Who is jackie stricker

Share On Facebook Share On twitter. Load more posts. Jackie Stricker-Phelps. Social Advocate. Kerryn Phelps. We were driving along in the car. The first time I saw the story in the Sunday papers, I was in shock. I think you were in shock, too. How significant was that moment for you both? Gabby wanted to be adopted.

She came through the foster system, and it was a very important thing for her to take on our name and to be part of our family legally. I would like to thank my wife, Jackie, and my children, Gabby, Jamie and Karl, for their unwavering support. And I was very aware it was a privileged position, and I made very good use, I believe, of the time I had in Parliament and delivered on the promises that I made. Even when things get incredibly tough, you just, you know, Jackie would say: "Just pick yourself up and dust yourself off.

Tomorrow is a new day. Video Player failed to load. Play Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. The Member for Wentworth, who built her public profile as a celebrity TV doctor and later as the head of the Australian Medical Association, wants to ensure that no teacher is discriminated against because of their sexuality.

When Labor introduces a bill into parliament today to abolish discrimination against students in religious schools on the basis of sexuality, Dr Phelps will be watching with interest. The same-sex conversation the couple started in would eventually find its way past the Ascham school gates, the gates through which Jackie Stricker-Phelps once departed.

In , in a very different climate to , the chair of Ascham school's social justice committee invited Dr Phelps and her partner to talk about marriage equality to the school assembly. Dr Phelps has two children from her first marriage: Jaime, a dietician and Carl, an aged care worker. But some years after her marriage to Ms Stricker-Phelps in New York in , the couple decided they wanted a child together.

Gabi was nine, undernourished and undereducated, when she arrived on their doorstep. Gabi recalls the trauma of the day she was taken out of her class at school. Despite her early setbacks, after two years of remedial maths and English classes and intensive work, Gabi became dux of her primary school. For Kerryn Phelps, the personal has long been political. Just as their own relationship set them on an activist route, so too would their love for Gabi. Not long after she came to live with them, the couple decided to adopt Gabi, only to discover that NSW law didn't allow them to do so.

They campaigned alongside others to change adoption laws in New South Wales to allow same-sex couples to adopt. I'm happy, I want to stay here, I love Jackie, and Kerryn.

I want them to be my parents. I want to be adopted, but it felt as though I was not listened to," Gabi Stricker-Phelps said. In , when Gabi was 12, the family finally succeeded and became the first same-sex non-kin couple to adopt in NSW. Ms Stricker-Phelps recalls the comical moment that followed the judge's stamping of Gabi's adoption papers.