A personal reflection on Foster Caring from one of our Church members:
This week is Foster Care Week!
When my husband and I first started along on the path of becoming short-term foster carers, nearly every person we spoke to about it said ‘I couldn’t do that! I’d get too attached!’ At first we felt a little hurt, as if they were suggesting our hearts had to be harder to take on caring for a child we’d have to say goodbye to. The irony is that the whole purpose of short-term foster care, particularly of infants, is to become very attached, to teach them from the start that they can attach to other humans and can trust that they will be loved and cared for.
In a workshop we attended early on, we learnt about the unique grief that short-term carers experience: a grief you know full well you’re going to experience, and yet enter into anyway. They suggested making sure that others around you have opportunity to enter that grief with you. Our church family certainly did. From the start, they couldn’t help but love that little baby, even though they all knew a goodbye was coming.
When I think of those words ‘I couldn’t do that!’, I can’t help but feel that I couldn’t not have done that! Both of us can’t imagine not having had that baby in our life, even with the inevitable, raw grief that has followed. And it certainly wasn’t an easy time. We felt our age! We felt our sore arms and backs. We felt anger and sadness as we came face to face with the pain that many in our community suffer. We certainly felt God’s help. But we also felt just a little of God’s heart for the lost, the weak, those born into and living with generational trauma, those who haven’t had the opportunities that many of us have had.
But in the end it’s ultimately not about us! The need for homes for vulnerable children, particularly in the South West of Sydney, is great. In our parish, we are right on the doorstep of the area of biggest need for out-of-home-care in NSW.
Not everyone has the flexibility or space to take on foster caring, but some of you might. There are endless opportunities for crisis care (one or two nights); short-term care (up to 12 months); respite care (typically giving other foster carers a break for a weekend a month) and long-term care. As we plan to take on another placement later in the year, we will be even better this time at asking for help from our church family, occasional baby-sitting or a cooked meal in those first weeks of sleepless nights with a newborn! We’ve so appreciated those praying for us (particularly during the transition/goodbye period), praying for the baby, for the baby’s birth family, and now for the new family. That child will certainly never leave our hearts, even having left our home.
To find out more about Foster Care through Anglicare click here.
Or watch these Youtube Clips:
