Thursday, July 26, 2007

Supper Out and A Different Lifestyle

Bart and I had supper tonight with Pat O'Brien and one of his staff members and her daughter. Just a Sport's Bar, nothing fancy, but the food was good and, as imagined, the conversation was fascinating.

We first went to part of Pat's workshop on Humor (or, as he pronounces it, Yuma) and did some laughing, and some thinking, and some listening....

Then supper we shared about our lives, got caught up to date, and listened to a little of his staff member, Mary's, story. Mary does foster care for much older teens 16-21 and makes a permanent commitment to them. She was telling us about an article in the paper about her and how she allowed her address to be printed.

A result of the article was a letter that was she received from a boy in jail. A 16 year old, he wrote to her and said, "I know you usually take gay and lesbian kids, and I'm not either one, but I think I'd like to live at your house." He invited her to visit him in jail and she agreed. When his sentence is over, she plans to invite him to live with her.

"Have you always been the kind of person who would have no fear in letting your address be published in the paper or letting a kid move into your house straight from jail, or have you evolved into that kind of person?"

The result of the question was a discussion about how we all are unsure of what we handle until something comes into our lives. We then discussed how knowing then what we do now about what the future would hold, might have us chicken out before we started.

But the bottom line is there is an incredible resiliency in the human spirit and we CAN and DO face many things that we were not formerly sure we could handle. But the more we are able to handle, by God's grace, the more we realize we can do.

On of my missions is to recruit families who are willing to life through the horrors to end up to be resilient people of faith who will take on the harder things. As Bart said, quoting Jaiya John this morning, "what we currently have in our country is not a "child welfare" system, but a "help parents get the child they want" system, when it comes to adoption."

What we need to be doing is looking at the kind of kids that are out there. In 2005, 48,853 children were adopted out of foster care. Of this number, 41,117 were age 11 or under. Only 7736 children were 12 or older when they were adopted.

Does this mean that there were no teenagers in foster care who were free for adoption? Of course not. In studying this report., where I'm getting my statistics, you will see that there were a great number of children who were in foster care and legaly free. In fact, in that year alone, over 24,000 of them were emancipated as adults from the foster care system.

But what do we continue to do? We continue to recruit families who want to take children under 6. We spend a lot of money, time and energy to recruit and train these families so that they can jump into competition with other families just like them who want a child or children to meet their need to parent.

Obviously, we still need to do this. But do children under 6 each need 100 families all wanting that same child? I realize that I am probably going to make all kinds of people mad in saying this, but are we not focusing our energies, as Dr. John accuses us, on meeting the needs of the families wanting children instead of the children themselves.

If we were looking at the issue of waiting children in foster care, we would be recruiting families for teens with on probation with an array of mental illnesses. We would be looking for families willing to take large sibling groups. We would be looking for parents willing to parent children with FASD or RAD or sexual acting out or the dreaded "fire-setters."

But the answer we always receive is, "I could never do that."

If you asked me 10 years ago, I would have said the same thing. But you know what? We've done it. We're doing it. We're living out some of our worst nightmares, and not only are we OK, but we love our lives and we'd do it again. In fact, we will.

Wow, I'm getting carried away. But it is true. The kids that are out there, the ones aging out this year, or next year, or five years down the road, are the ones who need us the most. The families that will take a 5 year old with no issues are a dime a dozen.

We need to find those who will willingly do something harder. But there are few takers, and it's an impossible sell.

7 comments:

Mike Benson said...

Have you seen "Aging Out"? It's a documentary by Roger Weisberg, who's done a bunch of stuff (His film "Sound and Fury" won an Oscar and he has another film called "Why Can't We Be a Family Again" which you'd probably be interested in.)

Anyway, "Aging Out" follows three foster kids aging out of the system, many of whom don't have a stable permanent adult in their lives. It's a heartbreaking film and I think you can get it on NetFlix.

Also, I'd recommend "My Flesh and Blood," but I assume you've already seen that right?

-Mike B

LindaJean said...

You are so right... We are wading through family feelings, attitudes right now, but will, if God so directs, be on the list for a large sibling group before the end of the year... Keep on keeping on Claudia, it is so needed.

FosterAbba said...

This post you have written (and others like it) is why I am struggling so hard with what we should do for "Belinda" right now. She needs a permanent, loving family, but her behaviors (at least when she was placed with us) were extreme.

Sadly, our county just doesn't offer the level of support we would need in order to have her in our home, especially because we have another child living with us.

When I read your posts, I wish things were different for us as a family. If we lived in a place where real estate was less expensive, we could afford a bigger house and we could take more kids. If one of us didn't have to work full time, we'd have more time to work with our current daughter, and we might be able to take on more. If we had more money...if our county offered more support...if only...if only.

It's a hard thing knowing that we have to set our limits so low. If our county offered more support in terms of money, respite, PCAs and other help, we could do more. But they don't, and we have to set limits for what we think we can manage alone.

It's sad and disappointing every time I think about all the kids that are out there, waiting. It's even worse when I know a kid who blew out of our home once before is out there waiting...

Claudia said...

To respond to Foster Abba:

What you are writing about is certainly worthy of a future blog entry.

One of the unfortunate things that has occurred over the past ten years isthat people are starting to realize what they might get into if they choose to adopt older children and how their counties might not offer them the support they need.

We were so naive we never had a clue what was going to happen. Now we, the generation of those clueless, is telling all of the potential parents out there was life is going to be like.

And, if like fosterabba, they live in communities where they know they will not have support, they cannot risk everything.

But the passion you guys (gals) have to change ONE kid's life is still more than most are doing.

Keep up the good work and who knows what might happen in the future to allow you to parent more kids.

Dare I suggest a move to minnesota? :-)

FosterAbba said...

I don't think we could handle a move to MinneSNOWta. Brr...

I've posted my own follow-up to this conversation, which you can read here if you are interested.

Maerlowe said...

When we started out, it was with the intent of brining teenagers into our lives. We were certified for kids from 5-17, mainly because of a sibling group that had kids on both ends of that range, and then we waited. From August to November, we never heard anything about any of the homestudies we sent in for adoptive placements. Meanwhile, starting around six weeks after we were approved, we got calls at least once a week for fost-adopt placements, asking us if we'd like to pick up newborns at the hospital, or if we'd consider twin toddler girls. Huckle, at three years and two months, was the second-oldest child we were asked to take (as far as foster-adopt goes. While we were being called for babies, we were submitting our homestudy to kids on TARE that were usually 9-16, aside from one little boy who had a video that just about killed me), with the oldest being five years old and waiting for his father to come back from Iraq before he was reunified.

For us, it ended up being a matter of "how long are we going to wait on the state" vs "here's a kid who needs a home, right in front of us." And our agency had worn us down with enough turning-down of kids 0-1 that all of a sudden, 3 didn't seem that young.

I don't yet know if we'll do this again. I have these dreams of future Christmases with a dozen adult children, so we'll see.

Kerry said...

We went to our training with the intention of adopting an alder child, a teenager to be exact. We were told that we had unrealistic expectations (no kidding!) and to look at younger children. Then we went to teen "meet and greet" events and fell in love with kids (and they with us) and were told that each and every one MUST be placed as an only child.

Then we started pursuing sibling group adoption, and now we are told over and over again that they must be placed alone or the youngest as the youngest.

While I agree 100% with what you wrote, I think a bigger issue might be some unrealistic expectations on the social workers part. One of the children we wanted (who wanted us!) was living in a foster home with younger children. There was no plan to move her into a different home, yet they wouldn't even consider a home with younger kids. Maybe I was very wrong, but some of those issues might not be issues in a pre-adoptive home the same way that they are in a foster home.

I don't know what the answer is but I know other people in the same situation that we are in. What more can we do?