Your Stories
Inclusion and belonging is fundamental
I grew up with over 500 OOHC kids sharing her life and home. I think the first and most important thing is about inclusion. I have been around foster care all my life. I was two when the first Aboriginal foster child came into our home. I’ve also been around a lot of other foster carers throughout my life and done training to care for kids myself. In our family every kid that was placed with us was included in everything that we did. I remember Mum and Dad buying a little bus and when we went away the kid or kids came with us. When we went out for dinner they came with us. If we got a lunch order at school so did they. Everything our family did all of our foster children were included in as well. Some carers look for somewhere to send the children for respite when they go away for a holiday but that didn’t happen in our family. In my opinion inclusion is everything when trying to form a meaningful relationship. I think the sense of inclusion and belonging is fundamental when forming relationships. For the kids to feel a sense of belonging, to be treated the same and to feel appreciated are fundamentally important. The kids we’ve had weren’t considered as foster kids in our family, they were considered one of us. I can’t actually remember a time in my life when we didn’t have OOHC kids in our home and life. Some kids that came to us when they were 3 or 4 are still very much part of our family forty plus years on.
I think it’s important to make sure that everybody is on the same page. You need to have social workers who are knowledgeable in terms of the kids, their lives, their likes and dislikes etc. Social workers need to also know and interact with the families because it's important that they know everybody not just the kids or the carer but everyone involved. I think real human relationships can be formed in OOHC. These relationships might be with the carer, the children of the carer, an aunt, uncle. I definitely formed some great, life long relationships with kids. Some of the younger kids would come home and love me to read to them and some kids that were around the same age loved me driving around with them and doing teenage things. We got each other and loved hanging out. Maintaining relationships with the kids’ own families is so important as well. It’s often hoped that eventually the child will resume living with their own family so I think its great to form a relationship with their family and include that family in your family wherever possible. Normal human interaction and behaviour should always be shown. Young kids in care often haven't experienced healthy, safe, loving relationships with different people so we need to include them in everything so they can experience how these relationships form and feel.
I think it's important for kids to have a connection with everyone living in the house. Our family was able to achieve great things as we worked together supporting each other and we all felt strongly about helping kids. Mum wouldn’t have been able to do what she did without Dad’s support and when dad passed away it wouldn't have been as possible without the support of us 4 kids. It takes a village to raise a child. All four of us kids have gone on in some way to be involved in foster caring. Both my brothers and their wives have fostered children, I provide respite for any kids if Mum is called away (in one of her many roles). It was great to be able to continue caring for the kids in Mum’s house when she went away as they were still in their own bed and had consistency.
The most important thing for people making decisions is to know the kids. You can't make a decision based on what works for one child because this might not work for another. It’s also important for decision makers to get some hands-on experience as well - it's not just what a social worker might of learned out of a textbook. It's certainly not a one size fits all. l also think it’s important that decision makers not only know the kids but also the family and the foster family. You can't make a decision for a child if you don't know the whole picture. The final piece for me is that whatever you do, doesn't matter whether you're a carer or a social worker, everything that you do must be in the best interest of the child.