Melissa Sumner has cared for Alex since he was a 9-week-old baby, and he's now 9 and in her permanent care. Photo / Malisha Kumar
For over a decade, Melissa Sumner has given children in need love, safety and security as a foster mum.
Now the Hamilton woman has been recognised for her work with an Excellence in Foster Care Award from children’s charity Barnardos.
Melissa, together with her husband Dean and their four children, unexpectedly found their calling as a foster family, and they especially tend to kids with neurodiversities.
“We’ve helped a few children along the way. It’s been very rewarding, but it can be very tough and sad at times,” Melissa told the Waikato Herald.
Originally from South Africa, Melissa and Dean initially explored adopting children in their home country in 2005.
She described the process as “quite rough” on both her and Dean’s side of the family, but the couple were passionate about it and determined to see it through.
They started the adoption process for a little girl, but were suddenly told the adoption wouldn’t proceed because the girl would be returned to her elderly parents.
“It was sad,” Melissa said.
They had three children on their own, with a fourth one on the way, when they decided to move to New Zealand in 2007 for a “better chance at life”.
In Hamilton, Melissa started working at an early childhood centre.
It was here that she first heard about fostering.
She said social workers would visit the centre to find places for children in foster care.
“The need [for foster parents] was great.”
Melissa said she was inspired, and after talking to her husband, they decided to give it a go.
“We just thought that we could make a difference and help out,” she said.
In 2013, they contacted Barnardos to start the fostering process, and seven months later, they welcomed two brothers, aged 9 weeks and 2 years, into their home.
Melissa still remembers receiving the call at 7.15pm. She and Dean were given the rundown of the children’s situation, and Dean quickly stepped out to buy milk formula to get baby-ready.
About 45 minutes later, the siblings turned up on the Sumners’ doorstep.
“They were beautiful, but very scared little boys,” Sumner said.
The first evening was “very challenging” for the foster children, who were both neurodiverse.
“Children that come into your care obviously have their own trauma, and their own neurodiversities. So you have hurdles that you have to overcome.
“[The two brothers] were very scared coming into a stranger’s home, but we had our own little children, [and] I think it made it a bit easier for them.
“[Our kids] just helped them settle.”
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.
They were asked to help care for little Alex for a couple of weeks while his caregiver went overseas.
What was meant to be a temporary solution soon became a several-year-long stay.
“Eventually, everybody [in our family] fell in love with him,” Melissa said.
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.
This would have meant leaving the Sumners.
“[My] children said, ‘If Alex goes, we go’, and the decision was made.
“So we put our hand up and said we would do ‘home for life’ with him.”
Nowadays, “Little Alex” is 9 years old and thriving.
Melissa said her family had fostered five children over the past 13 years, but Alex was different.
“It was an easy decision [to have him in our permanent care] because all my children fell in love with him,” she said.
After not being able to adopt in South Africa, the Sumners consider Alex their “little miracle”.
Melissa said she found it “awkward” to receive the award, but she still felt good to be recognised for her work.
“I couldn’t have done it without the support of my husband, kids, and Barnardos.”
Reflecting on more than a decade as a foster caregiver, Melissa said she learned a lot.
She had little experience with neurodiverse children before fostering and admitted she was “a little nervous” at the start.
But she has completed extensive training and receives ongoing professional development.
She’s even studying now to become a school teacher specialising in education for children with neurodiversities.
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 “should be in good homes with good families”.
What keeps her going is the commitment to children.
“Just [for them to] be able to be happy, safe, secure, in a family that loves them, and they’ve got everything that they deserve, that’s why we do it.
“You don’t have to give birth to a child to love that child.
“I’m not their tummy mummy, but I am their mummy.”
Malisha Kumar is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined the Waikato Herald in 2023 after working for Radio 1XX in Whakatāne.