How do you become a foster parent? You’ve seen those billboards on the highway.
Share your love, they say. Please foster a child.
Is it hard? Can you really share your love and make a difference in a child’s life?
Oh, you can make a difference all right. Nearly 175 children are living in foster care in Rowan County right now, and child care workers at the Rowan County Department of Social Services will tell you quickly they’re making a difference.
But it’s harder — and easier — than becoming a birth parent.
Foster parents used to say they were only responsible for three hots and a cot but no more. Now foster parents have to understand what the children have been through and how they can best help them. And they have to love them if any of that is going to happen.
It starts with screening.
If you decide you want to take someone else’s child into your home, says Carla Mallinson, the foster home licensing worker, “we will screen, screen, screen.”
It requires three criminal record checks. You have to be finger-printed. You have to have personal references.
“We hold these people to a higher standard,” she says, than birth parents have to measure up to.
“I tell folks during the training classes that when you become licensed to care for other people’s children, everyone will watch, especially when they realize you’re getting tax money. That tax money makes it everybody’s business. You live in a glass house.
“The money foster parents get is not considered payment for services rendered. It’s money to be specifically used for the children. It goes toward the cost of room and board and clothes and shoes and school supplies.
“When I have someone call me and say, ‘I’m home all day and could use some extra money,’ I say that’s not what foster care is. I suggest they become licensed for day care and get a fee for services.”
But not for foster care.
Most foster families receive $315 a month, she says, but the amount varies with the age of the children and their need, generally their physical or medical need.
Foster parents also must take a 30-hour training class.
“That’s the best way we know to prepare families for what to expect,” Mallinson says.
Not that the training class will prepare them for everything. But it will help a lot and is, she believes, “the best tool we’ve got.”
All foster parents are required to take the course, and they must make up any classes they miss. The training is conducted four times a year and became a requirement in Rowan County in 1995 and statewide in 1996.
“We do some presentations to share information that they’re going to need to know,” she says, “and we work in small groups.”
Mallinson or others working with the training classes will present a situation, ask how each group would handle it and share the answers.
For example, a 6-year-old has been removed from his mother who was deeply involved with drugs. He’s angry. If he’s put in your home, how would you expect that anger to show itself? And how would you deal with it?
“We talk a lot about loss and attachment,” she says, “because both are issues with all these children by virtue of them being neglected and taken away from their families. They suffer a loss most kids never experience.
“We talk about that, and then say, ‘OK, if you have a 5-year-old child in your home, how would you expect that child to react to this compared to an infant or a 13 year old? ...
“We talk about developmental stages — most foster parents have had children of their own — and how children react to loss at different ages. And we talk about personality and background.”
But basically, she says, they talk to applicants about what to expect.
Many think they’re going to be like their own or their sister’s children or their neighbors’.
But they’re not. Most of them have gone through huge issues.
“A 1-year-old might have sleeping disturbances, feeding disturbances, might not like to be cuddled,” she says. If you see an infant who’s scared stiff and tense in your arms, that’s a scary thing. A 5-year-old may be crying, aggressive, have behavior problems. A 13-year-old may be defiant, might run away.
“All these things could be a reaction to where they’ve been, what they’ve been through.
“So many people say children should be grateful,” she says, but if that was the only family a child knew and he is taken away ...
“We tell children never to talk to strangers, but we pick them up and put them with strangers.”
One whole class in the 30-hour training series deals with handling aggression, withdrawal, hoarding. Some children will hoard food because they’re accustomed to not knowing where their next meal is coming from.
Each child has a social worker, and the family has two — Mallinson, who’s the foster home licensing worker, and Peggy Thornburg,who is the placement worker.
“We try to train them well enough so they won’t have to call us every time they have a question, but we certainly want to be aware of the big things. If a foster parent calls and says, ‘I’m at my wit’s end. What do I do?’ we both try to help.”
You would think that happens often, she says, “but our foster families do a great job of coping with the behaviors while being supportive of the children.
“At the best, foster parents don’t treat the children as victims and help them not see themselves as victims.”
One social worker and one trained foster parent serve as co-leaders during the training sessions, and the trained foster parents are vitally important to the process.
The foster parents, she says, hear the information she and the social worker give them, “but they really listen” to Melissa Shue and Darlene Murphy and Woodrina Downing, three foster parents who are working with the program now.
They’ve been there, done that, and the bond is always immediate.
Harder or easier than being a birth parent?
Both, Carla Mallinson says.
But the payoff is almost always positive.
“I heard one parent say, ‘It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever love. Children come into your home who have never had a Christmas, never had a birthday, and to be able to give that to them... ”
Foster parents love and are loved, and nothing provides a stronger bridge to a better life.
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