Amera Eid is changing lives by being a foster carer for Fostering NSW
AS A professional belly dancer Amera Eid’s life was very colourful but something was missing - there was a yearning from deep within for a child.
Wentworth Courier
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As a professional belly dancer Amera Eid’s life was a whirl of colour that shimmied across the globe but her greatest adventure started in 2005, when she put her hand up to become a foster carer.
Eid was a single woman with fertility issues but this fiercely independent dynamo was determined to experience motherhood and turned to Fostering NSW, a decision that would change her life in ways she never could have imagined.
Eid, then 40, was in her Parramatta belly dance studio, one of two she ran at the time, when she got the call that not one but three children were about to enter her life, including a 12-week-old baby.
The door bell rang in the middle of the night three days later and she opened the door. Three little faces stared back: Brad Baxter, now 20, and two other children.
“I was in shock,” Eid says. ”I’d never even changed a nappy before.”
Baxter counts himself as lucky that it was Eid behind the door, a door that opened up a new, exciting world.
“When I was very young Amera was a performer,” he says.
“Amera would also have classes and performances so we grew up in a world of theatre, stage, and costumes.
“You can imagine as a young boy to be surrounded by dancers, musicians and music. She also had a shop filled with costumes and jewellery that was like an Aladdin’s cave.”
Eid performed nationally and internationally before opening Australia’s first dedicated belly dance boutique and studio, Amera’s Palace at Marrickville in 1987.
“In the days before the internet the boutique acted as the hub of information on belly dancing in Australia through The Palace newsletter, which ultimately became a bi-annual magazine. The magazine merged with Bellydance Oasis magazine in late 2006.
“In 2013 I sold Amera’s Palace to dancer and musician Ali Higson. It is now the only dedicated belly dance store in Australia with a physical shopfront as well as a website - all the others are online.”
Eid brought music, colour and a splash of magic into the lives of her foster children, including one boy who she adopted from out-of-home care in 2012 when he was 10-years-old, but she also had to break down her own perceptions on motherhood and realise that a loving family comes in all different shapes and sizes.
“For any child coming into care at an older age it is hard, Brad, who was eight, initially found it hard and the way we managed it was to get involved in family contact,” Eid says.
“Being a single mum was hard but we had a great respite carer family in the mountains and we also had access to a male carer.
“My mantra is: ‘You can’t have enough people to love you in this world’.”
Baxter says being part of Eid’s big, warm Egyptian-European family was amazing but it was also important for him to maintain contact with his birth mother, who even joined one of the family adventures.
He says a lot of these an adventures involved dancers and there were trips around NSW and to New Zealand and Fiji.
One adventure was a dream come true for his birth mother - for her 40th birthday Eid hired a Hummer and took the family to Darling Harbour for lunch.
“Amera helped me to see that family can be anyone, whether you a related by birth or not,” Baxter says.
For Eid the best thing about her journey as a foster carer is “just being part of their lives and watching how you can make a difference”.
Baxter is now working towards a career as a plumber, while Eid is putting all her years of hard work as a foster carer to good use as a foster care support, recruitment and retention co-ordinator for Marist180. She is also writing a book to help other carers.
FOSTER CARERS NEEDED: CAN YOU HELP
It is estimated that 660 new foster carers are needed over the next 12 months in NSW - across all types of care: emergency, respite, long and short term carers.
To mark NSW Foster Care Week a new campaign has been launched to recruit foster carers to help cope with the rising number of children entering out-of-home care. Today there are almost 20,000 children and young people in NSW unable to live at home.
People interested in finding out more about becoming a foster carer can visit the Fostering NSW website or call 1800 236 783.
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