It’s been just over a year since we started our foster care journey with CareSouth.
After we got married, there was an expectation that we would have kids of our own, but we wanted to help kids who needed it. We hoped to be role models in a child’s life and show them what family can look like, outside of the traditional nuclear model.
We did careful research into foster care. We chose CareSouth because the organisation’s values aligned with our own. It felt like a good fit. When we began talking to the carer engagement team, they were very welcoming. We knew we picked the right place.
We were in our early thirties, working full time and madly saving to buy a house. We worried that this would prevent us from becoming foster carers. The team at CareSouth listened to our concerns and answered all our questions. We had honest discussions with them so that, together, we could find an arrangement that would work for us.
We are now respite carers for a teenage boy. This type of foster care, and the child being in school full-time, fits well with our busy schedules. We arrange times with his grandparents for him to stay with us month-by-month. This flexibility is great for all of us.
We love nothing more than hanging out with him on weekends. He’s such an easy-going kid. We tend to spend our days together watching the footy, bike riding or playing Xbox. We enjoy sharing new experiences with him – like when we introduced him to rugby union. We want to be a constant in his life for as long as he wants to hang out with us.
With a better understanding of foster care and what it involves, we are more open to exploring other types of foster care, like emergency and short-term care. We discuss these options with the team at CareSouth but have never felt any pressure – it’s all on our terms.
We would encourage anyone considering becoming foster carers to reach out to CareSouth for more information. They gave us everything we needed to feel like we were making an informed decision. We’re so glad we took that step to figure out if it was right for us or not.
