How an Adelaide teacher and his wife rescued his student from foster care after the neglected child’s father died
Four years ago, an eight-year-old Adelaide boy tragically lost his only parent. In a move that brought colleagues to tears, his teacher stepped up in the most incredible way.
SA News
Don't miss out on the headlines from SA News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Four years ago, George was a teacher at his primary school and Aidan was just another one of his students. Today – after a heartbreaking tragedy that up-ended both their worlds – they are doting father and loving son.
In an extraordinary story of selflessness and unconditional love, the teacher and his wife, Kiki, became forever foster parents to the lost and grieving eight-year-old boy, who had been left all alone after his troubled father died suddenly just one week before the end of the school year in 2019.
In the tumultuous days that followed the shocking death, George found himself gripped by heartbreak for Aidan, whose problematic mother had been removed from his life years earlier
“It was just the unfairness of it,” says the 57-year-old, who Kiki found bereft on the couch at the end of the long and distressing day.
“I was just getting very emotional. I thought ‘it’s so unfair that this little kid, his whole life is now going to be affected because of something that someone else did. This is not fair.”
In a split-second decision that would change their lives forever – and despite having never spoken about the possibility, let alone the logistics, of fostering a child – they wordlessly agreed to bring Aidan into their family forever.
“We never even had a discussion about it … I didn’t even ask her,” says George. “She just said ‘of course we’ll have him’.”
“He said ‘I feel he’s meant to be ours, we’re meant to have this kid’,” says Kiki, a paediatric occupational therapist.
“I said ‘if we’re doing this, you need to tell them I’m not opening my heart to this child … and then saying see you later’. If we’re doing this, it’s forever.”
George’s “amazing” decision left his colleagues in tears and floored his school’s principal, who rates it as the “most extraordinary good news story I can think of in my 20-year career”.
“Teachers always say ‘I wish I could take that kid home’, it’s one of those things you say, but I don’t think I have ever seen or heard of anyone actually going through that process or making it a reality. It was amazing,” says the principal, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
“I just remember sitting down with George and just being in awe of the decision he had made, astounded that he had taken that on. It’s such a selfless thing to do. Who does that?
“I didn’t think it would happen but I’m really glad it did because what (George and Kiki) have done has changed the course of that boy’s life.”
Before the tragedy, George knew Aidan as a tiny Year 1 buddy to his Year 6 class. He also had dealings with Aidan’s father, a tortured man who sometimes caused disruption in the school office but, at quieter and more contemplative times, would seek out George’s counsel on parenting and being a better man.
Six months before Aidan joined their family, Kiki and George were celebrating their long-awaited wedding with Kiki’s 14-year-old son and George’s daughter, then 16. Life had become a lot easier for the parents and they could sneak out on dates together. Hands-on parenting was becoming a thing of the past.
But they didn’t blink at the prospect of returning to round-the-clock care for their new son. And their credentials – with more than 60 years’ experience of working with kids between them – made them a “dream placement” for foster caring.
What followed was a frantic whirlwind of red tape. The family was leaving for the NSW Central Coast for Christmas for a couple of days after the last day of school and all of the paperwork, interviews and background checks needed to foster a child had to be fast-tracked.
As they madly packed their bags and made sandwiches for the trip, Department for Child Protection staff conducted their final checks of the family home.
“It was like a scene out of a movie, like a farce,” says George.
And then Aidan was on the road with his new family on his first trip outside of Adelaide. It was the start of many exciting firsts – finding a sack of presents from Santa under the Christmas tree, going to the beach, fishing and visiting a farm, catching a tram, eating roast pork, learning to swim and use a knife and fork and having his first birthday party.
“We counted up all the new things he had done and by day five we had reached 305,” says Kiki, who now plans to add a passport to the list so Aidan can go on his first overseas trip – a family cruise to New Zealand later this year.
Weeks after they returned from their first holiday together, Covid struck and sent the family into lockdown.
“We say Aidan was our Covid baby,” jokes Kiki, 55. “I was at home with Aidan homeschooling, which was great because it gave us the opportunity to work on so much together. Aidan was eight, but his skills were more like that of a three-year-old.”
Kiki focused her OT skills solely on little Aidan, who struggled with walking, had speech and language issues and didn’t know his alphabet, all as a result of suffering significant trauma and neglect.
“It’s hard work, it’s not rainbows and fluffy toys and unicorns,” she says. “It’s exhausting, but it’s also very rewarding for us to see how far he has come.”
Using their combined skills, George and Kiki became persistent lobbyists for their new son, demanding tests for ADHD, literacy assessments and access to sporting clubs to improve his physical skills. It worked, and Aidan is now a speedy sprinter and high-flying soccer player, a voracious reader and an expert chopper of vegetables for dinner.
“I have worked with kids like Aidan and so has George over many, many years, but it’s very different when it’s in your own family,” she says.
“Everything we do is for our kids and Aidan is our kid and we have expressed that to the Department for Child Protection.”
For Kiki, who was adopted by her parents, the fact that Aidan is still a foster child and needs to be monitored by department staff once a month is an eternal frustration.
“We are constantly reminded that he’s not our blood child – that’s very annoying. We don’t see that we have two kids and a foster kid, we have three kids,” she says.
The family’s “extraordinary” story has drawn praise from Education Minister Blair Boyer, who sees it as a “powerful example” of a teacher prepared to “go above and beyond to support students outside the classroom”.
“Teaching is more than a job – it’s a vocation. And one of the few professions that has the power to positively change lives every single day,” he said.
“And I can’t think of a more powerful example of that power than (George’s) decision to foster his own student. This is an incredibly selfless decision which will no doubt change the course of this young boy’s life.”
Now, George and Kiki are hoping to encourage other families to welcome a foster child into their world.
“If we hadn’t put our hands up, Aidan would have been lost in the system forever. There were no beds available in Adelaide, he would have been sent to a rural emergency bed and it was over Christmas, so it could have been anywhere in the state. That makes us very sad,” Kiki says.
“We have our trying times, we have lots of challenges, but on the whole, it’s pretty awesome. He’s our son and he’s here forever.”
Aidan – who is now 12 and a fluent reader who loves soccer, basketball, his friends, big brother and sister and his dogs – agrees. “This is my family, they are my mum and dad. I’m pretty much happy.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of a child under protection.
For more information about foster care, call 1300 2 FOSTER (1300 2 367 8370 or visit childprotection.sa.gov.au
Smoke warning as inferno consumes huge two-storey home
Firefighters arrived to find a large two-storey home in Adelaide’s north well alight, with the roof collapsed and flames threatening neighbouring properties.
‘Completely inadequate’: SA’s riskiest roads revealed
An infamous city-edge roundabout and a rural road have been voted among SA’s riskiest roads, but a problematic northern suburbs stretch has caused the most concern. See the list.