Foster parenting and 33 years of love

IN the mid-1970s, Deborah Young was a Sydney girl who dated shaggy-headed surfer dudes. Cedric Lee was the son of Bing Lee, of the electric goods retail empire.

IN the mid-1970s, Deborah Young was a Sydney girl who dated shaggy-headed surfer dudes. Cedric Lee was the son of Bing Lee, of the electric goods retail empire.

They met over the counter. She went into his shop to argue about the price of a stereo. He gave her a discount. She gave him her number.

It was, she admits, unusual in those days to see Chinese people in Sydney, let alone to date them. The first time Cedric rang the doorbell at Deborah's house, her little sister shouted out: "There's a Chinaman at the door."

Deborah recalls: "To top it off, she then showed him into the loungeroom, where he made himself comfortable on the leather-look lounge.

"She came in with six tiny kittens on a dinner plate. With her arms outstretched, she held them under his nose and said: 'Would you like something to eat?"'

Deborah thought he would never come back again.

In fact, they got married, and in the 33 years since Deborah and Cedric Lee have opened their gorgeous waterfront home to many foster children, most of them from dysfunctional homes, who must truly think they have landed in paradise.

Today, Mr and Ms Lee will be made members (AM) of the Order of Australia, for their service to those children.

The couple were married knowing she would not be able to have children of her own. Mr Lee didn't care - he said they would form a family somehow.

Immediately after returning from their honeymoon, Ms Lee rang the NSW government's Adoption Branch, and asked to adopt a baby. To her surprise, a social worker said they would have to be assessed.

"What for?" she asked. She had love to give, so bring on the baby.

Welfare workers were concerned about the brevity of their relationship. And Mr and Ms Lee had never had an argument. How would they deal with conflict?

"I thought, how stupid," Ms Lee said. So she rang them one day and said: "OK, so we've had an argument."

The welfare worker said: "Wonderful. How did you manage?"

Ms Lee said: "No problem. You can visit him in the morgue."

It was, she says, the moment when she realised that social workers, by and large, do not have a sense of humour.

Over the years, they were approved to adopt three children, all of them born to Chinese parents. But while waiting for the first - a son, Nathan - they started to foster, and they have never really stopped.

They've seen it all, of course: children have come to them with cigarette burns and bruises, and one small boy was scalded when he was made to stand in a bucket of boiling water.

Ms Lee won't fib and say all children are gorgeous. In her book, Mixed Blessings, published last year, she describes one child as "a two-year-old monster, the devil's spawn".

"I wanted to wear a sandwich board with 'HE'S NOT MINE' written in capital letters on either side of it," she wrote.

But without question, she adores the babies that come into her home. They sleep in a French bassinet in the master bedroom at the Lee house, draped with gorgeous curtains. They wear Baby Dior and travel in a glorious big-wheeled pram.

"They're not mine to keep. I am part of their life's journey. But I hope some of the love will stay with them all their lives," Ms Lee said. "If they can absorb some of that love into their being, perhaps it will see them through whatever is ahead."