PROJECT 2

Research Project

About 2 years ago the term “foster care” began buzzing around my house. All these questions swarmed my mind. What is this? Is it forever? Do I have to give up something? Will it be easy?No answer could change my mind about the idea of helping children, but not knowing what to expect made me worry. The only question that anyone could answer was “what is this?” I found out that foster care is a system in which children that are removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect are provided a foster family to care for them. When you become a foster family, you do not know which children will’;;; be placed into your home. We had to prepare for any age, and any number of kids to be welcomed into our home. After having my house completely child proofed, locks on medicine cabinets and cleaning supplies, covers on the gas stove knobs, outlet covers in the entire house, a fence around the perimeter of the pool, and alarms on exterior doors, we were ready for the next steps. The next thing we had to do was get a background check and fingerprinted. I had never had this done in the past, so walking into the facility was rather nerve wracking. I had to be asked many questions about what I thought about fostering children. When I was getting fingerprinted, almost half of my fingerprints did not register on the first scan. This made my heart rate go up even higher. Why wasn’t it working? Is there something wrong with my fingerprints? Are they going to tell me we cannot foster, just because of me? Finally, I was done and all 10 of my fingers had been scanned and I let out a big sigh of relief. Noticing that my brother and I were in slight distress, the women working with us gave us each a big handful of lollipops. That m;;;pade the day a lot better. A few months later when I turned eighteen, I was required to sign all of the paperwork my mom and step-dad did, even though I was going to be a sibling. Not exactly what I had imagined doing on my eighteenth birthday, but as an adult in the home, I had to be treated the same as my parents were when they got their license. My family received a license for up to two children under the age of five, and once we received out foster license, we began receiving calls about placements the same day. 

         The first call that came from placement to ask if we could take kids into our home, my parents had to say no. It is difficult to say no when you know that there are kids waiting to find a home. We have one bedroom with a crib and a twin bed, so housing three brothers in one small room was just not a possibility. The second call was for twin toddler boys who were medically needy; one needed surgery and the other couldn’t walk due to a clubbed foot. My parents couldn’t accept children who needed so much medical attention due to the requirements of their jobs. Another difficult “no” to kids who needed a loving home. On October 26, 2017, 5 days before Halloween, my mom received a call asking if we would take in a 1-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl. 2 kids!!! The house is about to go insane. After talking about it all together, we decided to take these two kids under our wing. We had the space and the perfect beds for them, so it seemed to be just right this time. The next day October 27, 2017 my mom and step-dad drove to Panama City, Florida, to pick up my new foster brother and sister. As I drove home from dance that night, I was excited but also nervous about what my family was getting into. The little girl was obsessed with Elsa and Ana from the Disney movie Frozen. When I walked in the door, I brought Frozen balloons, cups, and a little cupcake just for her. When I gave it to her, she hesitated to take it from me. This was understandable, since I was a new person in her life. The third new person since she arrived at this new house we call home. The next thing I know, just a few minutes later, we were dancing around in the hallway to get out all of our energy before dinner. The little boy was not even 1 yet. He was so cute, and I could not wait to squeeze his chubby cheeks. He could hardly walk, and couldn’t talk, so it took a few weeks for us to make a connection. Now, I am his favorite, shhh. Over time having the kids in our home we learned that the little girl had a lot of behavioral issues, as many kids from hard places do. She would hit, kick, spit, and scream to get attention or if she didn’t get her own way. For many reasons, she needed to live in a home that could provide a higher level of attention and care than we were able to provide in our home. As foster families, it is our job to advocate what is best for the children, so we had to advocate to the state and to Guardian Ad Litem that she be placed in a home that would fit her needs so that she could heal without having the competition and attention on anyone else. Even though she would have to move out of our home, we truly believed that a different environment would be better for her. Right at that time a single woman, that did not have any children, was getting her license to become a foster parent. She was hoping to foster a little girl just about her age. She was trained in trauma-informed care, she worked with kids with special needs, and she had worked with girls like her before. We are so glad that we advocated for this kind of home, and that the licensing agency placed them together, even though it was hard for all of us for her to move.  Since December, the little girl and this woman have been living together and she is thriving in her care. They are perfect for each other. Fortunately, I still get to see her at my dance studio and we meet with them to play at the park to maintain a bond with her. . While people might think that things are easy once children get placed in a good home, because the children have experienced trauma, it is not always that easy. Children from hard places have many more issues, which can be communicated through behavior, or they may simply have developmental delays due to the effects of trauma on the brain.

In foster care, the goal is to reunite the removed child to their biological parents. This means that foster homes are typically temporary homes. While you do get a call from the state to tell you the age, gender, and the background of a child, you do not always get very many details before you have to decide whether or not you want to bring them into your home. Your information on them may be limited, but the placement agent needs an answer quickly so that the child has a safe place to sleep that night. In foster care, foster parents receive a stipend from the state of roughly four hundred dollars each month to offset any extra costs of having the children in your home. This could be for daycare, clothing, haircuts, or food. If the child does not reunify with their parents or with a member of their biological family, they would be available for adoption. Children adopted from foster care in the state of Florida receive a voucher for free in-state college tuition. The foster community is very large. Annually 800,000 children are in foster care and on any given day about 500,000 children are in care in the United States (Pecora 27). While this is only a fraction of children living in the United States, this is a large number of children who need care by a loving family. The purpose of foster care is for the child to live in a stable home while the biological parent completes a case plan. The case plan can include classes, drug testing, sustaining a job, and having a stable place to live. Virtually anyone could become a foster parent (McMath). There are no skills required to become a foster parent, however, in an interview with Kim McMath, she pointed out that “if you have a parenting style that is inflexible, overbearing or cannot nurture another person, it probably would not be a good fit.” Children that are placed in foster homes often have experienced some type of trauma, whether it was physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, drug abuse, or hunger. It requires a lot of patience, love for children, and an openness to learn to be a truly successful foster parent. 

There are many steps in becoming a foster parent and the whole process could take three to six months to complete. To get started, foster parent candidates need to seek out a licensing agency in their area to sign up for the required classes. These classes provide information on a variety of things about how to prepare for a foster home study, how to understand the impacts of trauma on children, how to request resources for the children, and how to work with the biological family towards reunification with their children. In a required home study, the licensing agent will make sure a room is prepared for a child, certain things are locked away, and that the house is overall a safe environment. Everyone living in the house who is over the age of eighteen will have to get a background check and fingerprinted. Children living in the home under the age of eighteen will have to be fingerprinted. A reference check is also required for all foster parent candidates. The references have to answer questions about how the candidate would be as a foster parent, how reliable they are, how stable the family is, whether or not they have a support system is, and whether they would trust the candidate with their own children. While the steps and process are long and intricate, the state needs to know that you are reliable and responsible before placing a child in the home. Foster parents are also required toreceive ten hours of continuing education credit per year in order to maintain their license.

In Tallahassee there are many different foster events, meetings, donation bins, and online groups to go to when you need help, support, or just want to learn more. There is a foster support network that has a storage area for clothing and other donations that come in from the community and other foster parents. In addition, there is an online foster page for the local community where people can post if they have donations, need donations, or even just need advice on how to handle a situation (McMath). The donation areas are very helpful because most times the children do not come into foster care with many items. All sorts of things are donated: clothes, toys, cribs, changing tables, and dressers. There are also foster parent association meetings that provide free child care and dinner at the meeting. At these meetings speakers are brought in to discuss important topics that are important to foster families. Topics that have been used are: medical foster care, respite care, mental health, and how children’s developmentis impacted by trauma. At these meetings, foster parents are able to meet other foster families that are going through the same thing they are. Other foster parentscan help provideideas on how to handle certain situations and they can be a great source for support. 

A Guardian ad Litem is a person who works for the best interest of the child in care. This person will go to the child’s current home or school and talk to them about how they feel about their current placement and if they are getting visits with their biological parents, if allowed. They alsomayhave visits while the biological parents are around, to observe the bond and interaction between the child and parent, and sometimes they are needed to supervise a visit to make sure that the parents are being appropriate and interacting with their child. There are times where the parent will spend more time on their phone than they will with their child (Bernard). The Guardian ad Litem supervisor is responsible for attending court cases and talking to the judge about what they believe is best for the child. They make recommendations to the judge based on the things that they saw or heard in their visits. This could mean recommending if the parents should have supervised or unsupervised visits or even if the child should be reunified with their parents or that the biological parents’ rights should be terminated (Bernard). The Guardian ad Litem writes reports for the court and talks to the judge if there are any problems. Since the Guardian ad Litem is not a part of the state-run foster system, they have to ask the biological parents to sign forms that give them permission to look at the records from their case plan (Bernard). The Guardian ad Litem does not always agree with the case manager, attorneys, or even the foster parents. There are some cases where more than one child is on the same case plan because the parent has had more than one child and they are taken into care at the same time. The Guardian ad Litem tries their best to recommend what is best for the children, but what they tell the judge they believe does not always happen. 

Overall, foster care is a very large community. It includes the children, the biological parents, the foster parents, case managers, court system, the Guardian ad Litem, and an extensive support system. To foster children requiresa lot, but it can also reward the families and the childrena lot too. Being a part of this community, I have learned so much. I am much more patient, I have a better understanding of the effects of trauma on children, and I have learned a lot about how to handle kids without overwhelming or making them anxious. Overall, I can definitely see myself staying a part of the foster community for a very long time.