Foster parents open their hearts

Having grown up with more than 200 siblings, a Port Kennedy man was driven to share that experience with his children while helping youth in need of a safe and loving home.

In the wake of Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan’s statement that authorities need to be tougher and take more children into State care, Don and Karina Thomson shared with theTelegraph what it meant to create a safe and loving environment for those young people.

The Thomsons have been foster carers for the past four years and tend to agree with Mr O’Callaghan’s opinion but believe there first needs to be more foster carers.

Mr Thomson said children should not be living in a drug home or exposed to domestic violence and grow up thinking it was normal.

“We are passing on cultural cancer,” he said.

“We have to stop the social issues affecting the next generation — all children deserve to feel loved and safe.”

Mr Thomson said the drive to want to help those in need stemmed from growing up in a foster-care environment.

He was technically an only child, but had many “brothers and sisters” because his parents fostered for a decade.

“Having so many siblings was enriching — it was defining and opened my eyes to how different people are,” Mr Thomson said.

The Thomsons applied to be carers with the Department of Child Protection and Family Support in their late 20s and underwent training to learn how to deal with young people in trauma.

Mrs Thomson said the first children they cared for were a two and four-year-old in February 2012.

“It was full-on, crazy and fantastic,” she said.

“They were high-needs children who experienced high trauma and had speech issues.”

Mr Thomson said as emergency carers of children with potentially high anxiety, they wanted them to feel happy and comfortable.

“One strategy is to fill a lunch box with snacks that stays in their room so they know food is always available and won’t go hungry,” he said.

The first foster children stayed for about 10 months and were followed by 11-month-old twins and their eight-year-old brother, and in 2014, three girls, now 10, 12, and 13, came into their home.

With their biological children aged 12 and 14, the dynamic works well.

Mrs Thomson said the experience was rewarding, but was not without its challenges.

“You have to take every day as it comes because some triggers can be unexpected, such as a certain smell of food,” she said.

“We like to eat wraps and one day bought the spinach variety, which made one of the kids go into a scary place because when they saw it was green, they thought it was mouldy.”

The pair said they were trying to develop the emotional literacy of the children so they could better understand what they were feeling and how to articulate it.

There is a subsidy in place to cover the costs associated with caring for foster children, but carers’ time is voluntarily given.

Mrs Thomson urged anyone who cared to apply for the opportunity to make a difference to a child’s life.

She admitted it was overwhelming but said the DCPFS and its case workers offered great support.

“They are in our hearts and we are in theirs — we take them in as family,” Mrs Thomson said.