No Limit to Love

Over her 20-year career as a foster carer, Julia Rollings has become a devoted mum to nearly 50 babies, toddlers and children.

IT IS HARD to grasp the extent of Julia Rollings’ capacity for maternal love. It goes far beyond loving her biological children—of which she has two. It goes far beyond loving her adopted children, of which she has seven, or her step-children, of which she has four. And it goes far beyond loving the nearly 50 babies, toddlers, and children who have been entrusted to her over a 20-year career as a foster carer.

Along the way she has earned a Psychology Degree, moved into a managerial role within a foster care program, been awarded Barnados ACT Mother of the Year, and written a book about her extraordinary family and a devastating twist in their overseas adoption story.

But first, meet Julia. She opens the door of her meticulously clean and large family home with a tiny newborn cradled to her chest in a sling.

As she settles on the sofa, she reaches down to stroke the forehead of a beautiful and slightly older baby in a bouncer. Fed through a tube, Julia warns me this baby has some medical issues and will shortly bring up their lunch. As if on cue, the child vomits and Julia deftly comes to the rescue with a towel without once disturbing the baby asleep on her chest. Both babies seem content and, as we chat over the next hour, neither utters a cry.

“I am pretty good at settling them,” Julia demurs.

Even when one of them is detoxing off heroin—a process that can bring a strong adult to their knees.

Julia’s story is multifaceted. She is on the front line of the ACT’s emergency care and protection service— taking babies at virtually a minute’s notice when, for whatever reason, they cannot be cared for by their own parents.

She maintains an almost unfathomable lack of judgement for the parents whose children she nurtures, maintaining that whenever and wherever possible, parents should be supported to resume custody of their children if they can provide safety, stability and love.

“I tend not to dwell on the parents’ issue. My focus is entirely on the bub. It does still get to me, when I go into the hospital nursery, and a bub has been there a week and all the other babies have teddies and balloons and one baby is on its own. And nobody has visited. Nobody has celebrated their birth. They have been exposed to heroin, or methamphetamine since conception, there has been no prenatal care and now they have to go through withdrawal….”

While Julia has come to resigned terms with the way in which drug addiction takes control of a person so that they are not able to look after themselves, much less a child, she is less tolerant when parents make choices which put their babies or children in harm’s way.

“Whether we were biological parents or not, we loved them all.”

“Sometimes the parents have done the best they can, but their best may still not be good enough to provide a safe home. There could be drug issues, mental health issues, homelessness. And sometimes the parents have tragic stories, and they have never had parenting modelled to them and they have had tragic lives themselves, and it just perpetuates.”

“I find it harder not to judge choices. The choice when someone has sexually abused your child and you chose to let that person back into your life. The choice to go from one violent relationship to another. Sometimes, those parents who recognise their children are at risk and step out of their parenting role are doing the best they can for their child.”

And Julia steps in.

THE GREAT IRONY is that Julia recalls her own path to motherhood, as a 20-year-old in 1982, started out unconvincingly. A young, single mum with a slightly needy daughter, she felt stressed, alone, and unsupported.

“I swore my firstborn (Alix) would be an only child. Absolutely swore it.”

But along came Barry when Alix was two-years-old, a gentle and loving dad, recently divorced and with four kids in tow. The pair fell in love and their families blended easily.

“Whether we were biological parents or not, we loved them all.”

Eventually, Julia would fall pregnant with their “joint” baby, Briony.

Her confidence as a mum grew exponentially, and she learned she was happiest when the house was full of children.

But after Barry’s children relocated to Perth with their mum, that previously boisterous house seemed suddenly still.

“We’d gone from six down to two. I began to think about more children but I wanted to look for children in need of a family rather than produce more. It is something I had been thinking about for some time and Barry was on board.”

The couple embarked on the long, intricate and administratively taxing process of overseas adoption —an option not for the fainthearted, according to Julia.

In 1989, the pair received with absolute delight a son from Korea. Haden was a chubby-faced five-monthold who was adored by his doting older sisters.

They quickly decided they would invite another child into the fold and began the process to adopt Joel— a two-year-old with special needs from Taiwan, who arrived in 1991.

"I wanted to look for children in need of a family rather than produce more."

The growing and inclusive family took Joel’s blindness and autism in their stride.

By this stage, Julia and Barry were getting pressured by their existing children to open the doors to more. They set about adopting another child from India. That child became two brothers, Madhu and Sadan, who arrived in 1995.

A second set of siblings from India, Akil and Sabila, were to follow three years later and this Canberra family was a walking advertisement for boisterous multiculturalism.

“Oh yes, we stood out at the mall,” says Julia with a snort. And while each of her adopted children brought varying challenges based on their often tragic early experiences, those years were largely crazy, busy, loving times.

Until Julia and Barry’s adoption story took a devastating turn.

In 2006, an international child trafficking scandal broke, implicating the adoption agency that handled Akil and Sabila’s adoption. The director of the orphanage was arrested and Julia and Barry learned their youngest children may have been sold rather than relinquished by their ill parents, as their paperwork stated.

The couple faced the possiblity head-on, launching their own private investigation to establish the truth behind their children’s heritage. They would indeed learn that Akil and Sabila were taken by their father from their mother Sunama while she slept. He sold them and was never heard of again.

Julia and Barry resolved to search for and, hopefully, contact Sunama, facing the very real fear they may be asked to relinquish their children if their biological mother wanted them returned.

But Julia’s dread dissipated after finding Sunama and writing to her to say, “I am so very sorry you have experienced such sadness in losing your children and not knowing what happened to them. Now I am happy to be able to tell you they are both happy, healthy and loved.”

Sunama responded: “You are the parents now and you have our best wishes.”

Julia returned to India in 2007 to reunite her son, then 13, and daughter, 12, with their mother. Sunama lived with her second husband in a small windowless room with five young children and no running water or toilet. The families spent a week together before establishing a regular pattern of visits and the Rollings extended financial support to educate the five children.

Julia’s book Love Our Way chronicles the journey and the Rollings were the subject of an ABC Foreign Correspondent story detailing the reunion.

Contact with Sunama has, however, ceased recently. Julia sadly reports that the family has moved away without leaving details. They believe one of the daughters has been married at barely 15.

“We were really hoping to change the family’s trajectory. Get the kids educated in a bilingual school and hopefully secure their future employment…This is a devastating outcome.”

But life in Canberra has largely returned to normal. Or the Rollings’ standard of normal.

Since Akil and Sabila, another sibling has arrived— Steph, a former foster child who arrived as an emergency placement at the age of 10 and simply refused to leave. Steph was formally adopted a few months ago, at age 17.

And in a beautiful turn of events, Julia’s first daughter Alix and her husband have become the permanent family for a foster baby who was in Julia’s care for her first year. It happened very naturally when Alix and Trevor temporarily moved in with Julia and Barry after the birth of their first baby and while they were searching for a new family home. They bonded with the other baby in the house—so much so that they wanted to offer her a permanent family. Alix and Trevor went through foster care training and it was one of the easiest transitions of all—particularly as Julia can now play doting grandmother to a little girl she loves.

And, ultimately, she does love each and every one of her tiny charges.

“Oh you have to. You just have to. Sometimes it is so difficult, falling in love with the new bubby while still missing the old one. But if a bit of my heart doesn’t go out the door with them when they leave then I am doing them a disservice.”

She does what any regular mum does—takes endless photos, records every milestone on video, keeps the special keepsakes, and puts together photo books for each baby. She also regularly writes her thoughts down to share with family and to defray some of the emotional burden she carries daily.

Recently Julia had to say goodbye to a baby born to parents with long-term addictions, who almost didn’t pull through.

“We became your foster family when you were just born. You came into the world too early, too fragile and in too much pain.

Every day, I came to the hospital and held you close to me so you could hear my heartbeat… not the same one you had heard before you were born but still a mother’s heart. I hoped it would settle you. I wrapped you up and whispered to you, telling you what a special baby you are.

Those early days and weeks were so hard. You shook and stiffened as your tiny body struggled through painful withdrawal.

Then, little one, we were able to take you home at last… still tiny and fragile but growing. You spent your first months snuggled close to me every day in a baby wrap.

So, we fed you, held you and loved you, anticipating the day you would make eye contact and start to smile.

Weeks turned into months, but you turned your face away when I tried to catch your gaze. I smiled but you didn’t smile back. I worried. Then, as were into your fourth month, something clicked and you suddenly sparked into life. Not only did you look at us but you looked everywhere. You smiled and your eyes lit up. People in the supermarket started talking to you while I paid for groceries, as you’d caught their eye and grinned. You were going to be okay.

It has been such a joy to share each of those moments, which we captured in photos and videos so these could be shared with you.

Then the news that the decision has been made and a family approved to be yours forever. We met them and we like them. They are good people. They have been waiting for you and making room in their hearts and home for their youngest, a baby they didn’t expect but are so happy to welcome.

So, my sweet, we reach that moment that is the hardest for me. This is the time my throat tightens, tears spill and a little bit of my heart is torn away. I will hold you close, kiss your sweet head, and then hand your mothering on to the woman who will become your world.

This is tough but it is as it should be. If walking away was easy, you would not have been given all you deserved. I am so grateful that we were part of your life.

You were loved, and you will be loved, precious babe. Xx” •

A word from ACT Together, a consortia of agencies led by Barnardos Australia. In the ACT alone, there are more than 700 children and young people living in out-of-home care arrangements. This year ACT Together is seeking 100 carers—carers who are single, partnered, gay, or married.

These carers can care for a child for as little as a weekend a month or may seek to welcome a child into their family for life.

Carers are needed for babies, sibling groups as well as teens who need assistance in navigating their way into adulthood.

The question of whether we could help through foster care is a question we should all consider—can we do more to support our community’s most vulnerable babies, children and young people?

For more information go to www.acttogether.org.au