"Rarity from the Hollow" can be bought online at Fat Cat Press: www.fatcatpress.com. It's $6.99 U.S. and you have to have a credit card the site accepts. There's a sample and some blurbs, etc. It can also be bought on the Mobipocket site for $2 more and where it's rated five star by readers. Please vote if you like it.

My grandma always gave me a birthday present, never costly, and she still does even though she's been dead for thirty years or so.

Robert E.

I’m glad, philo, that most children now are cared for in Foster homes. Are you sure, I thought there were a couple of orphanages (QLD?) still there, but I might have been wrong about that.

I’m very pleased to know that all these horrible orphanages have disappeared- if they really have disappeared. Foster homes are so much more natural and loving. The kids your wife (and I suppose you do your share of workload as well) cares for are very lucky to have her.

But still- Although foster carers, I expect, are adequately selected and monitored, and therefore child abuse in foster homes might be minimal, it’s still good to be alert. There must be nothing worse for a child who goes into foster care because s/he was abused by her/his own parents, to find that their foster parents abuse them as well! Be quick to report child abuse when you suspect it is going on ANYWHERE.

Are there enough foster homes available to accommodate all children who can’t go to relatives? Can you keep a child until it can go to a permanent home and is there a maximum time you can keep a child? I think it must be very hard emotionally for both the child and foster parent to see a child go to a permanent home.

Robert E, thanks, just wanted to make sure about your book- needs to be Celivia-rated ;)

Celivia,
It is now 20 years since we fostered infant children waiting for adoption or permanent foster placement. Most of the babies we cared for were between three days and 6 months while young mothers determined if they were going to adopt. Some were adopted, others taken in by grandparents, some were children of drug addicts, or temporarily accomodated to give stressed single mothers time to recover.

From my experience I refer to the closure of orphanages, when experience showed children prospered better mentally and emotionally in smaller families . I remember in the 1960's one Church orphanage in Sydney trialled family homes of not more than six - eight children in a home with live in house parents. It was so sucessful it set the course for the abandonment for large institutions.

In 1978, my wife and I founded Turning Point, a professional foster home that housed six teens at a time. During the five years that we lived there, I was the foster father for 36 kids, several of whom I still have a relationship with. There were no environmental indicators, such as signs, posted rules, etc., that it was not just a house on the block. Except for one teen prostitute who was murdered, all the kids ended up okay, and a few are financially well-off now. Turning Point was replicated and still exists.

After that, I started small emegency shelters for children around the state. Unfortunately, the experience was opposite. They were soon filled with kids who had bounced from one foster home to another, never achieving a sense of permanency.

Today, as a therapist, I always give each kid my work phone number on discharge, and tell them that they can call me for as long I live. Most don't call, but several do and have for years. Mainly, we chit chat. I think its a sense of belonging and having permanent positive relationships that helps kids who were birthed by a parent they can't count on being there for them.

Some kids were not wanted when conceived. Some others were a manipulation to qualify for welfare. Some are so damaged by abuse and neglect that their births represented just the first cruelty of their lives. Despite advances in out-of-home child care concepts, abortion has a place in a civilized society as an act of kindness, some pregnant women recognize it as such, and anybody who makes them feel bad or discourages them from doing the right thing should be ashamed. It's not solely a matter of women's rights. It's a children's rights issue as well, as a living hell is much worse than having never been born and, frankly, many more kids are still damaged by the child welfare systems than will be freely acknowledged

please Answer the question Philo.

Why dont your lot speak up Against Animal cruelty?

Better still pop over to Scouts Forum.

Its interesting even when people go to the trouble of starting a forum about the lack of action from you lot they all hide behind their bibles.

The Forum is noticable absent of all you good Church People.

Oh and Just for the record we run a school for underpriverleged kids as well as international students.

The children that were raised by our family are all either studying law or medical.

They are happy well educated almost audults.

Hope To See you on the other other forum.

Thanks Robert I will buy some.

Hope to see you and Ozgirl there also, and the others.

Thanks Robert Eggleton for your post from the child care front and for the time and effort you have put into these children.