Barcelona (EFE).- Tona and Josep are a married couple who have been part of the Red Cross Family Reception Service (SAF) for 13 years. In this long decade they have already temporarily welcomed six babies and they admit, in an interview with EFE, that each time they hand over the child they suffer a “mourning” that they “bear” by giving the children an “album of memories and songs” so that remember them.
They live in the Barcelona region of Berguedà, from where Josep, an architect by profession and passionate about photography, documents the entire reception process, “from when we go to look for the baby at the hospital until we sign the farewell”, with images that he later compiles. in an album “so that there is no gap in memories of the stage in which the child is in foster care”.
They keep the babies in foster care, without the right to adopt them, for the time necessary for them to be adopted or to return to their family of origin. It is an altruism that generates pain in each farewell.
“On the first page of the scrapbook we write a verse of a song that reminds us of him. Then, we explain without dramatizing that we are happy that he can continue a happy life and we include the photographs that we have since they arrived home. He helps us cope with the mourning for his departure and experience it as a happy moment”, details Tona, a woman in her sixties.
This family from Bergued explains to EFE that, in some cases, they have met the biological parents of the children they have fostered and admit that “it is difficult because you don’t know how they will act, but you have to accept their reaction.”
Josep and Tona welcomed their first baby motivated by a couple of friends: “We saw them walking with a little girl and we were surprised because they were no longer of the age to have small creatures,” they joke.
That meeting led to his first foster care and gave rise to five more.
“We immediately appreciated that it was a very important task. From the outset, knowing that it would be a more or less short stage, we decided to try and see, depending on the circumstances, if we were capable of moving forward. We ended up repeating it”, emphasizes Josep.
They say that they maintain the relationship with the children who have lived in their house and they assure, excited, that “it is very enriching”.
Another foster family, also a neighbor of the Berguedà region, is the one formed by Xavier and Teresa, who describe the foster care as “social justice”, since “if there are families that can afford to foster, why not increase the happiness of the children? ?”.
They have always been in favor of “involving everyone around us in the reception, that the environment also welcomes”.
“I have won and learned more than them in this time. I have had to reinvent myself because the process requires adaptation and knowing how to manage problems that arise without confrontation and making them feel part of the family”, says Xavier.
Javier and Mario -fictitious names-, future computer engineers specialized in cybersecurity and mosso d’esquadra, respectively, are two of four siblings, now adopted, who were fostered when they were children.
They couldn’t all go to the same family and they grew up seeing each other only once a month: “We couldn’t be without each other, so once a month we organized the four of us to sleep together in the same house. Now, the families of our brothers are also ours”, emphasizes Javier.
The brothers admit that “the first days are difficult because it is difficult to gain confidence, but you start a new life, little by little, and you end up adapting.”
“With our biological mother we planned monthly one-hour visits. We remembered a specific gesture that she made with her head and the day we saw her do it we said ‘she’s mom’. Now, we know that she is happy that we are doing well and we tell her that she does not have to worry about anything, that now it is her turn to live her life ”, they express with emotion.
The Red Cross has warned about the lack of families that foster children and, therefore, the institution has deployed actions to promote and disseminate foster care.
The number of foster families has stagnated for ten years, according to the Secretary for Childhood, Adolescence and Youth of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Núria Valls, who wants, “with the new budgets, to strengthen the collaborating families that welcome during weekends or times like Summer holidays”.
As the families explained to EFE, in Catalonia, those who want to foster must pass “validation and approval tests and tests” and receive aid from the Generalitat, which “in no case are designed for us to profit.”
In fact -they add-, “it is more expensive for the administration for a child to live in a Residential Center for Educational Action (CRAE) than for a family to take them in and, for them, it is much better to grow up in a family environment”.
