neurodiverse<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cChildren that come into your care obviously have their own trauma, and their own neurodiversities. So you have hurdles that you have to overcome.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The two brothers] were very scared coming into a stranger\u2019s home, but we had our own little children, [and] I think it made it a bit easier for them.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Our kids] just helped them settle.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few years later, the brothers were still in her care when the Sumners received a call about fostering another 9-week-old baby boy.<\/p>\n
They were asked to help care for little Alex for a couple of weeks while his caregiver went overseas.<\/p>\n
![\"Melissa]()
Melissa Sumner and her husband have raised foster children from infancy alongside their own four children. Photo \/ Malisha Kumar <\/p>\n
What was meant to be a temporary solution soon became a several-year-long stay.<\/p>\n
\u201cEventually, everybody [in our family] fell in love with him,\u201d Melissa said.<\/p>\n
When it became apparent that the caregiver would not return, there was talk about moving Alex out of foster care to a more permanent solution.<\/p>\n
This would have meant leaving the Sumners.<\/p>\n
\u201c[My] children said, \u2018If Alex goes, we go\u2019, and the decision was made.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we put our hand up and said we would do \u2018home for life\u2019 with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nowadays, \u201cLittle Alex\u201d is 9 years old and thriving.<\/p>\n
Melissa said her family had fostered five children over the past 13 years, but Alex was different.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an easy decision [to have him in our permanent care] because all my children fell in love with him,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
After not being able to adopt in South Africa, the Sumners consider Alex their \u201clittle miracle\u201d.<\/p>\n
Not for the accolades<\/p>\n
Melissa said she found it \u201cawkward\u201d to receive the award, but she still felt good to be recognised for her work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t have done it without the support of my husband, kids, and Barnardos.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reflecting on more than a decade as a foster caregiver, Melissa said she learned a lot.<\/p>\n
She had little experience with neurodiverse children before fostering and admitted she was \u201ca little nervous\u201d at the start.<\/p>\n
But she has completed extensive training and receives ongoing professional development.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s even studying now to become a school teacher specialising in education for children with neurodiversities. <\/p>\n
Melissa said she wants others to hear her story, hoping it could inspire more families to help foster a child in need, because there were a lot of children in foster care who \u201cshould be in good homes with good families\u201d.<\/p>\n
What keeps her going is the commitment to children.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust [for them to] be able to be happy, safe, secure, in a family that loves them, and they\u2019ve got everything that they deserve, that\u2019s why we do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have to give birth to a child to love that child.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not their tummy mummy, but I am their mummy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malisha Kumar is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined the Waikato Herald in 2023 after working for Radio 1XX in Whakat\u0101ne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She described the process as \u201cquite rough\u201d on both her and Dean\u2019s side of the family, but the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,32530,1061,380,2082,78024,19724,6288,27246,1899,2882,74216,2721,5971,175912,111,43,139,69,1523,6302,2437,35630],"class_list":["post-326537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-caring","tag-children","tag-decade","tag-for","tag-foster","tag-given","tag-hamilton","tag-honoured","tag-kids","tag-love","tag-melissa","tag-mum","tag-need","tag-neurodiverse","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-safety","tag-security","tag-sumner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}