of 12 months old, and the talk of children and the rest of our lives together was the focus.
Within Australia, adopting a child for a heterosexual couple is a logistical and expensive nightmare at the best of times, and a legal impossibility for a gay couple, so adoption wasn’t on the table. Our discussion moved to surrogacy and the options it gave us. By no stretch of the truth, many of our wonderful close friends had offered their “services” to us in aid of helping us to bring a child into the world over the years, and we began to talk about these people and those options.
We ending up weighing and debating the morality of bringing a child into the world when we had the opportunity to provide for a child who is already in need, which is the discussion that led us in an alternate direction: fostering.
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We quite honestly couldn’t decide on a situation we were equally comfortable with. We ending up weighing and debating the morality of bringing a child into the world when we had the opportunity to provide for a child who is already in need, which is the discussion that led us in an alternate direction: fostering. After a lengthy discussion as to whether we could actually legally be foster carers, we simply turned to the wisest person in the car and asked Google. Falling short of a detailed accurate answer, Google was able to provide us with the phone number for the government’s foster care department, which we called on the spot and left a message to be returned at a later date.
Some days later I was surprised with a call from the department who completed a simple 20 minute phone interview on our motivations to become carers. After our interview she forwarded our details to their register of foster care agencies and within a few weeks a flyer had arrived in the mail inviting us to attend an information evening. With some trepidation we arrived and were welcomed with open arms and discovered some great information regarding becoming carers, most notably that being gay was NOT an issue — our professional and personal life skills were of more interest and with our background in health and education we were regarded as primary candidates for becoming carers. Most surprising of all was that many people can qualify as a foster carer. For example, you can be single, defacto, married, gay, unemployed, and full-time employed. You can care of children full-time or part-time, or act as respite carers (every second weekend, for example).
The criteria was only around your skills and ability to care for a child who had experienced trauma, which nearly all children in care have. We found there was extensive training provided (nearly nine months of training, interviews and assessments took place!), personnel support, financial support and even emotional support to ourselves as carers and the children in our care.
The process is always focused on reunification with the families, which makes your role as a carer absolutely vital in helping to re-establish positive relationships between the children and their families.
What we really took from a lot of that training was the knowledge and understanding that most children in care will return to the care of their families and loved ones at some point — whether this be a matter of weeks from entering your care or even up to two years. The process is always focused on reunification with the families, which makes your role as a carer absolutely vital in helping to re-establish positive relationships between the children and their families. We learned that nearly 70% of children will return to home, while just 30% will remain in long-term care until they come of age.
Training and information prepared us to realistically understand that a person doesn’t become a foster carer because he or she wants to have a child of their own– you do it so that you can help to have a positive influence in a young person’s life. They prepare you to understand that this is not “your child,” but you are there to love them and care for them as your own. It’s funny because we weren’t yet aware that we would in fact end up in that 30% and end up bringing a child in to our home who would not return to live anywhere else — the child who would become our family.
For now perhaps I can share with you a snapshot of our life as it stands. As I’ve been sitting here writing this, our son sleeps in his room. He’s been reading Harry Potter for most of the afternoon since we got home and has finally tired and fallen asleep. We’ve come back from a lunch for my nephew’s birthday where he has been playing and running around with the rest of our family who accept him as one of our own. He loves playing in the backyard at home, which he didn’t get to today, he’ll spend hours in the sandpit digging and shoveling and calling out “Dad! Daddy!” and dragging us out to show us something he dug up. Keeping him company in the yard is our family dog, with whom he has developed a unique bond, as he plays she stands guard, sitting in the sand pit or patrolling the fence line.
He chose some time ago to stop calling us by our names and instead chose to select us each one as “Dad” and the other as “Daddy,” something he indignantly corrects us on if one responds to the incorrect title “No, I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to DAD, you’re DADDY!”. He attends school as normal, but he struggles with his work, in the afternoons we spend lots of time working with him on his handwriting, spelling and his maths, all of which he struggles with (the metaphor of “herding cats” is most appropriate).
After a life of inconsistent care he has fallen behind and we work hard to help him catch up. He’s no angel and like all children gets in his fair share of trouble. He is cheeky, adorable and knows how to get his own way with anyone! But he is loved and for the first time in his life is really beginning to feel and understand it. He has become our son and we live together — as a family.
What a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing. While my girlfriend and I are not ready for another child now (I have one biological, she has one who she raises as her own with an ex), we know that we do want to co-parent together from start to finish when we are ready. I had a traumatic experience when I had my son and I’m not sure I want to go through birth (via c-section or vaginally) again and her being pregnant is not an option. I think fostering might just be for us one day [LONG} down the road.
This is by far the best description of foster parenting I have ever heard. Loving and warm writing, brought tears to my eyes. Our foster son has also been made a permanent member of our family. I love to see the joys that fostering has brought to other families like it has to ours.
Thanks so much Sara,
Fostering is an amazing and trying experience, I’m just glad we get to share the story with other people too.
Your experiences sound so positive and I love the way you have approached it.
Also I loved the Animorphs books too.
This is a really lovely post. I’m so thankful that you were able to open your family to this little boy. I can feel the love you are sharing with him. Warm and fuzzy now!
Wow, so children in foster care in Australia never can be adopted? If they can’t go home, they stay in care their whole childhoods? What is the reason for that (if you don’t mind explaining to a clueless American — things work much differently here)?
I’ll be subscribing to your blog, btw. 🙂
Hi Mala,
Thanks for your question.
In Australia it Varies state by state, adoption as a whole here is a very slow and tedious process. In the 2011 – 2012 year in Qld just 5 children in the foster care system were adopted, so yes for the most part it is hard to adopt them, even as a heterosexual couple. This primarily comes down to the issue of consent, both parents are not always able to be found to grant consent and both parents are required for consent, the government fears creating a new generations of children in “forced adoption” situations, which they did many many years ago, so prefer to keep the children in care rather than over riding the missing parents consent.
As for gay couples, in Qld we are legally Barred from adopting children, our state government is also calling in laws to ban our access to surrogacy, they have wound back our civil union ceremonies (nationally we cannot marry), we live in a very homophobic state.
In New South Whales it was only recently that gays were granted the rights to adopt, 2 friends of mine there were the first to legally adopt their sons, even that took 3 years and was only officiated a year or so ago?
Thanks again for your question, always happy to answer what I can and thank you all for reading our story!
xo
Thanks for that explanation!
I’m sorry your state continues to deny/whittle away at your rights. 🙁
In Victoria, no children can be adopted from foster care even with consent. I’m hoping that in the next few years we will follow NSW in moving to adoption when returning to their families of origin is no longer an option. Given NSW have only recently changed to making adoption a priority it will be interesting to see how often it actually happens there even. Although, I get that for some families the extra assistance the child receives as a foster kid is helpful to them.
Around here they use permanent care orders which can be revoked by the court at any time and expire on their 18th birthday meaning some kids are kicked out of homes and special needs kids can loose their families as they require care outside of the home and they have no legal connection to the people who raised them. While under age they can’t inherit money from their families or be left to relatives with their siblings as they will be moved to another foster family. Families also have no legal right to visit or make medical decisions for permanent care kids after they turn 18 which can be very upsetting if there’s a car accident, etc.
I really cannot see how PC is in the best interest of any child. Even if contact orders are in place they can be kept following an adoption. And if families could adopt these kids there would be so many more homes available for foster kids.
It seems strange that you are not allowed to adopt, yet they are happy for you to foster [long term] – which is the exact same responsibilities anyway. Doesn’t make sense to me.
I know Carly, isn’t it utterly bizarre?
thank you for sharing this. my partner and i would like to foster in the future, and it’s so good to read such a positive first hand account.
i’m so glad the three of you found each other.
What a beautiful post! It made me teary. Sounds like there is a lot of love. Inspiring family.
Thank you for this! Not only is it a beautiful story, but as a fellow Australian it was helpful to get more of an insight into how fostering works in our country.
I am nowhere near being at a point in my life where I could foster, but I have been thinking that it’s something I would really like to do in the future.
I’m glad that not being heterosexual was not an issue for you, but oh, the new laws and attempts at taking away your rights in QLD makes my blood boil! Hopefully soon it will no longer be an issue.
What a fabulous post on the love of family. We live in Canada, and our fostering/adoption laws sound very similiar. Here in Canada, a large majority of the children in foster care are native. The law states that native children cannot be adopted, and will be returned to whatever reservation claims them as they approach adulthood. As a result, so much of these children feel lost, displaced and enter a life of crime, addiction or other bad choices. We’ve often thought of fostering, but it would break my heart to lose a child we love to an environment we have no control over. Good luck to you and your little family. Your little boy is surely blessed to have found you.
Thank you so much for writing this post, it’s so touching. I’m sorry your choices for building your family are so limited and I really hope that changes as fast as possible. But it’s so wonderful you, your partner and James found each other.
First, I loved that book series too :-). Second, I love that you’re sharing how fostering built your family. When my parents took in a 16-year-old as a “temporary” care situation, I never dreamed that 10 years later, he’d still be an integral part of our family. But now, it’s absolutely natural to call him my brother, and he’s tenderly caring for our parents through some health challenges. Fostering is a beautiful (if challenging) way to build a family, and I hope one day to carry on the legacy and open my own heart & home to foster children.
I think that fostering is possibly one of the most selfless and generous things someone could do, especially given the uncertainty surrounding the long term outcomes (so glad to hear these aren’t a problem in your case!).
This is gold 🙂