Don’t Forget to Ask

New foster parents have told me they wish they had asked more questions before accepting a placement in their home. When the agency calls me, I always ask these questions:

1. Who is the worker?
2. Why is this child or client being placed? Has the child/client been place before? May we contact the former provider?
3. What is the child’s/client’s legal status?
4. What is the family situation? Where are the parents? If out of the home, for how long? Are there brothers and/or sisters? Where are they? What community are they from?
5. Will the parents visit? How often? Where? Who transports?
6. Is the child/client in good health? Does the child/client have any medical problems? (i.e., allergies, special diet, therapy) When was the last dental/physical? What type of medical coverage does the child/client have? Who is the child’s/client’s provider? Am I able to use our provider?
7. What grade is the child in? What school does the child attend? Do I need to transport to school? Does the child receive any special or supportive educational services?
8. Will there be a clothing allowance?
9. Does the child/client have any special behavior problems or unusual habits, interests or talents? (Firesetter, bedwetter, sexual behavior, sleeping disorder, eating disorder, etc.)
10. Has the child/client or family made any allegations? Is there any reason our address should be kept from the family?
11. Are there any other support services for the child/client? (Personal care attendant or other services)

Foster Parenting Offers Intrinsic Rewards
By Erin Sullivan Sutton

This pretty well describes the job of foster parents needed in Minnesota. They’re everyday people willing to devote time to caring for children who have experienced some tough situations – including abuse, neglect, and chemical dependency – at very young ages.

Foster parents do amazing work. They nurture angry, confused, frightened children to help them regain hope in their lives. They help children advance from struggling students to strong students. They encourage sullen children to talk about their feelings with counselors. They coax withdrawn children to laugh and play with other children. Because of foster parents’ love for children, they make a different in kids’ lives.

But as any parent knows, love isn’t enough. Foster parents must not only have the nurturing skills to help with homework, prepare nutritious meals and tuck children into bed, but also specialized training to provide the emotional support to children who have been traumatized.

We an help with that. The Minnesota Department of Human Services which oversees foster care throughout Minnesota, works with the states’s 87 counties and private agencies to train people interested in becoming foster parents and maintaining their licenses each year. County staff interview foster parents to ensure they are prepared to care for children and address potential foster parents concerns and questions.

Foster parenting isn’t just about kids and families. It’s about entire communities. It’s about foster families helping birth families get the help they need and preparing children to return home. It’s about neighborhood families helping foster families care for children and welcoming them into their communities, if only for a short time. When children in foster care remain in their schools and neighborhoods, and on their teams and clubs, they make an easier transition as they move from their homes to foster homes and eventually back to their homes or into other permanent homes.,

In Minnesota, we’re looking for foster parents with a wide variety of backgrounds - single or married; with or without children; renters or homeowners; with low, medium and high incomes. Right now we have only 5,200 foster parents to care for 12,400 children in Minnesota. That’s not enough – not enough parents to care for children and not enough parent to choose from when we’re trying to match children with parents who can best meet their particular needs.

Our greatest need is for foster parents to care for children of color and sibling groups who want to stay together. Of Minnesota children in foster care, 43 percent are children of color and almost 50 percent are part of sibling groups.

As American writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “To know that even one life has breathed easier because your have lived – this is to have succeeded.” Foster parents succeed everyday in Minnnesota.

What To Do When You Can’t Reach Your Worker
The following list of solutions has been adapted from an article written by Teresa McElroy, director of 4-R-Kids, a new foster parent licensing agency in Sioux City, Iowa.

• Leave a thorough phone message.  Include your full name, telephone number, what you are calling about and indicate the degree of importance to your message.  If you have left more than one message, indicate what number message this is.  Remain professional and be assertive, not aggressive.  Make sure an emergency is a true emergency.

• Give a time or times when it will be best for your worker to return your call.

• If you don’t have any luck reaching your worker, send a message in writing and keep a copy for yourself.  Record your messages and the number of attempts you have made.

• If you have access to Internet, e-mail your worker.  A printed copy of each e-mail correspondence includes the date and time of each letter and help you keep accurate records of your communication.

• If at all times you have been professional, honest, calm, and respectful and you have tried all of the above and not been successful, you can follow the chain of command. In your last written correspondence, let your worker know you plan to notify his supervisor if you do not hear by a certain date. (This is good documentation for a problem that wasn’t originally urgent, but is not because of lack of response)

• If this does not elicit a response, use the same procedures with the supervisor’s superiors. (Between each correspondence allow a two-day turn around time)

Why are you a Foster Parent? By Judy Howell

Randy has planted a seed in previous News & Views "Why are we foster parents?" I had not given this much serious thought until this morning. One of my children knocked on my door and said "Dad said you’ll want to take this call!"

I picked up the receiver to "You’ll never guess who this is." She was right, I couldn’t.

In the early 1980s we went through a period of fostering where we were teased a lot about having a revolving door installed. We were dealing with a very difficult group of teenage girls with "hot feet." It was unusual for much time to pass without filing a police report on a runaway. There were nights when we went through the process more than once.

This was also a period of time when we really questioned if we were making any impact on these kids. They would disappear from our lives never to be heard from again.

On the other end of my phone was a young adult who had left our home nine years ago. She was now a wife and mother. She had been thinking about her past and was lonesome. We had not heard from her in nine years and then to hear she was doing good was a real powerful feeling. We had made an impact on the life she was living and she could talk about it all these years later.

So you want to be a Foster Parent?

So you want to become a foster parent? You will receive no benefit package. If you are frugal with your budget, you may make 50 cents to a dollar over what you spend on the child. You will be on call 24 hours a day, but most will be spent on active duty. You will not receive combat pay, even though you will endure more than most GIs faced during Desert Storm.

Becoming a foster parent will change your life style.

Maybe not at first, but as months and then years pass you will be affected. Foster care will affect you and your family in many areas: extended family, community involvement, your personal activities, and those of your children. The changes, like life around us, range from very good to very negative.

You will find that your relatives fit into two categories when you inform them that you are going to "take in" a foster child. Either they proclaim you the saints of the family or just plain nuts. Whichever side of the discussion they voice their opinion on, your choice to take in foster children puts them in various dilemmas. Grandparents suffer through a multitude of questions. Besides the normal dilemma of whether to include the foster child on their Christmas list, I had a grandparent question whether they should be included in their will. If you only take one or two foster children into your home in your lifetime, those questions may need a honest answer, but after ten or more foster children the questions become moot.

Foster parents are trained to respect the privacy of the foster child and their families. Relatives don’t always understand why you can’t tell them about their "new" niece or nephew. Their bewilderment only gets worse when the child acts out in an inappropriate manner and you can’t justify the behavior because the past history falls into the data privacy area. For some families this leads to selective invitations, where only certain individuals, or only adults are invited over. What do you do in those special circumstances? Cousins will get married, families will want a family portrait, what is the best way to handle special circumstances? No matter how many or what types of children you care for, the one thing that relatives will come to realize is that you are a very busy person. As the years pass, and you have to react to foster care emergency after emergency, you may find that the visits and the invitations become far and few between.

The community, your neighbors, are not much different. There may be a few who would like to blame you for every wrong that happens in the neighborhood, because you brought "those kids" into your home. Most, though, think it’s wonderful that you can do what you do, just keep them in your yard. Our police officers know us by name and most of the teachers at the school refer to us as "that house." The ones we work with on a regular basis are supportive and complimentary, the rest just raise their eyebrows when we pass them on the street. Church members work hard to include the children in activities, but never invite the "whole" family over for dinner. (If someone did once, it never happened twice.) Foster families tend to be larger than the "norm," and size alone can cause discomfort, without adding the abnormal behavior factor. Foster families are very visible to the community and can add additional pressures whether real or imaginary. As the adult of the foster family, you will constantly find yourself surrounded by people and yet very much alone.

Being a foster parent will develop your skills as a independent social director, therapist, and taxi service, to mention just a few. Activities that you took for granted as a member of the adult world will be infringed upon by the children you invited into your home. If you are physically active, and participating in athletic pursuits, your activities may change when the teenager your accept into your home is too paranoid to ride a bike, skate, or go in a boat. The activities of the whole family will be tailored to fit the least adaptable member. Need for attention or preconceived fears will stimulate pseudo-injuries or refusals to participate. Your social outings will be disrupted by unruly children or true emergencies (you will have more than you could imagine). The foster children you choose to bring into your home will have all the normal problems, but accelerated to an abnormal pace. You will be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The safety and welfare of the foster children will be a constant priority.

Your birth children will grow up with "the streets in their home." They will, at a young age, be aware of the cruelties that the children of this world face. They will endure pressures at home where they were intending to find refuge. Your choice to take in foster children will either send them on the streets in rebellion or give them skills to become outstanding young adults. It is not uncommon to find your birth children very active outside the home. They will participate in the community, not only because they choose to, but because it is a release from the constant pressure foster care places on them. Your choice to accept a foster child into your home will change your birth child for life.

When you are old, no one will remember what you did. Except for

• A child, now an adult, who has a life with a little more purpose and a lot more love,
• A child who would never have experienced an alternate "safe family" except that you chose to be a foster parent,
• Who now feeds others because you prepared meals,
• Who has a job and pays the bills, because you taught them how to work,
• Who completed school, because you ensured that the homework was done,
• Who treats their family with respect, because you modeled dignity.

Thank you, from all of them!

Greg Olson and his wife Diane are foster care providers for Hennepin County.