Foster parents get the chance to turn young lives around

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Everyone loves a good emotional human tale. Whether it's your favourite sporting code or a feel-good movie script, it tends to be the people or characters who have overcome backgrounds hindered with some form of adversity who make the best subjects for an uplifting story.

Long-time foster parents such as Julia and Barry Rollings get to not just see these stories play out as they help children at a critical stage of their life, they get to be part of the story itself.

The couple are into retirement now and Julia's mother, who passed away in April, used to ask her why she hadn't stopped taking on foster care. Julia's simple response was "and do what, Mum?"

Julia and Barry met in the '80s when Julia had one child and Barry a further four. They had another biological child together and went on to also adopt seven children from various parts of the world.

Add to that 48 foster children since the late '90s, and to the Rollings family this way of life is perfectly normal, so for as long as they are able to provide a loving home, Julia says they will continue to be foster parents.

Over the years Julia Rollings has been awarded such things as Banardos Mother of the Year in 2009, and ACT's Local Hero for 2020, and even wrote a book called Love Our Way published in 2008.

The Rollings don't do all of this for the awards or to write a book though. They continue to offer foster care because they find the experience of positively impacting the lives of young people in need to be immensely satisfying. There are many reasons why a child may need to be in foster care.

"Many stories are sad, with the parents or mother having a limited capacity to care for them," Julia said. "And there are complex nuances to their situations too. Lots of kids come from backgrounds with a lot of adversity, enduring more crap in their early years than most of us get to deal with in our whole lifetime."

As such, Julia also encourages anyone, including singles or same-sex couples, who can provide a safe loving home to consider foster care, pointing out there are various needs from respite care on weekends through to long-term care.

There are also children of various ages who need foster homes, from newborn babies through to older teens who Julia says would benefit from having someone in a bit of a mentor-type of role to guide them ahead of living independently.

Julia says the need for foster parents has been growing year-on-year as well, and the summer bushfires and coronavirus pandemic have only increased that need even further.

"People often say to me, 'oh, I couldn't do that, I'd get too attached.' And to those people I say, you're exactly who we need. If a piece of your heart doesn't go out the door with them, then you're doing them a disservice."

It doesn't have to stop there though. Julia says that she still has contact from two thirds of the children who have been in their care, getting updates as simple as little picture messages from their long-term guardian or parent sharing special moments in their lives. She forwards those messages to her own grown-up children who respond with excitement of their own.

Julia also asked her now-adult children how they felt about growing up with foster kids in the home, and the response was even more positive than she had hoped. Not only did they feel it was a good experience for them to have foster children as part of the family, some have now also decided to become foster parents themselves.

You can visit Julia's Memories Timeline at memories.com.au/timeline/julia-rollings-98148 to see more of her wonderful life.

Keep your memories alive for future generations. Visit memories.com.au or download the app today. It's where memories keep living.

This is advertiser content for Memories.