I would love to take in a foster child, but I am single. Is it possible to undertake this form of foster care? Can I also take in a young child? These are some of the questions we find ourselves answering.
Law 184/83, with subsequent amendments by Law 149/01, indicates as possible foster caregivers in addition to a family also single persons as long as they are able to ensure “maintenance, upbringing, education and affective relations that he or she needs.” The logic that the law indicates, by opening the possibility of foster care to married couples, with or without children, cohabiting couples or single persons, is that of the best response to the child’s need. This means that there are no rigid rules that a single person should be entrusted with children of a specific age. Singles can also be a resource for a child who has been removed from his or her family.
Family foster care is a gesture of love that makes it clear that we are called to give these children experiences of love that they have not experienced before.
And Lucia, one of our single foster moms recounts the hardship but also the joy of Ibrahim’s life-changing reception.
“Before I started fostering, I volunteered in Brazil for 18 years. There I have a real family that I have continued to feel over the years. This experience with international cooperation came to an end with the migrant crisis; a time when I asked myself why travel so many miles? I thought I wanted to make myself useful in the Italian territory, never would I have thought, however, about adoption or foster care.
Then as chance would have it, an old friend of mine, told me about Salvo the president of MetaCometa. Intrigued, I decided to go to Giarre to meet Salvo and Linda, and there I met 12 children, including Ibrahim. As soon as he arrived in Italy, he had been placed with a family at the age of 10; already there were thoughts of adoption but then the family took a step back.
Between Ibrahim and me there was a kind of love at first sight because on the days I visited Giarre we were always together. From there everything was born. In Ancona I began to follow paths on foster care and within a few months I returned to Giarre so as not to lose that bond I had created with Ibrahim. I started the path with the court: that was the second time that a child from Giarre was entrusted to a family so far away. The trips to Giarre continued until November when Ibrahim then landed in Ancona, in my home.
It was not easy, Ibra did everything to keep me at a distance, to provoke me, to see if I too, like that first family, would abandon him. It took me almost a year to fall in love with him but perhaps this exclusive relationship allowed us to get to know each other better and choose each other.
As a single mom, he was able to turn me inside out, challenged everything leading me to begin a long healing process that led us toward love.
We experienced many things together: adolescence, integration into the social fabric of Ancona, getting to know each other and our choosing each other.
Being alone has been an advantage both for me, for my personal path, and for him.
Ibra’s dad exists and it was very difficult to manage their relationship. Mom, on the other hand, for many years we thought she was missing and then finally, with a psychologist, she metabolized her death. Today we keep Mom’s photo together with the photos of my parents.
Perhaps finding a mom in Italy also gave him a chance to rebalance his whole life: an Italian mom, a mom in heaven, and a dad in the Ivory Coast.
A single mom struggles a lot but a solution is always found.
I had a hard time thinking of myself as a mom, at first for me this was a welcome not the creation of a family. Ibra taught me how to be a mom, today I can no longer remember a life without him.
