Meet Mr. and Mrs. Foster – a couple who have spent 32 years caring for nearly 200 little ones. The couple, 83 and 75, married in 1982 and spent the last 34 years of their lives selflessly devoting themselves to caring for little ones.
The couple has fostered dozens of little ones – some for days, months, even years – and even adopted a baby girl, who is now in her 30s and has four kids. And, even though William is over 80, the couple is still welcoming little ones.
Jean said: “It’s not easy and sometimes you have extremely difficult cases, but it’s such a rewarding job, we really like it. You make sacrifices, and make the kids feel welcome and part of the family. We keep in touch with many little ones we have taken in, they visit us often, and we have had many children who were adopted after we took them in and they are doing wonderfully.
The feeling we get when we see them so well is fantastic, it’s the best job in the world. We really love what we do, we love the kids and our reward comes when they come and go smiling. Holidays are always very busy and Christmas Day is always very hectic; we usually take it in turns and have a bunch of different dinners because there are too many to go around the table at once.
I haven’t had Bill dressed up as Santa Claus yet, all the little ones would know it was him anyway. There are a lot of people who think that once they’re over 50 they’re too old to be taken in, but now is the best time to do it because you’re an adult and you have all the time in the world to give to the little ones.
Our age is irrelevant because we always have, kids keep us young because we always filled our house with little ones because we love what we do. Some of them you will keep for a few days, others for a few months and in our case some for 30 years. »
The couple, who have 9 children between them, two of whom they adopted, also have more than 15 great-grandchildren. Bill added: “My favorite thing about all of this is how much I love it, I guess I love everything, but we do everything together, like changing them and bathing them.
The only problem is when they go, we’re used to cooking big dinners, so we cook all that food and realize there’s no one to eat it all. » Bill and Jean started fostering kids in 1983 and have since amassed a tally of 186 little ones whom they have fostered for days, months, and, in some cases, even years.
One of the little ones they took in as a little girl was supposed to be with them for a weekend, but five years later she was still with them, so they ended up making the move permanent, which Bill and Jean agreed must be because they had built such a strong relationship with the child over the five years they were with her.
Jean said: “She had been with us for so long that we didn’t want to see her go, so we asked to adopt her and she was accepted. »
The couple says the work they do has kept them young and even now they are currently raising two toddlers under the age of one and don’t plan on quitting their dream jobs anytime soon. “We’re so used to the job now and we love seeing the little ones, I think it would surprise a lot of people to realize how rewarding this job can be after so long.”
