Five of John Duke’s foster daughters, including Carli, have chosen him to give them away. Picture / Greg Bowker

Five of John Duke’s foster daughters, including Carli, have chosen him to give them away. Picture / Greg Bowker

John and Marion Duke have two sons of their own, but John has walked up the aisle five times to give away "daughters" to their husbands.

Carli, now a florist in West Auckland and married with a son of her own, came into the Dukes’ care at the age of 14 after abuse in her family. She was with them, on and off, for about four years.

Jenny, "one of the most badly abused kids we ever had", married a pastor and now lives in Australia. She and her husband are about to take their four children to look after African children in Uganda.

"That’s the sort of thing that keeps you going," John says.

"The highs are amazing," Marion agrees. "The lows are terrible. You are never in the middle."

In 34 years of caregiving, first in Britain and since 1981 in New Zealand, the Dukes have provided a safe home to more than 2500 children.

Most were far from little angels. Two years ago John was knifed by a 12-year-old because he was asked to do the dishes. Last year a young woman attacked Marion with a knife and a dinner plate.

When they ran a family home for eight children in West Auckland, social workers would often ring in the early hours of the morning asking them to take a child in an emergency. They would sit up until the child arrived, try to make the child welcome, then be up again at 7am for the other children.

 

Yet, apart from expenses, the Dukes have never been paid a cent for their work. Like all of New Zealand’s foster parents, who are looking after just under 5000 children officially in state care as at June last year, they are volunteers.

Many foster parents would not have it any other way.

"We run the risk, if we move to start paying foster parents, of losing the dynamic of voluntary service," warns Russell Martin of the Open Home Foundation, a private trust with 700 foster families.

"Immediately you professionalise it, you would change the motives."

But those who have run large homes, like the Dukes, believe some youngsters need both foster-mum and foster-dad on hand 24 hours a day, making the old model of dad going out to work impractical.

"In the school holidays, what was I supposed to do - stay at home with six high-risk teenagers?" asks one woman who ran a family home for Child, Youth and Family with her partner, a painter and decorator, and two daughters then aged 9 and 7.