Victoria: Gay families urged to foster children

Michelle Griffin

SINGLE MEN, gay families and sole parents are being urged to become foster carers in a statewide recruitment campaign.

Called Rainbow Hair For Foster Care, the campaign emphasises family diversity just as the decline in traditional marriage is being blamed for rising rates of child neglect. Darren Leckie, a travel agent who fosters two boys with his long-term partner Philip, said there had been no objections to gay couples fostering from the Catholic agency he works with, MacKillop Family Services.

''A lot of the groups in fostering are Christian and they've been welcoming,'' says Leckie. ''The only way to have our own family [as a gay couple] was through surrogacy, which costs hundreds of thousands. We knew there were lots of kids out there that need help.''

Victoria currently has 1552 foster carers but will need an extra 500 by July 2013 to meet increasing need, according to estimates from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

The urgent need for more people to care for children under state protection has persuaded many welfare organisations to cast their net wider, advertising in gay newspapers and targeting single people in advertising campaigns. While gay couples account for 3.5 per cent of households applying to become foster parents, more than one in three inquiries come from single people, of which only 14 per cent are single mothers.

Divorced grandfather Don Lee started fostering four years ago, taking in teenage boys on both a short-term and long-term basis. He was driving to a job when he got a call that the two boys he'd just dropped off at school had absconded. Now he lives with the 20-year-old and a 14-year-old boy. ''Some of the basic rules of parenting still apply,'' Mr Lee said. But he has also learnt patience. ''You've got to choose your battles. If you get that right, you can give them time to sort themselves out.'
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