IN FOCUS: Not perfect, but available – why this young couple chose to be foster parents

SINGAPORE: When Mr Melvin Soon, 31, said goodbye to his first foster child Benjamin, emotions ran high and he had tears in his eyes.

“I looked at him, he looked at me and I said I don’t know whether after today we will see each other again. But remember that you were like our family,” he said.

He watched longingly as the car that came to pick up the six-year-old boy drove away.

“The both of them made it very dramatic,” his wife, Ms Joanne Ong, 29, said with a fond chuckle.

In the span of six months, the couple had gone through highs and lows with Benjamin, who came to them from a challenging home environment.

His departure was bittersweet. The goal of fostering Benjamin was to eventually reunite him with his biological family – but Mr Soon was heartbroken that the boy, whom he had grown close to, would be leaving.

But going through the grief, sadness, and the knowledge that they may never meet again was worth it, said Mr Soon. 

“We are able to grieve the loss when they (foster children) eventually do go back. We can process those emotions,” he said.

“They get a chance to experience the love, peace, joy and safety. That’s more important than our sad emotions when we have to part with them eventually.”

Ms Ong, a freelance social worker, said she sees this grief as evidence of their connection with their foster child.

“You gave it your best, that’s why you … feel sad,” she said. “We know that we have really loved and that means we also hope that the person has experienced it.”

This conviction grew, and they signed up to be foster parents in 2021. They took in Benjamin in early 2022 for half a year.

A few months after Benjamin returned to live with his birth family, the couple adopted their daughter Ariel in 2022. She was four years old then. 

Last year, they started fostering 10-month-old Alora, and the couple will be welcoming a baby boy in May.

*The real names of the foster children cannot be used in this article as their identities are protected.

FOSTERING IN SINGAPORE

According to the latest statistics, there were 596 foster families in Singapore in 2022 that – like Mr Soon and Ms Ong – care for children who had to be removed from their birth families. 

As of December 2022, there were 540 children in foster care.

The number of children in foster care has gone up over the last decade.

The number of cases investigated by the Child Protective Service has risen in recent years – from 415 cases in 2011 to 2,141 cases in 2021.

Nearly 800 cases in 2021 were investigated for physical abuse and more than 440 cases for sexual abuse.

According to the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), children may be removed from their birth families due to safety concerns.

Fostering provides these children with a safe and stable family environment in a temporary care structure.

The aim is for foster children to return to their birth families once the families are assessed to be able to resume care for them.

In about 98 per cent of cases investigated by Child Protective Services, children either remained with their birth families or were reunited after being temporarily removed.

For the remaining 2 per cent of cases, they are unable to return home because of reasons such as parents’ chronic incarceration, serious mental health conditions or the parents’ unwillingness to provide a safe environment for the child.

"PAST WOUNDS"

Being a foster parent can involve different challenges because of a child’s past. Benjamin was old enough to know his biological parents and remember the things that happened to him.

He wrestled with his emotions and lashed out at people, while struggling to trust the couple initially.

Ms Ong explained that children from such homes may have had their trust broken by their birth families.

“When they come to the foster care system, they are bringing along all of these past wounds that may not be entirely processed.

“One of the challenges is that we are welcoming a child with a life story that is sometimes too much for them to bear for their age,” she said. 

Dr Cherie Chan, a clinical psychologist at The Other Clinic, explained the different emotions a child may feel when they are removed from an abusive home.

“Sometimes even if the situation is objectively bad or dangerous, the child may still feel a mix of emotions such as relief and guilt for getting out of a difficult or abusive situation,” she said.

“Most children do not get the full story of what is happening and things can occur very abruptly.”  

This can lead to feelings of anxiety and helplessness, as they are moved from an unsafe but familiar home – with their birth families – to a likely safer but unfamiliar environment.

“These children may also feel a lot of shame and embarrassment for having to live with someone who may not know or understand them,” she explained. 

Ms Tham Yi Ching, a foster care worker at Epworth Community Services, said foster children may have different habits from their foster parents. They may feel disoriented and scared, and even have difficulty eating and sleeping in a new place.

As part of her job, she makes regular home visits to support foster families. To make the transition easier, she suggested bringing the child on a house tour and making the room inviting to them. 

As foster parents, Mr Soon and Ms Ong try to build trust, provide a safe home and hold space for their children’s big, overwhelming emotions.

“It’s journeying with them. You will experience a lot of moments like maybe a tantrum thrown at you, or maybe you feel super unappreciated,” she said.

When Benjamin was angry, he would shout at them to go away, but when they went away, he would shout at them to come back, Mr Soon said. 

He would also sometimes tell them that he did not want to be with them and that he wanted to go home.

“You need to realise they are going through a lot. They are transitioning to us and they are also grieving the loss of their natural home and family.”

Once, after Benjamin spent the weekend with his birth family, Mr Soon and Ms Ong went to pick him up from the MRT station.

“He was screaming at the top of his voice ‘I don’t want you, I don’t want you’,” Mr Soon recounted.

“We had to work through it, and eventually he felt more comfortable and opened up to us more, and he was more calm.”

Benjamin gradually learnt to manage his anger and communicate with his foster parents.

“Those are the fruits. You slowly see them building trust with you again, and that’s beautiful,” said Ms Ong.

“Those were points of breakthrough (and) we saw how it was worth it.”

CREATING A SAFE SPACE

Looking back, Mr Soon realised he didn’t know what he would be getting himself into when he started to consider fostering 10 years ago after hearing about it in church.

“You just feel like this is a very nice picture – a family, foster child, adoptive child. It was just ideas and concepts,” he said. 

“Eventually we welcomed the children to our family, and there are times when things are difficult.”

Alora’s needs are different from Benjamin’s and Ariel’s, given that she was not yet a year old when she came into the couple’s care. It involved a lot of practical caregiving.

“Even though she’s the third child, they entered (our family) at different ages,” said Mr Soon.

“Our parenting (journey) is a bit more jumbled up,” said Ms Ong.

The couple noticed that, like Benjamin and Ariel, she had no fear of strangers initially. It was a possible sign that she had not formed strong attachments to her caregivers, but could also have been her young age.

Now, she will cry if she’s uncomfortable with someone, or if her foster parents leave her.

Mr Soon said that there may be insecurities that surface later in life. 

“We just have to watch out and don’t be complacent,” he said. “We have to be prepared for that.”

When accepting Alora’s case from the fostering agency, the couple also had to consider the impact on Ariel. They declined to share the details of Ariel’s adoption, except that she was born overseas and likely also faced abuse or neglect.

“Turns out, (Ariel) really loves Alora, so thank God. She’s like born to be a big sister,” said Mr Soon. 

Ms Ong does not want to judge the situation with Benjamin’s biological family because they had unique circumstances that led to him being removed again.

“It’s just sad that the child is always the one who gets affected,” she said.

The couple could not take Benjamin back in because Ariel was still adjusting to life with them. When Benjamin was living with them, they made a similar decision not to expand their family so as to focus on him.

“We didn’t want to introduce a new child to the family because we feel like it won’t be fair to the foster child whom we actually committed to look after,” said Mr Soon.

Benjamin’s return to the foster system broke their hearts.

“We just trust that whatever we have done with him in our family will bring him through in life, and trust that whatever seeds that we have sown will (bear) fruit eventually.”

Thinking about fostering?

“NEVER UNDERESTIMATE EVERY SMALL MOMENT”

Mr Soon and Ms Ong recalled a moment with Benjamin when his time with them was coming to an end. 

They had printed out photos of their time together and arranged them in what they called a “life book”.

“What really amazed me and affirmed the call of fostering for us, was that he really could remember every single moment from the pictures we printed,” Ms Ong said.

“‘Oh, I remember this, I remember this’, then he would add on some details, very minor details. ‘Uncle, Auntie, you remember?’

“Sometimes I forget, because it’s very small, very simple. But it meant something to him. So we realised all those ordinary moments you never noticed actually had an impact on him.

“That’s when I realised – never underestimate every small, ordinary moment with them.”