Losing care of her seven-year-old nephew left Canberra woman Sara, 39, battling against a system that she felt was geared against her.
The heartbreak of having your child ripped from your home and placed into care was traumatic enough for Sara and her family, but it was the unfounded allegations of child abuse that almost broke her.
Sara’s long journey of caring for her nephew began when he was around 16 months old and his family dynamic crumbled, leaving herself and her husband with a life-changing decision.
He was her nephew; how could Sara not save him from a life in foster care?
“At the time it wasn’t a very hard decision, we’d known him since he was born. We just stepped in and took him on as one of our own,” says Sara.
“We actually have three older children as well, and navigating the system was difficult. He eventually came to live with us, which was complicated in itself.
“But then we started with Child Youth and Protection Services and had virtually no support at all.”
Uneducated in childhood trauma and how it can manifest later on in life, Sara’s nephew began having behavioural issues that she was severely under-prepared to deal with.
She reached out for help, to no avail, and says she eventually burnt out, causing her to develop Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder on top of a depression diagnosis.
“It was all too much, and I burnt out … I totally burnt out and had a breakdown. I called for help and instead of helping us, they took him away and I was accused of a number of abuse and neglect items which I then had to fight,” reveals Sara, the heartbreak of her son being taken from her home still evident in her voice.
“I really suffered through the way I was treated through the process. It was very unfair, there was no consideration that I was sick, and the things they were saying just simply weren’t true, but nobody wanted to believe that.”
The term Sara uses to describe her breakdown was a “deep exhaustion” and feels if she had received proper training when he first was placed in her care, a whole lot of additional trauma could have been prevented.
“Things just started to seem harder. You tend to get more irritable, and you’re tired all the time. You can take on the trauma of the child yourself and you start feeling the same responses,” says Sara.
“And you start getting angry about what happened to the child and who did it to the child and it just becomes so much you want to curl up into a ball because of the horrible things that happened that you couldn’t prevent.
“Once I got over the initial breakdown and got stablised again, I started working, learning, and educating myself in everything I possibly could, and advocating for my son, making sure he was getting everything he needed.”
Even while the people working on her case were treating Sara “badly”, she continued working with them because she says she just wanted her son to be okay.
While fighting her case, Sara’s son was initially taken to a respite care home with people he knew, but when that situation broke down, he went through 15 foster care placements in 15 months – he had just turned six years old.
“Between the ages of six and eight, he went through 15 foster places and two residential care spots – a seven-year-old was in a Canberra residential care home for 12 months because there aren’t enough foster carers in the ACT,” Sara says.
“After a lot of fighting, I ended up having to take it as far as I could through the Human Rights Commission, and then through a Civil Tribunal. From that process, they granted me an internal review, which means the case got kicked up to one of the high managerial positions.”
It took Sara over two years to get her son back from foster care, and he has been home now for around six months. She claims the people who were working on her case initially no longer work in the sector.
“[They] reviewed everything that had happened, spoke to everyone involved, looked at the paperwork, and then made a decision that it was in his best interest to return home to us,” smiles Sara.
“When I got the phone call to let me know he was coming home, it was a huge relief. I burst into tears. I was so happy and relieved, but I knew it was going to be hard work. Unfortunately, he was heavily traumatised in his time away from us. It’s still hard work but knowing he’s safe at home… it was just utter relief.
“We’ve still got a lot of work to do, and unfortunately, it’s going to take us years to undo the damage through the foster care system. But we’re on the path to recovery. There’s still plenty of time.”
The Kinship Circle program is an initiative founded by Sara, after her traumatic experience with the ACT care system. Her goal is to give other kinship carers the support she feels she failed to receive from the governing body.
“I started a website called Kinship Circle and I’m collating a lot of information there that is relevant to kinship carers in the ACT and surrounding areas,” explains Sara.
“Things like: where you can get help, who does training courses, and where you can access things. It’s a work in progress.
“At the moment, there is plenty of information out there, but it’s scattered to the four winds. So, you have to work really hard to find the things you need.”
While Sara says the system is inadequate right now, it is changing, just extremely slowly.
“For me, Kinship Circle is about starting to fill a gap that we have in the system here,” says Sara.
“One of the biggest things is access to training, and access to training as soon as possible. A lot of kids who come into care do have some form of trauma, neglect, abuse, and even at a very young age – like our little guy.
“All of his trauma was pre-verbal, so we treated him as one of the kids and it wasn’t until he was older that he started having huge meltdowns and we didn’t know why. Turns out, it was because the trauma had affected his brain.”
Sara is adamant that if she had received adequate trauma-based care training years before her breakdown, her son wouldn’t have been removed from her home.
“Just knowing the impact that trauma has on the brain can make a huge difference for a kinship carer, because they can go from seeing this as a kid who’s just being naughty or acting out at school to knowing that, actually, there’s something going on here that we need to look at,” says Sara.
“But if you don’t know that, you can’t tell the difference. So, one of the biggest things is training. As a foster carer, you get all that training initially, but as a kinship carer, the kid just arrives.”
Clearly exasperated from re-telling her story, Sara says she’s fighting for training to be available to every kinship carer to avoid any other Canberran being forced through the removal process she was subjected to.
“I want all the training that foster carers get to be offered to kinship carers, and it has to be offered outside of business hours,” says Sara.
“One of the biggest problems kinship carers have is they’re often older and they have to keep working to support the child who has come into their care, and they can’t take time off to go to these things.”
Because of her experience, Sara was nominated and selected to sit on the carer wellbeing joint committee as a kinship care representative. She says through gaining a voice within the kinship carer sector, she’s now able to raise systemic issues and give feedback from a carer’s perspective.
“I ruffled the waters, I’m afraid,” says Sara.
“I just want to see no carers go through what I had to go through, and no kids go through what our little guy went through.”
“It’s been traumatic for all of us.”
To any other kinship carer in the ACT who is struggling to find support, Sara says she is here for you, and Kinship Circle is here for you.
A support group runs once a fortnight at Carers ACT, and Sara says it’s been imperative for kinship carers across Canberra who lack knowledge and training.
“I want other kinship carers to know you’re not alone. Come talk to us. Reach out, join a support group. Talk to your case manager, talk to Carers ACT. Make sure you know who your carer support worker is,” says Sara.
“Don’t suffer alone. Speak up, because you’re not the only person going through this.
“I feel very blessed to have come through our journey and to be able to start giving back to the carer community and start supporting other carers. It’s an exciting venture and I hope we can grow Kinship Circle and help as many carers as we can.”
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