Stories

In my [biological] family there wasn’t a lot of time you’d spend with your brothers and sisters and you wouldn’t get an opportunity to do a lot of stuff. So being at Tom’s gave me an opportunity to do a lot of things. I mean, the main thing was just going to someone’s place, sleeping over at someone’s house. That would never happen in my own family. And, you know, getting a choice of things, like ‘What do you want for dinner tonight?’ You know, getting my own bed … my own room sometimes. Because you know at my house we were sharing rooms with three or four of us. You know, I’d have my own choice of room … have a shower to myself … We always had to share baths when we were younger. Ah, having a bike, you know. Tom would always have his old bike and I would be on that because I never had a bike of my own. Just having other friends to kind of hang out with. I mean, you see other people at school, but it’s really only when you hang out in the street and ride bikes, you know, stuff like that, that you make real friends. - Luke

I just had this kind of huge family existence … that’s what resonates for me the most. Just being completely acknowledged by people that don’t owe me one single thing but treat me like their own. I was just normal to them and nothing out of the ordinary. And that’s what’s so special about it, you know. Nothing out of the ordinary. And that’s the wonderful thing about it – just being theirs. - Kimberley

Oh, it was really good. Yeah, they were so welcoming and stuff. It was like a really good boost of confidence to be able to stay with them. They just made you feel somehow that they really wanted to know what was going on in your life. Yeah, they just had a real interest in what was going on. Definitely very positive. It’s a bit … character building. It was just really good. It … helps with confidence … being with complete strangers and meeting new friends. It’s like having a completely different second family, you know. - Sam

It was just completely stimulating and I just loved going there and I got so excited and it was not even like a holiday house. It was just like, ‘Oh, I’m going to … my other mum’s house‘. I’d have a great time … It was just so different and so stimulating, so I was just, like, dancing around … and I was just, like, singing and, you know. And everyone just thought Bec and I were like mother and daughter. And we’d just pretend we were because it was easier than having to explain everything to people. It was really fun. I could come out of my shell and I’d really feel, like, she’d support me. Kind of, like, boost me up. She’d say, ‘Oh, you know you’re great, you do this …’ and really make me feel good and adventurous and not so quiet like I was before. Like, I could just run around the house and feel completely supported by her. - Carly

It was great, what I saw. I got to see what the dynamic [of a family] was – what they were like as parents. They were role models to me, and to how a family should be run, too. I liked the fact that I had my own time with them and I was not alone while I was there. They gave me understanding, yeah. I have no regrets about staying with them. - David

Interviewer : Can you draw any link between who you are today and these experiences? Definitely. You kind of learn a lot of new skills seeing people that you haven’t before. Like … more communications skills and things like that. And just being positive and being able to, you know, go and talk to people that you haven’t met before and things like that. It makes you feel really good about yourself as well. So, instead of feeling really crappy about yourself, it just makes you feel a lot better as a person. So, yeah, it’s really cool. - Lizzy