Interested in open adoption in Australia?

Ronnie: We met, fell in love, got married, and we wanted a family. We started trying to make kids the old-fashioned way but had some problems with fertility. We started doing IVF, had some problems with IVF as well, so we started looking at alternatives.

Paul: We always wanted to have a large family, and even when we were getting to a point where it wasn’t working with IVF, we had a hunch that if it did we’d probably end up with one child, and that would have been lovely, but we really wanted a larger family.

Ronnie: There’s all these siblings out there who don’t have a home, who need to stay together. It’s such an important relationship, that that was one of the key motivating factors for us. We’re going to give children the gift of that relationship forever by keeping them together.

[Open adoption gives children in foster care the opportunity to belong to a family for life.]

Ronnie: We got a phone call from Barnardos saying here’s the three kids we’d like to match you with. Frazier was seven, Preston was five, and Anabella was four.

Paul: One of their first things they asked of me was, “Can we be on a soccer team?” That was one of the first things the boys asked me. I was really surprised because the attachment was very quick, particularly with the eldest child, Frazier. I felt like he, being the eldest and also being male, he was really looking for a father figure and he just, he was like like a magnet to me. He would come into my bedroom first thing in the morning and just give me a hug straight away.

[After being fostered by Ronnie and Paul for two and a half years, Frazier, Preston and Anabella were officially adopted in 2019.]

Ronnie: First they told their class, Anabella especially, she got up in the morning and said to her teacher “Can I tell my class something?” and she said “I’m being adopted today!” and she had to explain to her class what adopted meant. Her class was very excited for her.

Ronnie: So they got to walk up to the bench, stand with the judge, stamp their papers. My brother started bawling, the judge makes his order, everyone starts clapping, lots of photos under the government seal. I’ve never seen kids smile that big; they just turned into different children from that moment on.

Ronnie: When you’re a child who’s been born into a stable, loving family, like we were, you never have to ever question if mum and dad, do they love me or if I do something wrong will everything still be okay. It’s not even a question, because of course it is, because that’s how you have been from the moment you were born. I cannot possibly imagine, I could never put myself in their shoes, and comprehend what it must be like to be a child and actually question that. I can not comprehend. And these kids have had to do that. They are the bravest people I’ve ever met, for that reason alone.

Ronnie: Eventually, I think it got to the point that they realised that we love them no matter what. But until the adoptions were final, and they know when a judge says it, when the government says it, it means something. So no matter how many times we said it, it took that moment for them to, to be able to let go and understand, we’re not going anywhere. We were serious about this the whole time.

[Open Adoption has given Frazier, Preston and Anabella the security and stability of a family for life, while still understanding who they are and where they come from.]

Ronnie: We’ve also developed such a good relationship with their birth family that we’ve gone beyond the required visits and we’ve invited them to come watch the boys’ soccer games on random weekends and they’ve both been to Anabella’s dancing concert last year. It really is important that the kids have access to their birth family. It helps them to understand their history, understand who they are, where they’ve come from and why they were put into out-of-home care in the first place, which is important to understand and acknowledge. We worked hard to create a good relationship between us and the birth family, and to make sure the kids know that you’ve got a place in your life for them and for us.

Paul: We explained to them that loving them does not take away any love from us.