It wasn’t a lightning-bolt moment. It was more of a slow realisation that maybe I’d been heading in this direction for a while without even knowing it.
“What made you decide to become a foster carer?”
It’s a question I’ve been asked quite a few times, and I never really know how to answer it. There wasn’t a big eureka moment where I suddenly woke up one morning and thought, You know what? I’ll become a foster dad.
It was much less dramatic than that.
It was something I’d been quietly mulling over for quite a while, and, looking back, I think the answer probably started a few years before I ever filled out an application.
Before foster care, there were homestay boys
Before I became a caregiver, I hosted international high school students as a homestay parent. I did it for about three years and had two boys from Thailand stay with me during that time.
They arrived as 15- and 16-year-olds, so they were pretty much fully cooked already. They knew what they liked, they knew what they didn’t like, and for the most part they needed somewhere safe to live, a bed, food, Wi-Fi and someone to make sure they weren’t doing anything too stupid.
I loved it.
I got to know their families, learned about their country and heard about why they’d decided to come all the way to New Zealand to study. It was fascinating getting to see a little bit of their lives and their families, and I genuinely enjoyed having them around.
But something else happened that I hadn’t really expected.
I started worrying about them.
When they were late home, I worried. When they weren’t feeling well, I worried. I wondered whether they’d eaten properly and, inevitably, whether they were eating enough vegetables. I even found myself trying to play the role of “Dad” when they needed a bit of guidance.
Which, as you can probably imagine, went down brilliantly with teenage boys.
Still, there was something about being responsible for them that I really liked. I liked having someone to look after. I liked being needed. I liked having someone come home at the end of the day.
I just didn’t really understand what that meant yet.
Then the house went quiet
When I was getting ready to say goodbye to the second boy, I started thinking about what life would look like afterwards.
The house would be quiet again. No teenager coming home from school, no wondering what time they’d be back, no conversations about their day, no arguing about vegetables.
And I realised I was going to miss it. That’s when I started reading about foster care.
At first, I wasn’t necessarily thinking, I’m going to become a foster carer. I was just curious. I wanted to understand what it involved and what sort of people actually became caregivers.
The more I read, the more something clicked.
The things I was reading about sounded like things I had in my heart to give: a warm, loving and safe home, someone who was kind, caring and understanding, and, hopefully, a fair bit of patience.
I had all of those things. Well, most of the time.
The patience part seemed slightly optimistic, but I figured nobody was perfect.
So I decided to apply.
And then reality kicked in
Of course, deciding you want to become a foster carer and actually becoming one are two very different things.
There was paperwork. There were checks. There were conversations, references, medical forms, police vetting and a whole lot of learning about what I’d actually signed myself up for.
The whole process took about four months from applying to getting my approval from Oranga Tamariki.
And during that time, I learned pretty quickly that foster care isn’t simply about giving a child somewhere to live.
These are children who have experienced things that no child should have to experience, and they all arrive with their own history, their own needs and their own challenges. One of the biggest things you learn about during the process is trauma-informed caregiving, because understanding what a child has been through is an important part of understanding how to care for them.
There isn’t a cookie-cutter foster child. Some children need more support than others, and every situation is different, but there is one thing that sits underneath all of it.
They need somewhere safe. Somewhere stable.
Somewhere they can call home.
Was I ready?
Honestly? I don’t know.
I don’t think anyone ever really is.
I knew I wanted to help. I knew I had a lot of love to give. I knew I could provide a safe home and that I was willing to learn, but there was still a very big difference between thinking you could do something and actually doing it.
I had no idea what the future would look like.
I had no idea what kind of child might come into my home, what challenges we’d face or what being a foster dad would actually feel like.
I certainly didn’t know how much my life was about to change.
But I kept coming back to the same thought.
I’d always wanted to be a Dad.
Maybe I’d just spent a few years taking the scenic route to get there.