Conversations: Bronwyn's books

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Most of us are now well aware of the benefits of reading allowed to small children.

The research is in.

Reading books to kids stimulates the hyperactive language centres in their brains,

accelerates their communication skills, social skills and literacy skills,

and just putting aside all that neuroscience for a moment.

It's also a total joy, both for the kid and for the reader,

because you catch the kid at that really lovely moment, that perfect moment,

when they've had their dinner, they've been hosed down and put in their jammies,

and they're a bit sleepy and ready for bed.

But there's not always an adult around to give a child their bedtime story.

Some years ago, Roman Sheehan met some children going into foster care,

and she realised that they will often arrive into the home without ever having enjoyed

that lovely, magical interlude, getting lost in the telling of a story from a book.

Roman Sheehan is a former nurse and midwife,

and she became aware of the situation of homeless kids when she was working in a hospital.

She became friends with a foster carer,

and she realised that there are so many kids who miss out on being read to.

And so she set up the Pajama Foundation,

which trains thousands of volunteers to simply read stories allowed to children in care.

Hi, Roman. Hi.

What was your favourite bedtime story as a little kid?

Well, I am a big fan of A.A. Milm.

As am I.

And my nighttime routine was our dad used to come and tuck us in,

and he used to say,

um-zine, um-zine, and he would tuck in the bedsheets really, really tight.

And then my favourite childhood memory is him reading me and my sister the poem,

Alexander Beatle.

I had a little Beatle Alexander was his name.

He lived in a matchbox, and I called him just the same.

And Nanny let my Beatle out?

And Beatle ran away.

Yes, it's a tragedy, but Beatle, I don't want to spoil or alert,

Beatle comes back in the end, though it doesn't Beatle.

And Beatle felt guilty for running away.

That's right.

Um, and Nanny said she was sorry, and...

She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did.

Oh, that's a lovely story.

I was read that as a kid by my dad,

and I've read that endlessly,

that in one of all those other poems from when we were very young,

and now we are six, to my kids as well.

And you had plenty of that as a kid.

Yeah, I did.

And that was, I have...

I've had the absolute on-own pleasure of having a beautiful childhood

in the 80s and a brother and a sister,

and a very happy and secure and loving environment.

And that's something that I think is a basic human right.

And there are some children in our community that have had a rocky start,

and I think it's up to people like myself,

to have had a good childhood to contribute.

What feeling did those bedtime stories give you,

tucked in tightly under the sheets like that?

Well, it's just love and security and routine,

and every night being the same.

That's really important for the growing brain.

Children who have experienced trauma,

you know, trauma really impedes brain development.

So education was easy for me.

Home life was easy and very non-stressful.

You read to your own kids as well.

So I think you find that when you do the reading,

it actually soothes a few jagged nerves,

because now they're nicknamed for that period

when you get kids ready for this called arsenic hour by and large, isn't it?

When you've got to get them fed,

you've got to get rid of the cone of refuse of food

that's fallen off the high chair after dinner and get them clean.

But then they enter that kind of lovely, sleepy, dozy mode.

And that's when, I think you all get a moment of peace from that, don't you?

100%. Yeah, 100%.

And it's such a beautiful time.

It's such a bonding time.

And it really will set you up.

It's calming. It's calming. It's mindfulness.

And it's really, really special.

But books are a big part of the childhood generally for you?

Yes. I can remember our routine was Friday night

with library and fish and chips.

And I don't know if it was probably me,

because I tend to muddle my words.

We used to say Friday night was bribery and chips.

So you came then all your young life

to really assess your books and reading with pleasure

and comfort and security and discovery as well?

Absolutely. And then when I had my own children,

one of my friends was a primary school teacher,

and she gave me books and said,

read, read, read, read, read.

And so that's what I did with my children from newborn babies.

And I loved it.

I got to see how they loved it.

And then when they went to school for the first time,

I saw how they learned to read almost overnight,

almost like magic.

I didn't try and teach them to read books,

but that's how children learn to read

by having books read aloud to them.

They sat with you, followed the words on the page,

and then when it came time to get phonics or whatever it was

that was going to teach them how to read,

they were able to go on with it very quickly then.

Absolutely. And Mem Fox,

one of our beautiful children authors here in Australia,

says that every child should have a thousand books

read aloud to them before they learn to read themselves.

The language in books is different from our oral language.

You can tell when a child has been read to

because of their vocabulary.

Kids won't let you read a thousand books.

They want the same books every night, though.

That's the thing.

Maybe the same book a thousand times might work.

It does count.

Right. It does count.

So where did you grow up, Roman?

I was born in Auckland in New Zealand.

Then when I was two, we went to Fiji for two years,

and I have some childhood memories of living in Fiji as well.

Came back to Auckland when I was four,

and then we came to Australia to live when I was 11.

What kind of lessons did you get while you were a kid in Fiji?

Were there much greater disparities in income?

Yes, there was.

And we were in Fiji in the late 60s,

and there weren't many expats in Fiji at the time.

And I got to play with a lot of the local children.

As a matter of fact,

one of my memories that I can remember quite clearly

is that a young Fijian girl stole one of my dolls,

and I wanted to ring the police.

And Mum explained to me that I had lots of toys

and she didn't actually have any toys

and that she could keep my doll.

Sometimes it's early childhood memories

that influence what you do later on in life.

So the family moved to Brisbane and you went to school there.

Were you good at school? Were you a natural student?

I would say I was very average.

Yeah, I was a very average...

Well, maybe I'm discrediting myself.

Maybe a little bit above average.

When I went nursing, that was kind of my...

I'd always wanted to be a nurse.

I did very well academically at nursing.

Why did you want to be a nurse?

I wanted to either be a nurse or a policewoman.

And I chose nursing.

Both my grandparents were nurses.

I love people.

And I wanted to do something that was practical,

that you could move around lots.

It would be really interesting.

And I really...

Nurse for 21 years and absolutely loved it.

Do you ever wonder what would have happened

if you'd gone into the police force instead?

Yeah, interesting, isn't it?

I wonder if I had gone into the police force,

I would have ended up in child protection.

And knowing myself,

I'm pretty sure that I probably could have done that.

So where did you begin your training as a nurse?

I trained at the Royal Brisbane Hospital.

I'm in my 50s, and so I was hospital trained.

And we did seven weeks of P&C in the School of Nursing.

And then we were let loose out onto the wards

as a 17-year-old.

But we were very well protected.

You'd have a junior nurse and a senior nurse

and a registered nurse,

and you'd all share the same patients.

It was a wonderful way to do your training.

And you learned a lot.

So by the time I think everyone got to the end of the first year,

you kind of knew if this is what you were cut out for or not.

After I did my nursing training, which was three years,

you had to do a year postgraduate

before you could start your mid-buffery training.

And it was the Royal Women's Hospital.

And that was a year training.

And it was just divine. I loved it.

I loved the anatomy and physiology of mid-buffery.

And to see the beginning of life is such a pleasure.

I've seen thousands of babies being born,

and often I'd be crying along with the parents.

It was a very, very special profession.

Experienced midwives are amazing to watch in action.

They have all that knowledge and that experience.

And as the parent for the first time coming around you,

this is all astonishing what's going on and terrifying.

Women are making sounds that you'd normally make you associate

with someone dying, actually.

In fact, they're actually just giving birth.

And an experienced midwife has seen it thousands of times before.

To be honest, I have to say,

I regarded like the experienced midwives

as kind of like these elite priestesses

who have all this secret knowledge about the world.

Yeah, when I did my midwifery training,

which is in the early 90s,

there was midwives there that had been a midwife for 40 years.

They could just know things that were going to happen,

about to happen.

You get really good at reading people and patterns.

Yeah, amazing.

I think sometimes a midwife should compile a book

on the things women say when they're going into transition.

Things they yell at their husbands that moment of transition.

It's colourful.

It really is.

And sometimes if you'd come into a change of shift

and you'd come on and meet a person for the first time,

and they might be transitioning or close to delivering,

and so they're in a very wild and fragile state.

And then after the baby's born,

it's almost like you got to meet them for the first time.

Oh, hello.

So this is what you're really like.

So there you are in the hospital.

You're doing your dream job,

and you're loving the nature of your work.

It's kind of what you always wanted to do.

Tell me how you started encountering straight children

in the hospital.

Yeah, well, when I was doing my nursing training,

I worked a couple of times in the children's hospital,

and I incidentally nursed some foster children.

There was one little guy.

His name was Henry, and he lived in the hospital,

and he was two at the time.

He was born with incomplete airway,

and so he had a tracheostomy,

which is the hole in your neck that he had to breathe through

for the first two years of his life.

And he had to have several operations

where they had to operate on his trachea,

which is his windpipe, as he grew.

So he literally lived in the ear, nose, and throat ward,

and he had his own room.

He had all these beautiful clothes that were bought for him

by all the nurses.

He had a little bike.

He used to ride around his little push bike around the ward

when all the other children were having their tonsils out.

And he was a foster child,

so that was my first experience of coming in contact.

So he was living in the hospital?

At that stage, this is in the 80s,

he had his health concerns

where he had to have daily attention to his airway.

And there was no parent or guardian with him at the time?

Not at that stage,

but he ended up going home to a family years later,

so I found out.

Had you had any contact with kids in care up to that point?

When I was doing my training again,

I can remember working in casualty.

And we had a young boy, he was 13,

and he was, I think he had run away from his foster care placement

and was living on the street.

And I can remember talking to him all of 13

and not being able to get my head around the fact

that he lived on the street.

And when I said to him,

but where do you sleep?

I can remember him saying that he slept up a tree.

I don't know how long he was doing that for,

but I remember thinking to myself,

wow, how could you possibly sleep up a tree?

All these fleeting experiences, I think,

over my nursing career,

and then when my children went to primary school,

I got to have another look into the foster care system.

Yeah.

I suppose we can know,

we can sort of hear that there are homeless children

living in extreme circumstances like that.

But it's one other thing to meet a kid who's going through that.

Even today, I think a lot of our homelessness is hidden.

You know, there's a lot of it that you just don't know,

that you don't know people's circumstances.

Like I say, you met your husband, you built your own family.

How did you and your husband meet?

We're very cheesy.

We actually went to school together.

How old were you when you met each other?

I was 15 and he was 17,

so we've known each other for a very long time.

Once you had kids, did you feel confident

you could handle motherhood after being a nurse and midwife

all those years?

Yeah, I think nothing really prepares you

for being a first-time mum.

I was probably presumptuously confident

being a midwife, working in the nursery

and looking after six babies.

I thought, how hard can it be to look after one?

But it's very different when it's your own child

and you worry about your own children,

which was something that was unexpected for me.

How hard could it be, you said?

Well, it can be quite hard actually, can't it?

What sort of advice did you get from your family

and friends about reading to your kids?

Yeah, I think it was one of my teaching friends

that gave me books and said,

read, read, read, read, read.

I can remember I went back nursing

when my daughter was four months old

on the weekend and my husband looked after

my little, she was six months old.

And he thought I was a little bit strange

when I told him he had to read to a newborn baby.

But then when my daughter was setting up,

I arrived home from work

for him to meet me in the driveway

and say, look what I have taught Kate.

And I came upstairs.

He handed her a little board book

and she held it up the right way.

And that's the concept of our print,

holding books the correct way

and then turning the pages.

And he said, Kate, show me the tiger.

So she held up the book the correct way,

turned three or four pages,

found the tiger and went,

so my husband thought he was an absolute genius

teaching six month old.

You know, who can't really,

your babies can't speak,

but they can certainly comprehend.

Like I mentioned at the start,

we know how important it is.

There's all the science that's been done,

neuroscience done on the importance of reading

aloud to kids when they're little.

What more can you tell me about that?

So literacy equates to your quality of life.

The more literate you are,

the happier you are,

the healthier you are.

And obviously literacy really equates

to your employment as well.

So I think literacy is fundamentally important

and it starts at an early age.

So your oldest daughter Kate went to school.

Tell me about this little girl that she met

when she started school.

Yes, my child went to school

in the northern suburbs of Brisbane.

There was a child that was in foster care

that was in the same year as my daughter.

And we invited this young lady

to Kate's grade four birthday party.

Must have been her 10th birthday party

and it was her first birthday party

that she'd ever been invited to.

Yet she'd been at the school since prep.

So what happened on the day of the birthday?

Her foster mum didn't drive

and she'd caught two buses

to bring this young lady

to my daughter's birthday party

as well as she had to drag along

all the other foster kids that were in the home

and obviously I quickly got my husband

to drive them back home.

And this young lady kept coming up to me

throughout the birthday party to say

thank you so much for inviting me

and is there anything that I can do to help?

So she really touched me

and I had a lot to do with her

for over the next few years.

How about the foster mum?

You mentioned there she had a bunch of kids

she had to bring with her to this party

because she couldn't leave them alone at home presumably.

What was her story? What did you find out about her?

She was amazing

and one of the reasons I started the Pajama Foundation

because I was really inspired by her

she had been a carer for 35 years at that stage

and she had had more than 100 kids through her home

and I was blown away by

her absolute

contribution.

I think foster carers are the unsung hero.

Children that come into care

have been traumatised

and they need a lot of love and intention

and there's these magnificent people out in the community

that literally open their hearts

and their homes to vulnerable kids

and take care of them and I think they're extraordinary.

Now I caught up with her last October.

53 years she's been a foster carer.

53 years and she still has a house full of children.

I mean who does that?

She's never been on a holiday.

She doesn't spend any money on herself

yet she dedicates her life work

not that foster carers are paid.

I mean they receive an allowance

but they're essentially volunteers.

I just don't think they're praised

or acknowledged enough.

So after that you started visiting this carer

quite a bit more.

Did you have babies in her care?

No.

One day when I was visiting her

an 18 month old baby boy

had just arrived in foster care

and he had arrived with nothing

and when I saw him

he had an adult t-shirt on and an appy.

A little baby with an adult t-shirt on?

Well he had arrived with no clothes

and she hadn't had a young person for a long time

and so she had no equipment or clothing

and she was about to go shopping

and I said before you go and get anything

a four year old son has finished

with all his baby products

and so I filled my car

with protocols and prams

and high chairs and clothes

and books and toys

and took them around to her

and she was so grateful that she wanted to pay me.

Of course I didn't let her

but she wrote me a very beautiful

handwritten note to thank me

and looking into this

the 18 month old baby boy

who was very unwell

with a dreadful cold

and she was asking my advice

because she knew I was a nurse

I thought this is crazy

that this happens in my suburb.

Looking into his big brown eyes

I thought what gift can I give him right now

and my experience of my own kids

was the gift of reading

and the love of learning

and Alexander Beedle.

So if I can get him to love reading

to love learning

no matter if he moves foster care

placements, if he goes back to his

biological family, if he loves reading

then that has to play

a difference in his future.

So is this the moment

when you got the idea for the Pajama Foundation?

Correct.

When you saw this little sick baby

in an adult t-shirt

in foster care?

It was a yellow t-shirt

I'll never forget him.

He'd be in his early 20s now.

The last time I heard from him

or about him

he was 12 and he loved reading.

So I hope that

that we've had some impact

on his little life.

How did you make the connection between

what a kid like that needs

and reading, setting up a reading program?

Because it was my experience

it was my children's experience

and the statistics around children

in foster care is that

they haven't been immersed with early literacy

92% of children in care

are below the average reading level at age 7

75% of children

in out of home care won't finish grade 12

and it just makes sense

that empowering kids with education

the earlier the better

will have some positive impact

on their life moving forward.

Did that play a role in this,

the memory of that feeling?

Absolutely.

How can you contribute to an 80 month old baby?

You can.

It's one child at a time,

one book at a time.

So I formed the pajama foundation

and I knew that I couldn't read

a thousand books to all the children myself

so I went into the local newspaper

and I said calling for volunteers

to read books allowed to children

and I said calling for volunteers

to read books allowed to children

and I was inundated

and still have been 18 years later

inundated by beautiful volunteers

that share in my vision

and want to help out and contribute.

What kind of response were you talking about?

One local newspaper

in the northern suburbs of Brisbane

and I got 50 pajama angels

that I then trained.

Obviously all our volunteers

are interviewed, screened,

trained, have

working with children check

and they're called pajama angels

and one pajama angel

is matched up with one child in care

whom they visit

in their foster home

supervised by the foster carer

once a week so one kid has

their very special person.

And that person stays with them

even if they transfer to another home?

My volunteers are amazing

and they do stay with the children

and my Sunshine Coast volunteer

of the year has been a pajama angel

with the same young man for 15 years.

So can you imagine

the relationship that they have formed

is really significant?

August is a beautiful time for me

because I go around to every area

they were operating in

and we're cans down to the Gold Coast

Sydney and Melbourne.

We mentor 1,200 children every week

just over 1,200 kids

and we try and keep it one on one

because that's where the magic happens

and all children love

and serve attention

and they have their very own angel.

So sometimes it's not possible

and one angel might mentor

a couple of children

and we read books aloud

we play all those wonderful childhood games

and there's so much learning around games

help with homework

do craft, help with cooking

we watch them on the trampoline

one of my 70 year old pajama angels

was doing the times table

to rap music.

Absolutely, if that relationship

an important factor here.

Absolutely, 100%.

So research tells us

that a child who

or any children

needs one significant person in their life

that can really help them

get through a traumatic childhood.

Kids often have issues of trust

when they're in these situations

and if you show up week after week

every all the time

over a period of years

100%.

So one of our prerequisites

of being a pajama angel

is that we want you to volunteer

for at least 12 months.

These children have a lot of people

coming and going in their lives

but we're very fortunate

that a lot of our angels

our average length of volunteering

is 3.5 years

but we've got 5, 10, 15

and even 18 years

longevity of our pajama angels

Yeah, on the

3rd of February 2005

we read to a little girl

called Natasha

she was about 6

she came to the door

took one look at her pajama angel

and went and hid under the bed

the pajama angel sat on the floor

and read to 2 feet

sticking out of the bed

and that's how we started

She came out of the bed eventually after some weeks

or something like that

It's not sustainable isn't it?

But yeah, we attract

really beautiful happy people

that want to

give back to the community

their common theme.

What are the reading levels

of kids in care

like typically a problem?

I think you could safely say that

every child, well most children

would be a couple of years behind their peers

So these kids aren't like your daughter

who was kind of ready to just

bolt out out of the blocks

when she went to school. The kids are starting

from a distinct disadvantage because they haven't been read to

That's right and when I started

18 years ago there was 21,000 children

in foster care in Australia

now there's close to 48,000

So the number of children in foster care

has more than doubled

foster carers have a lot of children

they don't just have one foster kid

they have several

and so we added extra

and we're a bonus in the home

and we give the children

very special attention

and it's very interesting because all the children

will say

to the pajama angel

how much do you get paid to do this?

And they are

quite delighted when they know that

they're volunteer

They ask that quite commonly do they? The kids will say to the

How much do you get paid to do this?

And so they

must feel valued and special

when they know that the volunteer isn't

paid and the second

question they ask is are you going to come

back next week?

I have some wonderful

wonderful volunteers

that

contribute to the lives of vulnerable kids

but in saying that

they get more out of

the experience than what

the children do because

really to give is to receive

if you want to make yourself happy

then you make other people happy

I was with some volunteers on the weekend

and they were saying

she pulls up at the front

and she can hear the children

delightfully squealing

and the house going

Susie's here, Susie's here, Susie's here

so she said when I walk in the house

I've automatically got a smile on my face

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it's often said that

kids who

have these backgrounds in care

they can respond in two ways from the

instability of their home life

they can either act up in the antisocial

which is a kind of form of defence

or they can go the other way

and try and be super charming

they think they're super sweet and charming

they'll be guile the adults to stay in their lives

do you find that's the case?

yeah absolutely it's probably gay

and look you know the kids have to learn

about relationship

and you have to build up trust of the child

and you have to do fun things

when you turn up so our pajama angels

turn up with books, puzzles, games

craft

and some of the kids just really really

will resonate with playing games

you think that you're going to turn up to the house

and this child is going to look at you

and say please read me a book

then you might be seriously misled

that you need to build up a relationship

and a trust and we follow the interests

of the child as well

and the interest of the kids is

you know it's still quite similar to what it always has been

like it could be trains

it could be dinosaurs

and blue is pretty popular at the moment as well

so we follow the interest level

of the child and we really are led

by what they're interested in

and then we slowly

navigate them around to

the number of books we can read aloud to them

you were talking about a thousand books

being read to a child it sounds like the focus was initially

on preschool kids to begin with

when did you realise you had to sort of

broaden your reach beyond that

yeah after I set up my program

we get referrals from the agency

and the department of child safety

and I've got a referral

for a child that was in grade 7

that had a reading level of grade 2

and would we help

and so we actually read to all ages

and we've just developed

a teenage program as well

teen life skill program and for the kids that are

in that program and we're doing lots of fun things

with them like a barista course

and flower decorations

sewing classes and to try

and keep them engaged with their pajama angel

and in their education

one young lady who was

18 when she came into foster care

she was in a sibling group of 13 kids

they all were in care

her name was Grace and she had

a pajama angel when she was 8

and her pajama angel Barb

stayed with her for 10 years

before she finished school and it was

18 so

when children enter care they lose

their contact

with their extended family as well

and Barb played a very great role

as a grandmother figure

and they're still in contact today

and actually I just found out talking to Grace

just recently that she's

going to move in with Barb for

a little while as well and Grace is now

nearly 22 and she has

her own child and she works

full time she is a resilient

amazing beautiful young lady

I won't

take all the credit for her great

future but she was in a beautiful

foster care placement as well

but you know I think we've broken the cycle

there

everyone as a team she reads

books aloud to her little toddler

what amazes me is

how resilient some of the children

are and how resilient

human beings can be

who are these people who typically

volunteer for this role as

pajama angels? Yeah so they're

90% female we tend to

resonate with females

75% have higher education

than grade 12 and about

75% would work full time

or part time so

fabulous role models for these

children we lift the gaze

of these kids because they're associated

with engineers

and firemen and

teachers and librarians

and their eyes

are open to all the different careers

that you can

be and you know there is

a saying that is you can't

be what you can't see I think we lift

the gaze of these beautiful kids

and that they can see a future

for themselves.

Kids are so delightful they're hard

work yes but they are so delightful when they're

little they're so delightful what effect

can it have on the volunteers

lives having a little kid

pinging around their lives once more?

Oh beautiful really really beautiful

and our pajama angels do become

quite attached to the kids and

then they get to meet the

pajama angels family

and the pajama angels dog

and so it's a wrap around

effect really that these

children have a lot of positive people

in their lives. To volunteers

sometimes expect the kids

to be grateful and get hurt if the kids

aren't grateful for what

or not are apparently grateful for whatever

reason. Look I think we train

our volunteers very

realistically to build up

a relationship with their child can take

a good couple of months

you know I think there's myths about

the foster care system that a child enters

foster care and there they live happily

about after and that a child should be

grateful because they're placed with a new

loving family but you know it's a tough

life it's hard and

the lives of these kids can

be tricky if you don't know

or have a relationship with your biological

parents. Foster kids

you know like Grace always feel

like they don't quite fit into normal

society I mean Grace tells

the story that when she was at

school the role was

accidentally projected on the wall and she had

a dot beside her name which meant that

she was a kid in care. It was

an accident that the role went up

she was probably the only person

that saw that the dot was there.

She saw that the dot was there. She did

when you come

from a broken

family and even

adopted children

you never quite feel like you

100% fit in and I think

that is a weight that these children

will carry with them.

Is there a problem sometimes when

the kids obviously attach themselves

to this lovely volunteer who's coming around

all the time to some of these

parents feel you serped in some ways

and do you know how to deal with that situation?

Well we deal with the foster parents

and the foster parents are very grateful

for the support. They're at the front line

of the situation. Yeah of course

and that's who we deal with so we don't

we don't tend to deal with the

biological parents and with

some children and out of home care

they have contact with the parents

and some don't. There's

no one child that is the same

really in this sector but

there's a very strong message to these children

and is that they are special

and that they are valued by society.

You tell the story of a little boy

who came to your organisation

it was three years old called Charlie

tell me a bit about his story.

Charlie's one of my faves.

He has a special place in my heart.

He was born at 27 weeks

premature.

His family were unable to care for him.

He needed to be on oxygen

for the first 12 months of his life

and he had to be doctor's appointments

from being so premature

and so ended up staying with his

midwife who became his foster carer.

He got referred to our program when he was

three years old and he

I heard from Rene

his pajama angel how gorgeous he was

and I thought she was exaggerating

until I got to meet him and he was

the most gorgeous little kid

charismatic, funny

full of life.

Rene was his pajama angel

for eight years.

He influenced her to go teaching

and become a school teacher.

She used to read books a lot to him

and he used to hang upside down on the monkey bars

in the backyard while she read to him.

The perfect greedy position

of an ancient eastern mystics

going back thousands of years.

So while he was hanging upside down

when he needed to see the picture

she had to turn the book upside down

but they had a beautiful relationship

she stayed with him for eight years

until she had her first child

and then she had to

stop being his pajama angel

but she called his first child Charlie

after him and when he was

five he was the ring bearer

in her bridal party.

He had two other pajama angels

throughout his teenage years

he finished grade 12

and the only person in his family

to complete a schooling

and he went to

university last year.

He has a very special place in my heart

he's now 19

he's probably your size if not bigger

he is

a beautiful young man

and I can't wait to see what he does

with his future.

You mentioned that the very large majority

of your volunteers are women

why do you think you haven't had more male volunteers?

I think males

probably are reluctant

and would volunteer

in maybe a sporting capacity

or something

along those lines

you know there is child protection

so maybe there is some hesitancy

around being a male

I think there are a lot of men

afraid of being accused of taking an unseemly interest

or something like that I think that does happen

it's a shame. Yeah it is a shame

we have 10% of our volunteers are male

we've got

lots of different professions

once again

engineers to medical researchers

to

firemen we had a fireman

up in Mackay who was a pyjama angel

did he bring his truck? He bought the fire truck

around to the foster home

what effect did that have when you caught fire

I'm not a kid anymore

I'm still interested in fire trucks

it's beautiful

you can't beat a fire truck

I have a big Christmas party every year

and Santa arrives in a fire truck

I think that's my favourite moment of the year

and the look on the children's faces

is absolutely delightful

and they see this fireman who does this

wonderful job who's brave

who saves people's houses, people's lives

property all that sort of thing

what a wonderful role model

for young boys

and a research tells us that the most important

person to read books allowed to

a boy is a man

it has the most impact

men tend to read

different books

in material than what a female would

I got all the bush poetry from my dad

when I was growing up, he gave me Henry Lawson

and Banjo Patterson and everything else

I got that from my dad

I think I would have gotten that from my mum

didn't really interest her but I got that from my dad

we've actually had quite a few pyjama angels

that have introduced poetry

and it's been really successful with the kids

they've loved that as well

about the engineering student

called Pete who became one of your volunteers

he was one of my original volunteers

and at the time he was called pyjama Pete

amazing young man

19 he was at the time

he got him reading after 6 months

first of all he wouldn't sit still

and listen to one book

then after 6 months he could listen

to 6 books and then after that he wouldn't

leave home with his favourite book in his hand

which then was a 3 Billy Goats

graph and I don't think

he had a car at the time but he used

to catch the bus and I think

at the end of their session they used to have

a running race down to the bus stop

so pyjama Pete has gone on

he would be well into his 30s now

and he's gone on to a successful

career and his own children

which I am sure he would read books a lot too

from a very early age

so 20 years ago you probably knew

almost nothing about the foster care system

now you probably know just about

as much as anyone does in Australia about

the foster care system

you said there are quite a few myths

in the public mind about that system

some of those myths and what's the truth as you've seen it

there's no question

this is a tough sector

there is multiple children

and the numbers of children have

doubled I have met

thousands of foster carers

and I have been nothing short

of impressed by what they do

from the load that they carry

from their motivation

for caring from

what they have to tackle every day

I think that there needs

to be organisations

like myself that can contribute

in some small way

I think that working in child protection

is really hard as well

everyone wants the best outcome for children

and

the system might not be perfect

but children that are really well cared for

in this sector

unfortunately

the bad stories always make the press

people like to, everyone's got an opinion

but they might not know

what this sector is about

and about all the good people

that are in the sector

every once in a while

I'll talk to a foster carer who is heroically kind

and people will want to know

what compels them to do it

how is it that they do what they do

do you have an answer for that

I think they want to give back to the community

that they might have had some

their parents might have been foster carers

that they have come across

a foster child

they might have been a teacher

at the school

they might have been a midwife

that's looked after a little baby like Charlie

everyone's motivation

is slightly different but

they are very brave

they do open their hearts

and their homes

they get their hearts broken

I think they're extraordinary people

and that they deserve our praise

and our assistance

and our acknowledgement and our thanks

in 2009 you were the

Queensland Australian of the year

and you would have done a lot of travelling

you would have met a whole lot of people all over the place

what do you remember of that year

and the things you found out

by being in that role for that year

that you might not have known beforehand

this organisation has taken me

all over Australia

over the years I've spoken

everywhere from rotary groups

to classrooms to

I've been to the lodge

so Prime Minister

I often speak at conferences

do you feel comfortable

sitting around those tables

and if you do how do you make yourself

feel comfortable sitting at the tables

of such people

see this is not about me

I'm not talking on behalf of myself

I'm talking on behalf of Charlie

when you

put that in perspective

then it's easy

I'm also talking about the Pajama Foundation

that they invented

and so that's easy and that's my passion

and you know it's kind of funny how

my life has ended up in this direction

my mother has a favourite

story when I was in grade one

I was the only person in the classroom

that hadn't done a morning talk

I was flying under the radar until I got

caught out by my teacher

I lined up all my dolls and teddy bears

in my room and practiced talking in front of them

and now my mum likes it

Ladies and gentlemen

I've called you here today

that kind of thing

Welcome to my TED Talk

I've done a TED Talk

I've done a short course at Harvard

you know my life is

incredibly rich

but what grounds me

and who I'm talking to on behalf of

which makes it easy is the Charlie's of the world

and the graces of the world

and talking on bare behalf

There is another way to look at your organisation

which is a long standing two decades long

and I think it's a great

experience to make it permissible

to wear pyjamas to work

now you have this once a year

and encourage people to wear pyjamas to work

as a fundraising and awareness exercise

I think this is tremendous

I think COVID pushed things along quite a bit

You did well over COVID

Yeah like as long as the pyjamas are securely fastened

I think that would be a fine thing

if we wore pyjamas to work all the time

How about you?

Yeah absolutely so once a year

actually the last time I was in the ABC studio

I was

wearing my pyjamas so I feel rather

underdressed today

but there's nothing more equalising

than everyone in their pyjamas

My goal is to have everyone in Australia

on National Pyjama Day

in July wearing their pyjamas to school

or work for the day

Sensational how fantastic to speak with you Bronwyn

Thank you so much

My absolute pleasure thank you for having me

You've been listening to a podcast

of Conversations

with Richard Feidler

For more Conversations interviews

please go to the website

abc.net.au

slash Conversations

It's Carl here

I'm the co-host of the ABC's

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