The first part of this interview can be found here

John is a gorgeous, energetic three-year-old who loves cars and going to the zoo. He had been in an emergency placement awaiting long-term fostering.

Marie explains; “John had been in emergency care when we met him. In total, I think, it was about 10 days between us meeting him and him moving in. Usually you have a longer space of time so it was quite compressed.”

“We met him and the next day we had him for an hour, the next day two hours and on like that,” continues Jane. “Then we had him for an afternoon and gave him his bath and his dinner. The woman who was looking after him said that if he was comfortable he could stay over. He was great, he settled with us right away.”

Part of being fostered means an extended family, many carers and lots of ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’, this is something John treats as perfectly normal.

“He sees his family regularly”.

When he came to live with Marie and Jane, John was slightly behind developmentally. He caught up quickly. “When he arrived in some ways he was ahead and in others he was a bit behind,” says Jane.

“When we got him he was obviously still in nappies, his talking was fairly limited, and his eating wasn’t great, so he was fairly challenging in the beginning. He’s great now; he’s brilliant so he hasn’t been delayed by any of that.

Getting a child to eat more healthy food is a challenge for most parents however, the fact that John was taken into care at such a young age ensured that he was less emotionally scarred than his older siblings “A lot of people who foster want cuddly babies,” says Jane. “We said from the beginning that we’re not fussy.”

It is possible to specify the age you would like to foster. Jane and Marie say that the HSE tell you everything up front and want foster carers to be as happy with the placement as possible.

“From the beginning they told us John was in long term care and that he’s never going home,” says Marie. “They tell you from the start whether it’s short or long term although it can change at any time. Sometimes, they might say short-to-medium or medium-to-long. Medium is six months to two years and long is till they’re 18. So they tell you from the beginning, we have this child… age, name, ethnic descent usually, where they came from, a little bit about their history and then if it’s long or short term. They don’t take kids into care lightly.”

“I know people who only foster babies, newborns,” adds Jane “and others who will only foster teenagers, the biggest difficulty the HSE have is with kids eight-plus, because kids under eight may not have as many problems and they’re still young so they’ll bond with you. Eight and above can be a lot more challenging.”

Not that that has stopped Jane and Marie from fostering older children. As well as John, they short-term fostered teenage sisters, and recently a 14 year old girl on medium term.

“People ask if it’s hard to give the children back after caring for them for so long,” says Marie. “But if you know from the start that that’s the case so you can prepare yourself from day one. John is long term, whereas the girls, we knew they’d be going, so we did keep that little bit back.”

The couple are, however, cautious about fostering short-term again, because it’s not just about them anymore, they’re a family now.

“It’s not just our home now it’s John’s, and you can see the effect it had on him when they left. They were here for seven months and suddenly they’re gone. We’re very aware of his feelings.”

The social workers arrange all access,” says Marie. “In some cases, the social workers have to supervise access but with the girls we organised access ourselves. You get sucked into this whole thing where, instead of the kids seeing each other for an hour once every two weeks or whatever, they get used to seeing each other for a whole day once a week. They start taking advantage of that then as well. They might ask one week why they only saw their sister for half a day and you’d have to pull them back a bit and say ‘well hang on a minute, if we left it up to the social workers you’d only see each other for an hour once a fortnight’!”

“You have to be careful of that because the social workers may take advantage of you and let you facilitate,” continues Jane. “They don’t have the resources, that’s a larger issue as well but you have to think of yourself. After seven months of weekend access, the first question I asked when they rang up about the next teenager was ‘what’s the access?’ because I can’t take that anymore.”

“John’s access is right in the middle of the day, so you can’t do anything before because you’re afraid you’ll be late and you can’t do anything after because it’s too late. You also have to facilitate people who aren’t very reliable.

“When he was first taken into care, he didn’t see his mother for a long time and then, all of a sudden, he’s expected to go into a room with just her and a social worker.

At that stage the access worker was picking him up, bringing him to access and then bringing him home again –he actually thought the access worker was his mother! He didn’t know who his mother was anymore.”

When lesbians have children, or talk about having children, one of the issues that arises is “what will the child call you?” for John this resonates more than usual.

“There are huge issues around who he associates as mammy,” says Jane. “He’s more confused now by the fact that he has three. We were fortunate, actually, that our last social worker had worked in adoption, so she was great in terms of things like that. She said to just say the words ‘foster mammy” you know, ‘foster mammy Jane’, ‘foster mammy Marie’. She said we could put whatever words we wanted onto it, just to emphasise to him that he’s with us. She basically said to get him used to hearing the word “fostered”, fostered this and fostered that. That was OK, he accepted that.

“I know someone who fostered a child when she was two, she’s now six or seven, and she calls her foster mother ‘mammy’. Apparently she called her by her name till she went to school and then she started calling her mammy because it was easier than explaining to all her new friends why she called her by her first name.”

“One day,” says Marie. “John was playing down the road and there were other kids out playing with him. They must have been talking about their mammies because he pointed out to Jane and said ‘that’s my mammy there’. They fit in with whatever’s going on around them, they have to – they’re like chameleons, they just fit in.”

Children are fantastic social passports for adults. If you have kids, other parents immediately strike up conversations with you, it’s no different here.

“The neighbours think it’s hilarious. I mean obviously the two ladies up the road aren’t going to have children and suddenly we have two or three. They all think it’s gas, they’re all full of questions. This estate is generally very young with children under 10 or 15 and they’re all very interested. There are a few kids on the road the same age as John, we get invited to everything, we’re very included. Before they wouldn’t even sneeze at us but since we got John and the girls they’re very inclusive. The woman next door used to be very homophobic and now she’s like my new best friend. It’s bizarre, it’s like “you have children, you fit in now”, like she has something in common with me now.”

Becoming a parent is arguably the most challenging and rewarding experience a person can have. When asked what advice they would give to any other gay potential foster carers, Jane and Marie say that you need to think it through, thoroughly.

“I’d say be prepared,” says Jane. “Social workers are initially a bit suspicious of you and your motives – at least that was our experience. They’ll put you through the ringer more than they put straight people through it but, if you’re willing to go through it and go with it, it’s worth it.

The whole course, I found, was about telling us how hard it would be and they were right to do that. It is very hard; your life is ruled by social workers.”

“In the course they do put a lot of emphasis on how frustrating dealing with social services is and you kind of think to yourself sure how hard can it be?” Marie goes on. “You kind of think ‘sure what of it that they have to go visit their parents once a week’ but then it’s so time consuming, it affects everything right down to the grocery shopping. It’s nearly a full time job, especially during the summer; they had summer projects and the like.”

“We wouldn’t change any of it though, the whole experience has made us value what we had as children and see how lucky we were. Things that used to bother us would be considered minor now, there’s so much more out there to think about and it has made us better people I think. Life is for living – go for it.”

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