The family is something sacred. It is protected in the Constitution and is seen as the foundation of modern society. Nothing which defines the family says it must be a heterosexual unit. In modern Ireland, there are many different types of families – single parents, grandparents raising children, older siblings caring for younger, aunts and uncles rearing nieces and nephews, and so on. Most people would agree that it’s not the type of family that’s important but the love and nurturing between its members.

When we met with Jane and Marie in their home recently, the fact that they live a life full of love and warmth was clear. As we talked over a lovely dinner, their three-year-old son, John, wanted full attention and to be honest, he’s so cute and well mannered it’s hard not to give it. We wanted to talk about their ‘different’ family but it was obvious that here was a completely ‘normal’ family – one parent chatting and making tea while the other wrestled to get the child to eat his greens.

Jane and Marie have been together for almost nine years. When they bought their home the biological clock started beeping and, like many couples, they talked about having children. After trying to conceive themselves, they talked about other options.

“Jane’s mother was fostered,” Marie told us “we had thought about it a few times over the years but then saw a poster in the shop down the road one day for an information evening on fostering and we said – well let’s go get a free cup of tea!”

“So we went to that and they told us all about the application process. The team leader, another social worker and a foster carer that had been fostering for years talked to us. They went through everything, told us we had to be Garda cleared, that we would have to be assessed, allowances available and so on.”

They decided to give it a go and started to fill in the copious amounts of forms required by the HSE.

“You need three referees, all they say is that thay have to be someone who knows you, but isn’t family. They don’t have to be professional people so we had my best friend, a friend of Marie’s and someone who knew both of us. Anyone who would have access to the child would have to be Garda cleared. You also have to fill in where you have ever lived in your life, what schools you went to, what colleges, if any; – the whole lot.”

Coming from England, Jane also had to get on to the police across the water. “The fact that I’m English didn’t affect us except I had to get police clearance from the UK. Also, Marie lived in Australia for a year and I lived in Holland for a year so we had to get clearance for the Australian police and the Dutch police. The Australian police were fine, but I don’t speak Dutch so that was kind of hard.”

Once they’d gotten all of that sorted out, all of the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted, the social worker came to visit them.“Then the social worker arranges a first visit and clarifies what they are going to do,” explains Marie. “When we had that talk with her she told us that we were not under an obligation at any time. That at any point in the process we could turn around and say we’ve changed our minds.

“Even when you have children, if your personal circumstances change, you can say, ‘we can’t do this anymore’. Let’s just say your mother becomes infirm and you have to have her come live with you, there’s no obligation on you at any time to carry on doing it.

“So you fill in all the forms and then she comes back to get them and makes sure you’ve filled all the appropriate blanks in and all that and then they do a private interview with each partner separately and then a joint one. Each joint one is on different things like, ‘how would you cope with disabled children?’, ‘how would you cope with behaviourally challenged children?’”

“Most of it is to see if you need support with a child, whom you might get,” adds Jane. “Like if you get a child who has been sexually abused and if you were abused yourself then that’ll effect how you deal with that child. If you have children they interview the children separately to see how they feel about it. We know of people who have been thrown back because their kids didn’t want to do it.”

The HSE is, of course, there to help. They need to ensure that foster carers are prepared for all eventualities, as much as any parent can be. So, Jane and Marie went along with other potential fosterers to complete a course.

“Four evenings and two full days,” describes Marie. “It was all about how to deal with the various kinds of kids that you might get. You know, be it from different ethnic backgrounds, social backgrounds, whatever. Just to try to prepare you”.

“It was very good,” says Jane. “They tell you things like how to protect yourself from allegations of abuse, which is very important”.

Although they were the only gay people on the course, Jane and Marie were treated no differently. Indeed, at no stage in the process did they feel they were marginalised.

“Except by our team leader who sometimes appeared a little prejudiced,” Marie points out. “Like when she first came here, she couldn’t even say the word gay. It was like she’d never come across gay people in her life. Also, the first social worker we had seemed to have a problem at the start, but once she got to know us she was fine. At first though she wouldn’t even drink a glass of water in the house, she sat in the chair like she was ready to bolt” laughs Marie.

There were other subtle differences too. “When you give your application you have to give three referees, theoretically they only talk to one of them,” explained Jane, but two of Marie and Jane’s were spoken to. They also had to ensure any prospective children would have a male role model.

Overall though Jane insists that the social workers were not prejudiced. “They were just trying to cover their backs and ours at the same time. Our social worker always said that she didn’t want us being rejected at the last minute, she wanted everything covered and in the end we were glad because the committee can be quite pedantic and our social worker had done a good job on our application.

After going through the drawn-out process of applying to foster, Jane and Marie were worn out by the bureaucratic nature of the whole thing. It would prove to be more than worth it as there was a young boy who had just celebrated his second birthday in care, and was looking for a loving home.

“Theoretically it can take a few months,” explains Marie.” In our case it took nearly a year. Then you go in front of this Placement Committee who put everything together; you have to give them birth certificates, letters from work, bank statements and lots more. They send all of that off to the placement committee and they have to pass you. Our social worker wanted this to go smoothly because she had John in mind for us, although we didn’t know that at the time.”

The Placement Committee focused on an issue in Jane’s personal assessment which seemed unimportant, thus slowing things down all the more.

“According to mine I was an alcoholic, drug-taking housewife and Marie did the hoovering! I said to them, ‘you have me down as a drug-taking alcoholic’. It was crazy! So the first time the Placement Committee came back they said they had concerns over my drug taking. I explained I hadn’t taken drugs since a spliff six years ago. The second time we passed, because they realised I didn’t actually inject heroin on a daily basis. Then John came to live with us”.

“They did say to John’s mother before he was sent here that we’re gay but they didn’t make a big deal of it and she didn’t have a problem with it. They tried to make an issue of it in court, that John was with a same sex couple, and the judge was an older judge and tried to pick up on it. “He said, “how come I wasn’t told that the child was going to a non-constitutional family?” and all that stuff. But the lawyers of the HSE said that the judge only gets to say if the child is in care or not, it’s the HSE who says who he’s in care with. The judge wanted to see our file and all the rest but they said ‘no way’, that that would set a huge precedent.

“They told us all this because there was a review coming up and they didn’t want us walking into the review not knowing that it had happened. They said they’d go to the high court to fight the judge if they had to. It would’ve had a huge precedence in terms of single parents, sibling fostering, and so on. They were very very supportive, in fairness to them they have been supportive throughout”.

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The second half of this interview will be published shortly

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