This week’s SoroptiVoice blog comes from Christine Johnstone from SI South Queensland. Here she describes her region’s project: Supporting Kids in Plight (SKIP). This is a project which provides life diaries to children in long term foster care through partnership with the local government department of communities.
Who can I reminisce with, who is there to
help me remember when? You are sitting
and contemplating the next major direction in your life; you need encouragement
and support from family to help with your decision. This is easy if you have
family and close friends to use as a sounding board, family and friends who can
draw on past experiences in your life to assist you with your evaluation and
draw on these experiences to showwhere your strengths and weaknesses are.
It’s not so easy if your life has been one
where you have moved from home to home, where people cared for your physical
needs and perhaps neglected your emotional needs. This is often the reality of being a Foster Child. You have moved home so many times, you
feel you have lost your identity. Who
are you? What happened in your life? When did the major milestones occur? Who
will tell you when, as a 6 year old, you received the “Best Drawing of the Day”
award, when, as a 12 year old, you ran out onto the football field and scored a
goal? Where are the photos to show that you attended the school formal, had
that 13th birthday party?
Where are the photos of your siblings? Extended family? You may have lost contact
with the extended family. Medical
records may have been lost; moving from home to home also meant moving communities,
new schools, new doctors, and new friends. This is often the life of a child in long
term foster care.
Soroptimist
International Region of South Queensland’s SKIP (Supporting Kids in Plight)
Project, supports children in long term Foster Care. This project provides a
Life Diary to Foster Children. What is a
Life Diary? It is the provision of
equipment to enable the child and the foster parents to keep written records of
the child’s placement. Children
who are placed in foster care often experience many short-term placements. It is therefore important for the child to be
able to store special toys, photos, mementoes, certificates, school reports,
medical records – anything that will assist the child to remember their life
history.
Soroptimist
International of South Queensland Region’s SKIP Project provides “Life Diaries”
to the Queensland Department of Communities for distribution to long term
foster children. This diary consists of 5ltr
plastic storage container in which we pack a number of items to help develop a life diary. In the
container is a hard cover diary; photo album; scrapbook album; A4 size heavy
duty exercise book which can double as another diary; a display book (for
certificates, awards, records); pens; pencils; stickers; and a soft toy.
The
plastic storage container was chosen as it is durable, small enough to fit
under a bed, large enough to contain all the goods, plus provides additional
room for other personal mementoes, and is easy enough for the foster children
to pack up and take with them to other placements. The
Soroptimists, working with the Department of Communities, ensure that the
department staff encourage the foster parents to write in the diary and
encourage the children to use the diary to keep these memories alive. 
As the
project is a region project, all clubs and members are involved in raising
funds, purchasing the goods, packing and delivering to the departmental
officers in the club’s community. On a rotational basis, each club in the
Region is given the opportunity to pack 100 diaries, arrange delivery of the
diaries to their local department of communities, meet with the department
staff, arrange publicity of the delivery and, in some cases, meet with the
foster parent.
Working
with the Government Department has ensured the success of this project, raised
awareness of the work of Soroptimist International at many levels of government,
increased public awareness and encouraged relationship building between child
and foster parent.