Carisa Lee

Re­porter

caria.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The man­ag­er of the Fos­ter Care Unit at the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go is rais­ing a red flag over the low rate of ap­pli­cants for fos­ter care.

“We’ve re­al­ly tak­en a dip,” An­juli Tewari told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view to mark the launch of Adop­tion and Fos­ter Care Aware­ness Month last week. Tewari re­vealed that there are cur­rent­ly 164 chil­dren in fos­ter care. Of these, 53 are placed with rel­a­tives un­der the au­thor­i­ty’s Kin­ship Care Pro­gramme.

“At present, we have 111 chil­dren in tra­di­tion­al fos­ter care,” she shared. She said there were 93 ap­proved tra­di­tion­al fos­ter care providers, in­clud­ing eight in To­ba­go, and 33 ap­proved kin­ship fos­ter care providers.

“Whilst we’ve had rel­a­tives, kin­ship, fos­ter par­ents step for­ward, you know... we re­al­ly, re­al­ly need tra­di­tion­al,” Tewari ex­plained.

The au­thor­i­ty is hop­ing to re­verse the de­cline through this year’s ob­ser­vances, un­der the theme “Fam­i­ly is more than blood.”

For­mer fos­ter care provider and me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Nat­acha Jones is part of this year’s dri­ve to ed­u­cate the pub­lic on fos­ter care. Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, while so­cial­is­ing with her friends via a Zoom call, Jones learned just how many chil­dren were in need across the coun­try.

“One of my close friends, she was a lawyer with the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, and while we [were] gab­bing and chat­ting, she would mute her mic and come off the chat... and she was al­ways look­ing very dis­tressed... she came back and would say she was just on the phone with the po­lice, they’re look­ing for a place­ment for two lit­tle chil­dren,” Jones re­called.

Jones said her friend ex­plained how many chil­dren are dis­ad­van­taged and told the group they need­ed to step up—a call she an­swered with an open heart. She be­gan ex­plor­ing fos­ter care op­tions with the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty.

Be­cause it was dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Jones said the rig­or­ous ap­proval process took eight months. She even had to com­plete a med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion and a psy­cho­me­t­ric test.

“They give you a lot of time to think it through, to be clear this is what you want to do,” Jones said.

Once her de­ci­sion was fi­nal, Jones wel­comed a ba­by girl in­to her home, fos­ter­ing her from just a few months old for two years. She shared that the ex­pe­ri­ence was life-chang­ing not on­ly for her, but for her en­tire fam­i­ly, who all stepped up to sup­port and care for the child.

“She was a huge part of our lives. I mean, even to the point where my daugh­ter and I are get­ting a tat­too of her... it’s just been great. And what it has done for my chil­dren as well is give them a new aware­ness that love is all-en­com­pass­ing, that it is in­fi­nite, and that they them­selves will con­sid­er adopt­ing,” Jones shared.

Jones ad­mit­ted that it wasn’t easy to let go, but said the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty helped them through the tran­si­tion.

“But I have to say that my case­work­er is an an­gel, she re­al­ly is. She will take things across for me, she would take presents, birth­day presents, Christ­mas presents,” she said.

She said apart from her fam­i­ly, she had a com­mu­ni­ty of friends who, from the mo­ment she made the de­ci­sion, sup­port­ed her. They too grew fond of the lit­tle girl and at least one of her friends had to get ther­a­py from the au­thor­i­ty when the child was rein­te­grat­ed with her fam­i­ly.

Now that the lit­tle girl has suc­cess­ful­ly rein­te­grat­ed with her fam­i­ly, Jones is en­cour­ag­ing oth­ers to con­sid­er tem­porar­i­ly open­ing their homes to a child in need.

“It re­al­ly was an in­cred­i­ble ex­pe­ri­ence. I re­al­ly want­ed to re­move my­self away from fos­ter­ing so I can be­come an ad­vo­cate, be­cause a lot of peo­ple, when you tell them about fos­ter care, they go, ‘we have that in Trinidad?’ They didn’t even know that we had fos­ter care in Trinidad,” she said.

“Let peo­ple know that it’s not some­thing they are fos­ter­ing you to do, it’s some­thing that they are sug­gest­ing that it could align, and that there are chil­dren that re­al­ly, re­al­ly, re­al­ly want a home. There are kids that are in school that don’t have the same things like a lot of oth­ers. They don’t go home to a home where they feel safe, have some­thing to eat,” she ex­plained.

Jones said while the child is in the care of the fos­ter par­ents, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty works with the fam­i­ly. The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of­fi­cial­ly be­gan its op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing the procla­ma­tion of key leg­is­la­tion in May 2015.

Any­one in­ter­est­ed in fos­ter­ing a child can call a mem­ber of the Fos­ter Care team at 627-0748, ext. 40988, 40342 or 40345 for more in­fo.