Letter to the Minister
Letters of love and fettered furor (usually separate) were more my thing. I had been on the foster-to-adoption waiting list for eight months.
I come from a family of letter writers. Letters of protest, letters of complaint, letters of appreciation. My father, a boxer by training and an academic by profession, believed his hands were better served in writing. Writing could change the system. My mother was more a reader than a writer and often enlisted my help. So my letter-writing proclivity was inherited.
Letters of love and fettered furor (usually separate) were more my thing. I had been on the foster-to-adoption waiting list for eight months. That had been enough to ferment my fury.
The fostering journey has been fraught, stripping down my sense of worth as a person, making me feel unfit to be a mother, hell unfit to be an adult member of society. I have not felt so black in a white country, not since I was a child. I was single, a woman of colour, I didn’t own a two plus bedroom home and didn’t have a 6 figure income and wealthy husband to support me whilst I didn’t work for a year. Strike 6 and yooooooou’re out! I was a triangle peg in a putrescent round hole.
I could not, cannot, understand why children languish in short term care for years or die at the hands of violent men; there were people like me (okay not quite like me) desperate to adopt.
And so I wrote to the Minister of Family and Community Services (FACS). I have constrained my righteous indignation to 5 bullet points to give you some context.
During 2018-19 in Australia there were:
- 44906 children in out of home care. That’s 8 out of every 1000 children!
- 451184 notifications for children at risk of harm, 61% of which were closed without being investigated.
- 1 in 33 of all Australian children (that’s 170,200) receiving child protection services (investigation, care and protection order and/or were in out-of-home care). 68% of children who received child protection services were repeat clients.
- 41 deaths from abuse or neglect in two years (2012-2013) in NSW alone.
- 19,400 (0.4%) children aged 0–14 who were homeless on Census night in 2016.
It was a epistolary ‘fuck you‘ but I hoped it might nudge the system. I also hoped for some divine political intervention that would deliver my dream son (I’d always assumed it would be a boy) to my door.
‘So sorry! Complete oversight on our part! We can see you are fabulous and here is a fabulous child,’ the Minister would say in a Monty Pythonesque manner.
‘Dear Minister
I want to bring to your attention my case. I am shocked at how I have been treated and the willingness of foster agencies to reject Carers who do not meet unstated criteria.
I am a former aid worker, having set up emergency operations across the world with NGOs and the UN. I have worked with colleagues from a multitude of countries as true equals. It is really only in Australia that I have experienced racial bias. I was born here and have an Anglo-Asian background. I own a one-bedroom apartment that could be converted into a 2 bedroom. I am a writer working from home with the financial security that would allow me to raise a child. I have a strong network of family, friends and neighbours. I have contributed to the state’s child protection policy, trained in child protection with UNICEF and am on child protection emergency response rosters internationally.
I am writing to you because I have now been rejected from three foster agencies.’
Then I went on to summarise the whole degrading affair, the epilogue to my tome of resentment.
Next: Part 2: List every relationship you’ve ever had and why it ended
Wishing you love and all good things x
Be a patron of the arts – oh that sounds fancy
You don’t have to own a castle to be a benefactor or patron of a writer and it sounds fancy doesn’t it? You can be a patron for the cost of a coffee. You can say stuff at parties, like “Yes I support a new writer and her foster child. Can’t have them all starving in garrets writing by candlelight can we? How much does a garret go for these days?” Seriously, thank you for supporting me, my muse, and my son in our daily lives.
Wishing you love and all good things x
Good news! You can donate in Euros, Australian, New Zealand or Hong Kong dollars. You can also donate in US dollars, except if you live in some countries – there’s a wall!
You can make a one-off or recurring donation.
PS – Ugh! You can only donate in USD from the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, British Virgin Islands, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Japan, Jersey, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK, and United Arab Emirates.
A 12 part series on a single woman’s journey through the foster system
1. Letter to the Minister 2. List every relationship you’ve ever had and why it ended 3. The Asian tick box 4. Where the wogs go 5. The Goldilocks principle 6. Letter to Keanu Reeves 7. An Anglican minister, a Catholic nun and a Buddhist philosopher walk into a cafe 8. To be or not to be: The singleton’s conundrum 9. Absolutely fine 10. Fate and other fuckery 11. Danger signs 12. An unusual situation
