Sarah and Tom's story
Tom and I have almost lost count of exactly how many children have come into our home.
We’ve cared for approximately 30 children over the last 17 years. And that was in between raising our sons and completing a Bachelors and Masters in Teaching. It’s a team effort. My work involves teaching children with a disability so Tom is the primary carer for our family. He’s really a great dad.
Our first contact with the care system was through my family. My five nieces (the youngest was 5 at the time) needed help. They were placed in three different houses as no one was able to take the five girls together.
They just needed to all be together as a family. It’s important to keep families together.
We just continued on as foster carers after the department asked us if we’d be interested in taking on a couple of boys. So we took in these two little boys with additional needs.
Some kids have been with us temporarily for respite or because of an emergency.
Because I work as a special education teacher, we often accept children with additional needs. Kids with additional needs just need a little bit more nurturing and attention. You have to work at building relationships with them.
We’ve got five children with us at the moment – three siblings and two other non-related children. The youngest of the children is three and the eldest is 14.
The most rewarding part is knowing that you've helped a young person in need to have as normal a life as possible. That’s precious. It may not be obvious at the time but you'll see the results in the long term.
"The ultimate goal for carers like us is to see the children returning to their families."
Seeing the reunification with their families, when it works, is very rewarding.
All the kids ever want is to be loved and accepted and to find that place.
There are many misconceptions about foster care. Some people believe you need to have a huge house and all the equipment, and need to be out at weekends, catering to every desire and wish of the kids. But that doesn’t help them to be who they need to be.
It’s best just to have a normal home life – as normal as it can be.
We still keep in touch with the children we’ve cared for in the past. In fact, I recently had a phone call from one of them who wanted to share news of her engagement and invited us to her engagement party.
It's good to keep in contact – even kids who’ve come to us on respite keep in contact. They call up for a chat.
It’s special when the children tell us they appreciate what we did for them and say ‘I know I wasn’t particularly nice to you back then’ but they now appreciate it.
The experiences we’ve had with the children, it’s enhanced our lives. My advice to you is that you have to look at every day as a question. Ask ‘what can we learn from these young people?’ They actually have lots of life skills.
I am learning new things every day from them.
*To protect the identities of the children and carers in these stories, names and images have been changed.
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