Mistreat foster families, then recruit more when there’s a shortage…bad strategy

I just saw this quote from a Facebook status of a foster parent who is active in advocacy and raising awareness:

“You cannot recruit your way out of a foster home shortage while experienced families are quietly closing their homes because nobody supported them.“

The judge came to my home – it was a very good conversation, I’ll write more about it in another post – to speak with my husband and me, and she literally told me the same thing. She said there are very, very few families willing to step up as foster families, and there’s regular discussion about how to recruit more families.

Even though it’s in the best interest of children to be raised in a family setting, institutions are now being built for children from birth and up, so they will have a place for children to go when they are removed from their biological homes.

Why are there so few families? There are a number of factors, but the most important detail is this: in thirteen years as a youth judge, she’s never met a foster parent who says they’ve been treated well by the system. And, she continued, people who know these families hear about their experiences, and then decide not to get involved with foster care.

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There were many responses to the bolded quote above (many are in the US but other countries are also represented) with not a single dissenting comment – all from foster parents. Below is a sampling (with specific details removed); I could relate to every single one of statements.

“We are so close to closing. Pray for us and all of the children who need homes. We’re doing everything we can to keep fighting, but man, we are tired.”

“Yep!! We’re Screaming from the rooftops, over here, trying to protect children…but nobody listens! Foster parents are often the only true advocates for children and they’re ignored, shunned, emotionally abused and manipulated by disingenuous, poorly trained, emotionally unavailable Agency workers.”

“Not only not supported but actively fought against. It was a wild ride to say the least.”

“This is so true. I have been a foster home for many years now. Finding respite when we need it has been pretty much little to none. They say it takes a village and with foster kids sometimes it seems like you need more than just a village. My village never arrived. We have our last foster baby after seven years and when his future is decided we will be closing our house out. Burn out from lack of support and resources is a very real thing.”

“The children were not the hard part. Dealing with the broken system was soul crushing.”

“I wouldn’t change it for the beautiful kids who came through our home that we were able to support, even if it was temporary. However there’s no chance of us ever opening our home again. “

“After sitting in court listening to the case team say we were “detrimental to the child’s health”….. that was enough for us to take a step back and realize we were not built for this corrupt system.”

“right?!?! How do they expect to keep families when they treat the families horribly. “

“Or while lying about the experienced foster home, or threatening the experienced foster home,”

“Because the system is broken. The state makes it harder for kind, loving, selfless people to voluntarily take in and keep children than they do to return kids to broken, abusive, selfish bio parents.”

“So much love, time, stress, money..and we are often treated as the ones that did something wrong. But God forbid WE actually need help with something”

“recieved this from licensing worker today after sitting in on meeting with Caseworker. ‘My heart breaks for you! This is not how I feel you and any of my foster parents should ever be treated. I am so sorry that they are treating you so poorly.’”

“After everything, we are most likely closing because we don’t want to deal with the things we dealt with. The lies, the disrespect, no communication, she caused me so much anxiety, so much distrust. I just don’t think I can do it again.”

“People go into it thinking they can handle challenging kiddos so they will be good at it, not realizing the kiddos are not the difficult part. It’s all the adults that make up the “system”. When they see decisions made that go against logic and realize that you have just about no control over anything, they want out. We were asked to speak on a panel a couple months back and I was honest. I would never want to discourage anyone, but I think when prospective foster/resource parents go into the process informed, they are less likely to stop when they see the craziness that happens with some of these cases.”

“it is lack of support from the system, they do not care about the kids needs at all”

“I fought the system for over two years watching things that had me amazed that they allowed to happen. I was blessed in the end of that chapter to be able to adopt my baby and I closed my home immediately. I hate to say no but my health declined in that two years. The stress of watching how little the children mattered in my case was almost enough to do me in. I would love one day to have more babies but I just don’t know if I can see myself going through all that again.”

“Churn and burn system”

“Me!! Today!!! I even may warn perspective fosterers to run, run away!!!”

“Amen!!!! Foster parents are not supported at all.”

“It’s definitely been a very eye opening experience on how broken the system actually is on all sides of it. The lack of resources and support for the kids, the biological family, the foster care parents, and even the social workers themselves is appalling.”

“Foster parents end up with trauma because they really have no one to support them. For 2 weeks to a month let DCS and foster care agencies take the children into their homes. Yes, (they) see the children and talk to them, and (they) go home at the end of the day but who is with the children 24/7?”

“Yes i agree run as fast as you can, they will use you abuse you and spit you out, DONT DO IT!!!! I miss the kiddos soooo much but do not miss the abuse and mistreatment that dhs dished out and their expectations are thru the roof.”

“Being a foster parent has been the worst experience of my life. Only hanging on until this case closes. We are hated. Told to not advocate. Completely left out of the case. Our time and schedule is basically laughed at. I love this baby but can’t do this again.”

“That’s why my wife and quit foster care. The county offered little support, didn’t take concerns seriously and also people we knew were very unsupportive and had the attitude that it was our problem for taking in these kids.”

“Nobody wants to listen to the caregivers who are loving these children through what they are going through. What a gut wrenching experience opening our home to foster was to see how children are treated as “a file”.

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It’s been validating though sad to learn that so many foster parents have experienced similar difficulties to us. To quote something I saw somewhere else, to be a foster parent, “you need to have an irrationally strong desire to help children at high cost to yourself”.

It doesn’t always have to be like that, but there are so many issues baked into the system that to continue in the face of even the usual difficulties (not the unusual difficulties we faced) is generally at a high cost to yourself.

I would add a caveat for a child who is voluntarily given up, generally the case when the child has a physical disability like Down syndrome. Since they weren’t removed from their homes against parental wishes, there are fewer people involved with their files, and there can be less drama. While there have been frustrations with the technicalities of how things have been handled at times, overall this situation has been very different from the fostering scenario I’ve been writing about.

Avivah