National Families Week, from May 13-19, celebrates the diversity of families, something we pride ourselves on at CareSouth.
Families come in all different shapes and sizes: birth families, foster carers, kinship carers, therapeutic carers and adoptive parents. National Families Week celebrates the role they all play in teaching, supporting and nurturing children and young people as they grow.
Southern NSW foster carers Ross and his partner Simon have been fostering for only a year but are already making an incredible difference in the life of a young child. Recently, Ross was the youngster’s number-one fan when CareSouth’s Goulburn team hosted an All Stars Show featuring the talents of young people, staff and carers from across the region.
Talent acts included a CareSouth band, stand-up comedy, singing, Irish dancing, tricks by CareSouth’s resident CareDog Nora and ribbon twirling by the six-year-old Ross and Simon care for.
The youngster got up in front of more than 50 audience members to perform her act, something Goulburn carer recruitment caseworker Ingrid Schreiber believes was only possible due to the unwavering support of her foster carers.
“It has been amazing to see the growth and progress this little girl has made since the day I first brought her to meet Simon and Ross at their home one year ago,” says Ingrid. “Simon and Ross are fierce advocates for her, always putting her needs and wellbeing first. To see them all develop and flourish as a family unit has been a highlight of my career so far.”
Ross, who could not have been prouder when the six-year-old took out equal second prize in the talent quest, says the journey to becoming a foster carer isn’t something you do alone. There’s support from CareSouth for both the child in care and the carers themselves.
“You are not on your own; you are part of a wider community who all want the best for the young people they support,” says Ross.
Ross and Simon decided to become foster carers after reaching a point in their lives where they wanted to give back.
“She had a bit of a rough start to life and didn’t have the structures and stability that a six-year-old should have,” says Ross. “She wasn’t attending school regularly, and there was volatility in the home. But Simon and I had the time, stability and capacity to care for a child, and we saw this as an opportunity to act as a bit of a circuit breaker to help her move forward by putting structures and stability in place.”
Ingrid explains that foster carers don’t need experience being parents, they just need to be patient, caring and willing to continue learning and growing alongside the young people in their care.
“Simon and I had no parenting experience beyond minding other people’s kids, but now we are doing it, as foster carers,” says Ross. “There is a real need, with something like 16,500 children in foster care in NSW alone, so we decided to go down that path. There are so many young people who, through no fault of their own, need a little help in their lives to get back on track or find that longer-term stable home. We could offer that.”
If you think you can help to make a difference in a young person’s life by becoming a foster carer, call CareSouth on 1300 554 260 or visit www.caresouth.org.au.
