My Dear Daughter

My Dear Daughter,

I know you’ll be much older before you ever read this (if you ever read this), but I wanted to tell you the story of how you came to be my daughter. I wanted to tell you the story of how you changed me as a person. I wanted to tell you the story of how much you are loved. You see, you did not grow in my tummy, nor are you my permanent, legal daughter. Instead you came to me because placement called me very early one Friday morning – 1:27 AM to be exact – asking if I could take you and your brother on an emergency, over-night basis until they could find you and your brothers a permanent foster home the next morning. I remember thinking about how tired I was because the week had been a very long week already since daddy had been gone and wondering how I was going to fare at work the next day. It seemed like it took the investigator forever to arrive with you guys in tow, but when he pulled into the driveway at 4:32 AM, I was wide awake from having been thinking about you for the previous few hours. All I knew was your names and ages. I hadn’t really asked very many questions because I was not in the habit of taking placement calls anymore so all of my “good” foster parent skills were rusty from disuse.

When Mr. Byron opened the car and got you out I remember noting how little you seemed, but my goodness you were so brave for such a little munchkin. You came right over to me with your half-eaten happy meal in hand and jumped into my arms. I asked you if you were sleepy though I didn’t really need you to answer as you were already asleep before your head touched my shoulder. Mr. Bryon bought your brother inside; I carried you. Since all the other kids were asleep, we put you both on the couch in the living room, toes to toes, covered you up with warm blankets, and neither of you moved a muscle until I had to wake you for court a few hours later. You were both so exhausted.

I didn’t realize the significance of that morning at the time, my love. I had no idea that you would end up occupying more space in my heart and life than just the tiny fraction of the couch your sleeping form covered, and I had no idea how deeply I would end up loving you or how fiercely I would have to fight to be sure the people charged with your care would make wise decisions for your life. All I knew at that particular moment was that you and your brother needed to sleep and that we would all be heading in to court in less than four hours.

After the judge made it clear that you and your brothers would need to stay in care, the case manager began telling me that they would start looking for a home for you but that since there weren’t homes available locally that you and your brother would likely have to be moved to the central part of the state. I knew what that would ultimately mean for you so I got on the phone and started calling my foster family friends who might be able to help. We were able to find a family locally that could take your two youngest brothers, your other brother would stay with the family who initially took him that night and you would stay with us – I couldn’t keep your brother with you because you guys didn’t all fit into my van and the other family couldn’t take you because they didn’t have space either. I knew I was going to have to do a lot of explaining to daddy. I also knew I couldn’t just let them ship you guys all over the state willy nilly, and I figured this would only be for a few days until the placement team would be able to find a home that could take all four of you together. Even before I knew I loved you, I knew I needed to protect you.

What started out as me loudly nagging everyone on the case to see if a home had come available to accommodate all four of you eventually turned into the quiet questions during our monthly visit with the case manager. Daddy and I were both very clear with all the players that we were a temporary stop because you needed to be with your brothers longer term, but along the way, everyday life was happening. We signed you up for taekwondo (which you were lukewarm about at best), swimming lessons, a music class on occasion, and got you set up with our regular pediatrician and dentist. We worked on learning everyday skills like recognizing letters and colors and numbers, and we started learning your food preferences (I should tell you now that you were a McDonald’s junkie, sweet girl, and that you could smell a French fry a mile away). We figured out that you needed a nap in the middle of the day or you would fall asleep in the middle of taking a bite of dinner and that you absolutely loved the song “Drinking Class” because you would belt out every single word at the top of your lungs when it came on the radio. You eventually slipped out of calling me and daddy Miss Heather and Mr. Evan and started calling us mommy and daddy, though that seemed to happen quietly and before we really knew it, and I even heard you and Warren referring to each other as sissy and bubba a time or two when you weren’t too busy arguing with each other.

You and Warren would fight like cats and dogs one minute, but then two seconds later you were thick as thieves plotting some mission of mischief – do you remember the time the two of you locked the babysitter out of the house? Liam, who almost never uses anyone’s real name, would run around screaming “Naaaaana” because he couldn’t pronounce your whole name – but he couldn’t stand not being in the same room with you and would search all over until he found you. You guys would fight over the Leappad in the car but would gang up on Warren if he tried to intervene at all. You and Elie had a more tumultuous relationship because you shared a room and she would regularly steal your toys, but even so, you guys would sing together at night when it was time for bed, and I could hear you telling her bedtime stories long after we had told you guys lights out and good night.

I think we got so caught up in the swing of everyday life that the passage of time slipped quietly by until we were reminded that summer was coming to a close and you would be starting kindergarten soon. Somewhere in all the craziness of these last few months you took up permanent residence in mine and daddy’s hearts, and the conversations he and I were having about the time when you would have to leave us became almost unbearable for either of us. I think both of us had privately entertained the idea that you could be with us forever, but as selfish as both of us can be on occasion we also knew that you deserved to be with your brothers. We knew that the home and love you had with us would never be able to overcome that deep connection siblings share – no matter how much we loved you and no matter how much we tried to change that. We knew that all of us were going to hurt and that you were probably not going to understand things initially, but we also knew that if we didn’t push the system to try to get you back with your brothers now it would never happen. So to keep you from having to change schools and to give you a chance at getting your brothers back, my voice to the case manager and placement team grew loud again. Baby girl, if you know nothing else about any this, I want you to know that I have fought for your long term life with your brothers tooth and nail. I have pushed people to think about the consequences of their actions to the point of even doubting myself and my own motivations at times. My only regret is that I didn’t stay as loud as I should have the entire time – though I know that if I had I wouldn’t have had your sweet smile, infectious laughter and mischievous spirit with me as long as I did – so I am torn as to whether I did right by you or not.

Long story short, the system was not able to find a home with enough space or resources to take all four of you – though I pushed everyone really hard to carefully consider the long term implications for you and your brothers if we didn’t work hard enough now to try to keep you guys together. I tried very hard to make everyone understand how the loss of a sibling can hurt deeply – even decades later – though I know I was preaching to the choir most days. I was angry – and frustrated – that it didn’t seem like the folks making the big decisions understood what I was talking about on a personal level though. There were so many people all trying to look out for what was best for you and your brothers so I want you to know that none of the decisions about your life were ever taken lightly. Ultimately, we had to compromise and agree that being with one brother was better than being with no brothers at all – though I am really sad – no, angry – that we have to make choices like this.

Up to this point in my life, I’ve never had to make the kind of decisions that I’ve had to make in the last few months. Yes, we have had many children come through our home, but you were the only child we ever took in who was old enough to know what was happening. You were the only child I’ve ever had to have adult-level conversations with about things that would make most adults cringe and run away crying. Sweet pea, you have handled all of this chaos in your short life like a little champ and have shown so much strength and resilience that I know you’ll end up changing the world someday. You have amazed me continually with your ability to heal and grow and your capacity for love and wonder. My sweet child, I am not your permanent, legal, forever mommy, but you will forever be my permanent and forever daughter even without the legal paperwork. You grew love in my heart almost without me even realizing it, and you changed the way I view the world because you forced me to recognize the places in this world where things need to change. But because of you, I am a stronger person with a renewed sense of passion for fixing what’s wrong with the system that brought you into my life.

You came into my life in an unconventional manner for certain, but you’ll be in my heart and mind forever.

The cost of fostering

We recently had a new foster kiddo join our family for a while throwing us back into the thick of the foster care rollercoaster. We’ve had an active license for the last six years, but when we finalized the adoption of our last munchkin in January of last year, we thought we were done with the exception of the odd here and there babysitting gigs for our friends who are still foster parents and need licensed caregivers in order to have respite care for their munchkins.

Imagine my husband’s surprise when he got a weird text message from our friends in New Mexico congratulating him on our new basketball team (the running joke between our two families has always been that we had enough kids to field our own sports teams). Apparently I sort of forgot to inform my husband that we had temporarily taken in a new kid (actually two of them) while he was out of town – okay, in my defense, it was only supposed to be overnight and he was out of town at the time. I probably should have known that when Tenille told me it was only overnight that it really wasn’t (we’ve had that happen every single time but once), but I have an almost pathological inability to say no when placement calls me. But I digress.

The story I’m writing about here is actually one of numbers. After having been out of the “real” foster game for a few years, I’d forgotten just how much work in involved in the first couple of weeks of a new child joining a family. But let me break some of it down for you here. Please understand that this post is not a complaint about the amount of time or money we spend on taking kids in – it’s simply to illustrate the realities behind why we have such a hard time recruiting and retaining good foster families.

Once the Department decides to shelter a child(ren), the Department has to have the case heard before a judge the next business morning in an emergency shelter hearing so that the Department can have the legal ability to shelter the child until the adjudication hearing. This requires that the child be transported as the courts have now decided that the children have a right to be heard in court (this includes infants – I guess the judges like hearing their cries?) though in the 15 times I’ve been present during the shelter hearing I’ve never once had the judge actually speak to any of my children – even our most recent addition who is four and a half and old enough to talk to the judge. In fact, this judge specifically asked me to take all of the children out of the court room into the play area because they were disrupting court – which served to irritate me because what was the use in making the child attend if you’re not going to pay any attention to them? Even when the hearing is the first one on the docket, you end up being in court for several hours – so if you’re a full time employee, be prepared to burn some annual leave.

When removed from their family of origin, foster kids are required to see a doctor within 72 hours as a way for the system to have a baseline of what their current health status is. However, in certain parts of Florida, the managed care entity responsible for ensuring that these kids have access to a doctor did a horrible job of rolling out its new plan, and thus there are simply no available doctors to see our kids. It took 11 days to get the very first available doctor’s appointment for my new child – officially 192 hours longer than mandated. Oops! Because I was not the person who made the appointment, I was unable to attend this visit due to a meeting at work I simply could not reschedule so my child had to be transported by yet another unfamiliar person to a doctor’s visit that required four shots from a doctor she had never seen before to be comforted by a person she had no relationship with whatsoever.

The results of that visit showed that she needed specialist appointments that simply could not be arranged locally – so I did something not many people have the ability to do – I added her to my private insurance to gain access to a whole slew of medical practitioners that were not available to her on the Sunshine plan. This will cost me money out of pocket, but I would rather do that and have access to good LOCAL doctors than have her suffer or have to be transported to Panama City or further for medical appointments. I was fortunate to be able to do this because she also has a slew of dental issues that need to be addressed and there are no local dentists who take the Sunshine plan either (okay, I may be exaggerating here – there is one dentist but that office can’t make appointments for months so I don’t count them). So to take her to her establishing appointment with both the primary care physician and the dentist both took about a half a day of my workday.

The two kids that came to me that night had nothing with them but a ratty teddy bear, two books, a pair of panties two sizes too small, a pair of pants two sizes too small, a bag of cookies, a box of almond milk and six diapers. When we figured out one of the kids would be staying (likely for a very long time) it became necessary to try to get some clothes and supplies for her for everyday use. Since I’ve never had an older female child, I did not already have a stash of larger sized clothing. We’ve only ever taken in babies – I didn’t even have a bed that was big enough for her permanently (or even longer term). Fortunately, our local foster and adoptive parent association runs a small supply closet and I was able to get two outfits in her size and our licensing agency just happened to have an extra bed we could use for her – otherwise I would have had to run out to purchase those things (and I would have willingly). My fabulous coworkers even pitched in and got her three more outfits, some sock and undies. I ended up having to buy school supplies, a nap blanket and mat, a lunch sack and thermos, and enough outfits to get us through the rest of the week, a pair of shoes and some pajamas. The grand total for day one of her arrival was already sitting at $200 and change.

The week we got back from the trip I will tell you about in a minute (in the middle of the third week kidlet had become part of our family), the case manager finally got us the clothing and shoe voucher we had asked for so that we could supplement and fill in what we didn’t already have. A $50 voucher to Marshall’s for clothing and a $50 voucher to Beall’s Outlet for shoes are what the department provided. While better than nothing – for families who do not have the means that we do at their disposal – this wouldn’t have gone very far.

To recap so far, already we’re sitting at two full days off of work to get through necessary appointments and $200+ out of pocket for basic expenses and a late set of vouchers for an additional $100 at stores whose prices are rather inflated. An addition to our private insurance as the state provided insurance plan was inadequate to handle the needs of the child in my care. And I won’t disclose how much emotional chocolate I may or may not have consumed in this time period to handle the emotional rollercoaster I’m personally on over the course of this journey.

My family had already planned a Disney vacation for the week after munchkin joined us. It was obvious munchkin wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon because we’re out of foster homes locally – and quite frankly, unless a home came available that could take all four of them permanently (did I mention she’s part of a sibling group of four) I wouldn’t want her to move because each move is highly traumatic to kids. It wouldn’t have been right to exclude her from the trip we had already planned because she is part of our family now. We couldn’t back out of our trip or reschedule it because it was already paid for – so we simply bought her tickets to go with us – another $180 expense. She had a fabulous time and the whole family had a much more enjoyable trip for having her with us.

Here we are now at week three of munchkin joining our family. I can’t really remember a time when she wasn’t part of our family – and my kids have all embraced her as one of us. My husband adores her as does all of the extended family who have met her. Her daycare teachers love her. Our friends love her. She’s’ one of the best things to have happened to our family since Elie joined our family two years ago. But I haven’t even begun to touch on the emotional toil going on in our family in the last three weeks.

Initially, there was a lot of fear, chaos and even some anger as my husband was a little peeved with me when he first got the news I had taken a new child in. I was also a little off kilter as the placement phone call came at 1 AM and the kids arrived at 3 AM when I have to be up for work by 4 AM. Court is ALWAYS stressful – so add in a(n) (un)healthy dose of high stress from court and then the utter chaos of trying to get your house situated for a little life to join you when you were clearly not planning for it. My husband was returning from a weeklong trip to the D.C. area during a nasty weather system and my kids were all out of sorts from having a new little person joining our clan. Toss in a smattering of sobbing from our new kiddo as she started to figure out that she wasn’t going to be with her mommy again for a while, some missed visitations, and a nice little tummy bug to boot – let’s just say that fostering isn’t for the faint of heart.

Recently, I’ve had people discuss with me that they feel people foster simply for the money. They go on and on and on about how foster parents make so much money housing other people’s kids. I’ve always taken offense to those statements – but after we finalized the adoption of our last kiddo I started focusing more on my own family and less on the system of care (though trust me, I’ve not given up on changing the system). But after this last three weeks, when one of my very misguided friends tried to barb me by saying “at least we would be making some more money now” I actually went off the deep end on her a little. You see, the average board rate reimbursement for foster care in Florida is $439 a month, split up on a daily rate it’s $14.16 a day. On the very first day my new munchkin came to me I’d already spent over $200 just to meet her basic immediate needs. Setting up daycare there is a $75 registration fee and a $65 supply fee. The Early Learning Coalition referral only pays about $16-22 a day towards day care for kids in care and most day care centers cost between $25-50 a day. At one center we were paying over $600 a month out of pocket just for day care costs alone.

To put this in perspective – the per diem reimbursement the State of Florida pays a state employee when on travel is $36 a day for meals alone – that does not include the costs of hotels which is generally $85 a night or more. If it’s a travel day and you’re travelling during all four day parts, the reimbursement rate is $80. The state pays more for employees on travel status than it does for kids in care.

The emotional toll foster parents pay is also enormous. My current munchkin is very, very sad about not being with her mommy. We’ve deal with crying jags that have lasted over an hour at times where the only thing we could do is simply hold her, rock her, pat her head and remind her that she is loved and that we would do everything in our power to help ensure she could see her mom again soon – even though her mom doesn’t always show up for visitation. Dealing with a clinically depressed four year old is tough work – knowing that every little thing we say or do can either help or hinder her healing process is a huge emotional burden to carry – but we do it willingly because we know she needs us.

The changes in the relationships between me and my husband and me and my kids right now also carry a big price tag. Granted, these have been positive changes this go around – but they haven’t been with other kids we’ve fostered in the past. One of our foster babies was so high needs that she almost broke me from all the crying – that was one of the hardest three months I’ve ever endured and I come from a pretty rough childhood myself! My marriage was stressed. My other child was stressed. I was stressed. Every time we’ve taken a child in, it’s changed the dynamics of our family. I’m hopeful my kids learn from these fostering experiences that we should help our fellow humans out – but there’s also a good chance they grow up resentful of the time and energy we put into other children and families aside from our own.

The long and short of this all is that fostering is expensive – emotionally and literally. We need more families to make this investment though – because it’s an investment in the future of a child but also in the future of our society and civilization. We also need our legislators to realize that there are physical and emotional costs to these kids and to the families who care for them – so that they can adjust the supports available to the families and to the kids. And we need the system of care to become more flexible to allow for creative solutions to the needs of our kids and families. None of this will happen in a vacuum – we need more people like YOU to take the steps to help make the change too. Won’t you join me? There’s a child out there who would be grateful you made the world change for them!

Why discrimination against our children and families is not a good thing - as if I actually needed to write that sentence

Yesterday I testified before the Florida Senate Rules Committee why CS for HB7111 was a bad bill and would ultimately harm the children of our state. It amazes me that we even have this kind of debate going on in today's world, but we do! Discrimination is discrimination - regardless of whether it's cloaked in the blanket of religion or morality - but some people don't understand that.

Here's the text of my testimony:

My name is Heather Rosenberg. I’m a foster mom, an adoptive mom and an advocate for the children in the foster care system. I am also a product of a family where the kids were removed, split up, placed in different families and ultimately aged out of care. I, myself did not age out of care – I was lucky enough to have had my dad’s side of the family to rescue me, but my three younger siblings did not and ultimately paid the price by leaving the foster care system at 18 with no permanent home.

I have had fifteen children come through my home in the last five and a half years as a foster parent. Two of those munchkins came to me last Friday night in what was supposed to be an emergency, overnight only placement. I still have one of them with me today – and it’s a good thing I do, because if not, she would have had to be shipped down to central Florida in order to have a place to sleep.

Why would that be a bad thing you ask – and how does that address the topic of this bill?

Well, my current child is one of a sibling group of four. At just over four years, she is the oldest – with her brothers right behind her at 3 years, 2 years and 6 months old. There are simply not enough homes available in this area to handle the needs of the kids who are being removed from their families of origin. My home was not technically an “active” foster home when I got the call to take her – we were licensed, but only as child specific and respite for if my niece were to come back into care – so when the phone rang at 1 AM and I saw it was placement I knew the straights were dire. I was right. This area is critically short of homes – in fact, in the panhandle alone, we need 1,100 more homes to meet the needs of kids CURRENTLY in care. Limiting the available pool of applicants is the wrong way to go to meet that need.

This bill is designed to limit the number of permanent homes available to the children in care which is exactly the opposite of what needs to be happening. Our children deserve a loving family to call their own forever. Davion Only knew that when he stood before a congregation at his church begging for someone to adopt him. The kids my husband and I adopted over the last three years knew that and have thrived with having a permanent, forever mommy and daddy. And while it’s too early to say how the case will go for my current munchkin, if it heads in the direction of termination and adoption in a couple of years she will know it too.

There is no substitution for a permanent, loving, family-style home. You guys have addressed that in other legislation this year when you’ve sought to limit the use of group homes – yet you’re considering limiting the pool of prospective families again – and I get it that you’ve probably never gotten the phone call in the middle of the night to take in a child who has been abused or neglected so it may not be high on your radar. But I have. And it is. I’ve lived it as a child. I’ve lived it as an adult. I’ve lost siblings to this system. I’ve seen kids age out of care, first hand. I see their pictures on the mugshots of the local sheriff’s website years after they’ve aged out because they didn’t have someone to help step in and guide them. That is not good enough for our kids. That’s not good enough for the families who are willing to step up and help our kids.

If an agency is in the business of licensing homes for adoption and is taking public money for that purpose, there should be no proviso to let them discriminate against a potential family. This law in any form is bad. This law in its current form is aimed at discriminating against gay and lesbian families, but it’s written so incredibly broadly that a religious organization could discriminate against single parents, military families, they could even discriminate against you if you have a glass of wine with your dinner. Let’s agree that this is a bad idea in any form, dismiss the bill and work on legislation that will help recruit more families to help take these kiddos in – not fewer.

Thank You Letter to Placement Part Deux

My Dear Tenille,

Two years ago tomorrow you called me. Do you remember it like I do? You may not have it etched in memory in quite the fine detail that I do, but every second of the conversation is still in my brain - recorded in high quality content for posterity (hopefully - ha ha). We had been working toward this phone call for several months - ever since we found out that Liam's mom was pregnant again - but even so my husband and I weren't ready when it came! We had so much on our plates already with two rambunctious boys - but Bethanie and Karen and Diana were slowly working on us, getting us ready for the ultimate time when we would have to make a decision that would change the face of our family in a profound way.

That time came two years ago tomorrow. You called me to let me know that Elie had made her arrival in this world and that if everything went well with the hospital and her tests we would be clear to take her home the next day. That was such an emotional day. That phone call. Making that decision. I was so scared that by saying yes I was going to ultimately ruin the dynamics of my family because we were already so stretched with all of Liam's medical appointments and our hectic and crazy work schedules. But in the back of my mind I knew it was the right decision. I knew Elie belonged with us and with her brother.

So the next day Warren and I went to pick her up from the hospital to take her home. What had been a chaotic few months during the pregnancy was raised to new levels at the hospital as it ended up requiring security and two nurses herding us out a back entrance to my car due to the commotion going on on the labor and delivery floor with the biological mother. Maybe it's because her arrival was so insane, or maybe it's because she's a girl and just a little more relaxed and easy going than the boys are, but she has been by far and away the easiest child we've ever parented!

She was such a little peanut when she came to us - a mere five pounds and an extra ten ounces. But she was perfect. She fit right in to the Rosenberg clan immediately - and my husband and both of our sons were just as smitten with her as I was! These last two years have been hectic, crazy, insanely crazy and have gone by so quickly! I cannot believe my baby turns two tomorrow!!! Two!!! When did that happen??? I have watched her grow from such a little peanut into such a well... she's still a little, petite peanut, but she's also such a big girl too!

She is kind and caring and loves to play with her baby dolls, her brother's trains, purses, and dinosaurs. She loves to wear hats and headbands, and really loves bows though she still doesn't have enough hair to pull them off yet (much to my chagrin). She's sassy and independent and totally rules the house with her little shenanigans, and I'm quite sure that she's stolen the heart of every single person who has ever met her. She loves music - all kinds - though I'm trying very hard to cultivate an appreciation of all things 80's related and U2 and Yo Yo Ma (not necessarily in that order though).

I love watching her move - she still has a funny little side-to-side gait as she runs and her short little legs are still a bit bowed - but it makes me smile every time I see her running towards me to jump into my arms to give me a hug and a kiss. She wiggles all the time whether she's dancing or just impatient to get to the next cool thing, and she has the absolute best laugh ever! And she gives the best hugs too! I cannot even begin to tell you how much I simply love this little girl to pieces!!!

She came to us unconventionally for sure, but she was meant to be part of my family and I cannot imagine my life without her.

So thank you, Tenille! Thank you for making that crazy, emotional phone call! Thank you for giving me my girl, my munchkin, my mini-me, my heart! She has made my life richer in so many ways!

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you!!

Heather

Fostering Questions

I was asked some questions about why I decided to become a foster parent. Here are my answers!

Why did you become a foster parent?

I am an accidental foster parent actually. When my husband and I decided to start a family we ran into issues with fertility which meant that we were unable to have children biologically. We started looking into the process of adoption and decided to take the MAPP class to adopt from Children’s Home Society. My husband and I were originally only going to look into adoption when we decided to take the MAPP class, but once we got into the class and the instructors started talking about the desperate need for homes for children in care, it awakened a whole slew of feelings I had been carrying around underneath the surface about the events that unfolded in my own family. You see, while I am the only child of my mother and father, my mother had three other children in subsequent marriages – each of whom ultimately ended up in foster care themselves. Of my siblings, I alone escaped the chaos and destruction of our family and then the foster system relatively unscathed. Relatively being a subjective term here!

My husband and I committed to taking the MAPP class every Saturday for four weeks to learn what to expect from adoption and what kinds of behaviors and medical issues to expect from kids in state care. There was a lot of homework and forms to fill out, and it was a truly eye opening experience learning about the absolutely horrific things people can do to children and to each other. Much of what they discussed in class I had experienced myself in my own childhood as my mom and stepfather were abusive alcoholics, but the range of various abuse and neglect cases the instructors presented in class literally took my breath away. Aside from learning specific information about the types of trauma and abuse children who come into care suffer, we also had a lot of work to do personally by preparing ourselves to be able to handle the types of behaviors that may arise as a result of that trauma and abuse. This was also an exercise in strengthening our relationship because it forced me and Evan to deal with things about ourselves and our pasts that we would likely never have revisited if not forced to. I mean… my parents were a nightmare… and I would have been happy to leave things in the past, but we had to learn to deal with our own childhood issues to be able to help children that may be placed with us to deal with theirs.

After the second week of class, my husband and I decided that we would not simply go into the adoption track, but chose rather to become foster parents instead with the idea that if a child needed a secure home we would provide that. We also thought that if it was meant to be for a child to stay with us long term, that we had already decided we would be willing to adopt as well – and ultimately of the dozen children we’ve fostered in the last five years, we adopted three of them.

Tell us a moment in your life that led you to take part in foster care.

As my husband and I were going through licensing, we read more and more stories about the abuses children were experiencing. I had endured many of those same things myself and spent the majority of my adult life trying to work through the feelings of fear, worthlessness and anger that I felt as a result of how my parents behaved and treated me and my siblings. When I was an early teen, I finally got free of my mother and step father when my paternal grandmother and aunt stepped in to care for me. But my siblings were not so lucky and had to stay in the situation they were in. They were parentally kidnapped by their father and were missing for several years before ultimately being removed by DCF in another state some years later after my stepfather tried to murder my sister. I was still too young really to step in to try to save my siblings, but it didn’t mean that I didn’t want to. I was in my early twenties when my siblings came into the care of DCF in Massachusetts, and as a result of the abuse I had grown up in as well, I was not a mature twenty something – more like an angry teen. I was not equipped to handle the behaviors my siblings exhibited nor was I equipped to handle the emotional needs they had. I was not able to take them in or help them recover from their ordeal – but neither really was the system of care they were in. Both of them ended up in multiple foster homes and group home settings – and both of them ended up aging out of care with no safety net in place. My youngest sister ended up in the same situation as things between our mother and her father continued to deteriorate and DCF Massachusetts stepped in to remove her as well. After dealing with my own failure to help protect my own siblings, when faced with the idea that I could do something now to help keep this from happening to another child, I knew that we could help - even if we only ended up helping one child, I felt like it could help me heal some of the old wounds I still felt about my own siblings.

What do you think the state of the child welfare system says about Florida, and about the times we live in?

Anytime you deal with a vulnerable population and you fail to protect them, it says something very sad about your society. In Florida, we have not done even an adequate job of protecting our vulnerable populations – particularly our children. We’ve had an increase in the number of children and families on the radar of DCF yet we’ve not funded services to these children adequately. The staff charged with working these cases (whether CPIs, case managers, transporters, supervisors) are not trained very well, they do not have the tools necessary to do their jobs efficiently, and sometimes they cannot get to everything that needs to be done. As a result, what happens is we have this group of children and families on our radar who we know need help. We know they’re in danger. Yet we do not have the mechanisms in place to keep harm from coming to them. And I am not saying that money is the salvo to fix the problems here – it’s not. It’s about supporting the children and the families who care for them appropriately – which means supporting the people working in the system of care – all of the people working in the system of care, not just the child protective investigators (though that is a good start).

We also have a backwards mindset as a state when it comes to child welfare. We continue to see children as an extension of their parents – chattel almost – rather than seeing them as human beings who have rights themselves. So instead of working to do what is best for the children to help them grow up strong and healthy, we place the emphasis on keeping a family together – even if that means keeping a child in a situation that is dangerous or unhealthy. I hear judges and legislators talking about cases of termination of parental rights as the death penalty of child welfare cases, but these same judges and legislators do not live in the homes with the children and see the physical and psychological devastation the effects of a broken system of care have on their daily life and ultimately who they grow up to be. We know the research shows that exposure to violence and neglect have a detrimental effect on children, yet we somehow have come to the conclusion that we do more harm or damage by removing children from these situations – and I think we’re wrong about that in some cases. I’m not saying we should take all children away from all families – but I definitely think that the notion that some situations can be fixed by an inadequate safety plan is tantamount to sticking our heads in the sand to a real and dangerous situation – one that has lifelong, real life consequences!

I also think by not fully funding and fully supporting our system of child welfare that we’re re-victimizing the children we’re trying to protect. I’ve been the parent who had to comfort a child whose nervous system was shot from so much prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol that they could not adequately regulate basic life processes. Yet when that same set of parents had their sixth child (all five of the others were already in care), the state had to scramble and work really hard to prove to a judge that the situation this child came into was extremely dangerous for that child to go home to – and they almost we not able to remove her because the judge felt like the extreme history of drug and alcohol abuse, chronic homelessness, mental health issues and domestic violence were not a safety issue. I’ve had to pick the pieces up for an eight month old child after they’ve had to spend ten hours on the road to a visitation with a biological parent twice a week – only to not have their diapers changed but once and fed only four ounces in that time by the transporter, visitation supervisor, case manager and biological parent. When we fail to remove children from situations that are extremely volatile and dangerous and then fail to adequately service the ones we do remove, we re-victimize our children over and over again. This is how we have multiple generations of families with the repeated patterns of behavior that cause DCF involvement in the first place. My family is a prime example of this systematic breakdown of the system! I should have been taken from my family many, many times but never was and so I had to suffer the physical and mental abuses doled out by my mom and stepfather. My siblings should have been given stable placements and had case workers who supported them as they grew up, yet they were repeatedly moved from home to home to institutional setting instead. My middle sister is doing well now finally – after a lot of counseling and hard work on her part, my brother is really damaged and will likely not do much better – and my youngest sister had her own child removed by DCF and has only now been able to regain custody of her. I worry that my niece will end up repeating this pattern again someday.

It says to me that our state either does not care about the future of our children or that we’re too immersed in things that are of minor importance comparatively when we don’t do everything we can to protect our children.

How does putting the focus on case planning instead of the CPIs improve Florida's child welfare system?

It seems like the focus of child welfare policy lately has been on the up front battle of investigations and the supporting the child protective investigators. While this is a good start, if we logically think about what happens next, we must figure out that if we already do not have enough resources to care for the families in the system currently, that we’re not going to be able to handle the influx that will necessarily come when we bring more families into care. There needs to be a huge push to fully support the case managers and attorneys who handle the cases once they leave the investigative part of the process too. Otherwise, you bring families into a system that will only end up removing children but not putting mechanisms in place to help heal those families with no mechanisms in place to achieve permanency for those children. There should never be a case where a child has to linger in the system for years with no end in sight – either fix the situation that caused the removal and return the child or if the situation is not fixable or if the fix drags on and on and on because no one thinks progress is important – then move to permanency.

Part of the problem with child welfare as I’ve been witness to personally, is that the turn over for staff is so high and the burn out rate so great, that there’s no longevity for institutional knowledge. By the time a case manager is fully trained and has the ability to make excellent judgment calls on case planning, we’ve thrown such a high case load at them that they’re so overwhelmed and underpaid that they leave for less stress and more money. Understandably! If we focused on supporting the case management/legal aspect of the system as well as what’s been suggested for the investigative portion, then we may be able to have staff trained well enough to actually design case plan activities that would work to help change the unsafe behaviors. If the unsafe behaviors change, then the children get to go home. Having enough and well trained case managers and attorneys would also decrease the caseload of each individual case manager allowing them to be more supportive of the individuals in their care. A case manager with 30 or 40 kids on their case load cannot possibly know all of the details of each case and be alert to the behaviors that are sometimes subtle but indicative of dangerous things to come. They also cannot be as in tuned to the timeframes of the families on their caseload when they have to manage so many different families. Our two youngest children’s cases were complex and had so many chronic problems that the case manager literally had to send referrals out for services once a week. For the family associated with only two of the children on her caseload, I’m quite sure she had to spend at least five or six hours a week dedicated to that case alone – and she had at least thirty children on her load. That is simply too much for one person to manage adequately – though I will say she is one of the shining gold stars of case management in how dedicated she was!

We have to do better as a state – there’s no other way to put this! With our growing population and beautiful places to live, we’re going to always have people want to call Florida home. We need to be sure that we figure out a way to help make that paradise that so many people come here looking for isn’t just a shattered dream!

Working towards fixing a broken system of care...

I am copying a letter I wrote today to a couple of folks at our local Community Based Care partner to attempt to resolve some persistent issues in one region of our state. This is an issue I've had first hand experience with from this particular county and have actually worked with the individuals I sent my letter to before trying to address some of the things we thought needed tweaking to help better serve the kids who come into care. This is the kind of action I think all foster parents should be prepared to take when it comes to the kids they're entrusted with.

Dear So-and-So,

I'm writing to you because I have gotten another series of questions this week from three different foster families who have kids placed with them from Bay, and I'm not really sure how to advise these parents going forward. The theme of the last few days has been:

I have kids from Bay county and I'm not getting copies of JRs or Case Plans or any other documents that should be included with the kids' files. When I've asked for them I've been told I'm not allowed to have any of this information.

I've had kids placed with me from Bay who have been with me for over two years and the DCM still is not willing to work towards filing TPR even though the parents have not been compliant with any of their case plan tasks. (This particular statement came from two different families - one of which even said the magistrate gave the department 45 days to file a TPR which he said should have been filed months ago)

When my kids go for visitation, they often come back saying they have not gotten very much to eat during their visit. (this sounds eerily like what another foster family and I expressed two years ago about our kids going for visitation - so this one really concerns me greatly)

I hear several recurrent themes from families when dealing with Bay county quite frequently - and they come from multiple families which leads me to think that the experience is common and not limited to one or two case managers. Most of my conversations with other families usually end with the family saying they are unwilling to accept children from that county ever again and this really concerns me for several reasons I will outline below.

I'm concerned anytime a foster parent shares stories about case managers or other system employees who do not listen to the parent's concerns regarding the children in their care - but I'm more concerned with this when it comes from multiple families over long periods of time. With the Bay County issues, I've been first party to what happens over there, but I am now two full years removed from any first hand experience. I see where Life Management has posted that they have a critical foster home shortage over there and that we are not doing a good job retaining or recruiting families there. And when less than two days later I've gotten emails or phone calls from three different families dealing with similar issues as what I dealt with two years ago, I'm starting to understand why there may be a critical shortage of homes.

I'm not naive enough to think that there aren't other mitigating circumstances that affect the practices of that county - I get that it has a highly mobile population with a very low median income. I get that homelessness and drug use is more prevalent and that there's also a military base to deal with. But I also wonder if there are practice issues at the case management level and legal level that are affecting the support that foster and bio families are receiving which are making supporting the children in care more difficult? I am afraid that kids who are removed form Bay homes are going to be shipped to farther areas of the state as more families become unwilling to work with the county - I want to help combat that because like you guys, I truly do believe that kids need to stay as close to home as possible.

So with all of that in mind, what can I do to help? What answers or tips or suggestions can I give families when they come to me with questions, concerns or complaints? What is the right combination of people to put them in contact with and what steps can they take to have their issues handled?

I know with the first bullet I offered, they are entitled to the documents they are requesting as they are supposed to be a part of the resource record and the language including foster parents as appropriate participants to be included is specific in the statute and rule -- yet legal continues two years later to refuse documents to families. Who do we escalate this one to? And maybe the second bullet would be appropriately addressed to the same party?

The third bullet falls under the issues that stem from transportation, handing off to case management/visitation center, and the biological parents - so I know this one will certainly have to have a multiple party approach - but I think this one may actually be more pressing than the first two as it really bothers me that children are saying their basic needs are not being met during visitation/travel time.

Let me know what steps you think we need to take as a community to find workable solutions to these issues. I want us to get to the point to where all families are willing to take all children regardless from which county or circuit they originate.

I hope that they will take my letter seriously and that we can work to get some relief for both the families who are caring for the kids and also for the kids themselves. Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could ever reach that wonderful goal of having three homes available for every child who comes into care - because that would mean we've either figured out a way to safely keep kids with their biological families or we've figured out an amazing way to recruit and retain amazing foster and adoptive homes!

Forming a new family is hard work

I have been a foster parent for almost five years now and an adoptive parent for just over two of those years. In that short time, I’ve been through the dependency system with a dozen or so babies and have adopted three of the babies that came to me through foster care. Last month a judge banged her gavel and declared that my husband and I were the legal, forever parents of a brand new baby girl, Elie. And while that doesn’t really seem like an Earth-shattering statement as forever families are formed every day in court rooms across this country (though not nearly often enough in my humble opinion– but that is the topic of a future post), what is huge about that statement is that Elie is the third child my husband and I have adopted from the foster care system, and the biological sibling of the child we adopted back in October of last year, Liam. It is the story of how Liam came to us that put the wheels in motion for Elie becoming our child, too, and it is the story of the dedication of three very special women working in dependency that tells the story of my new and now whole family.

Twenty-three months ago next Monday, I got a call from placement asking me if I had space for a nine day old baby boy who desperately needed a home because he had been removed from his parents' care due to neglect and safety issues. The placement specialist, Rachael Bassett, had already called a slew of homes that evening looking for someone to take this little man in – I know this because my foster bestie, Sherri, had sent me a text message about thirty seconds before my phone rang telling me I needed to answer the phone because placement would be calling me. I remember the phone call vividly. I was actually in the middle of bathing my (then) recently adopted son, Warren, and our (then) foster daughter. I had bubble bath bubbles up to my elbows, was covered in water and sitting in a puddle of water that had been splashed out of the huge tub by one of the kids. I even managed to drop the phone while Rachel was talking to me- but she had placed children with me a few times before so she knew how spacey I can get during a placement call (yes - I am one of those mothers whose first instinct is to say "yes, yes, yes" even though my husband fusses at me for doing that). After briefly telling my husband what was going on and that we were getting a new baby that night (and I may have asked him if he was okay with this... or maybe I forgot to do that... not sure which), I raced out the door with my hair on fire to go meet the child protective investigator to pick up the new baby. And that was how Liam came to our family -- the first time.

Liam did not stay with us for very long initially. A judge reunified him with his family four days later because the family was able to find housing through the good deeds of a local church; but, sadly, this reunification lasted only about four weeks until a series of hotline calls led to him being removed again and resheltered with us. This is a dance many foster parents know too well. In this case, we sort of knew that it would not be a matter of if Liam came back into care, but more a matter of when he would come back into care and how much would have happened to him in the interim. Both of his biological parents had pervasive mental health issues, drug problems, chronic and persistent homelessness, unresolved and untreated health issues, issues with violence and self-esteem, long criminal histories and were, themselves, products of a broken foster care system. The cycle was repeating itself over and over again with this family. It was a long four weeks for Liam, and a very long four weeks in my head for the things that were happening to him.

When I got the second call from placement about Liam almost four weeks later I left my office immediately to go pick him up from the child protective investigator again. The CPI told me the case manager assigned to the case was going to be a Lead Dependency Case Manager named Bethanie Milford and gave me her contact information. I assumed that Bethanie was going to be just an average case manager and that I would begin that other dance foster parents know too well of tracking her down for paperwork or referrals or worse, that I wouldn’t be able to get to her at all. I was pleasantly surprised though as Bethanie was anything but average – in fact – as a ten year veteran case manager, she took her role as family advocate very seriously, and she was determined to do everything in her power to break the cycle of abuse in this family.

Bethanie went about setting up visitations with the biological family (which was complicated due to the everyday visitation the judge ordered), asked about our family's needs, got every single piece of documentation I asked for to me as soon as I asked for it, provided follow up and constant communication with both us and the biological family and provided referrals and services at least once a week. She would reach out to me before I could even reach out to her, and that threw me off because with the dozen or more case managers I had worked with prior, I had always been the one to initiate contact and generally had to spend the better part of a week or more getting the things we needed! Bethanie worked hard to anticipate the needs of both my family and the biological family and she worked very hard to get services in place to help the biological family start to overcome the overwhelming disadvantages they experienced in trying to parent this child.

I watched in awe as Bethanie did things I had only ever dreamed a case manager would or should or even could do to help heal a broken family. It was incredible. Watching Bethanie started to restore some of my faith in a system I have only ever seen fail since I was a young teen and watched my own siblings fall into the system having their lives slowly broken, piece by piece. It was also extremely disheartening to watch as the biological family systematically refused all of this amazing help and started to sink further into their chaotic lives and withdraw from the community around them. It was kind of like watching a horrific traffic crash happen in slow motion speed.

After many, many months of failed visits, lack of progress on case plan tasks, and then ultimately the disappearance of the parents, the posture of the case changed from reunification to concurrent goals of reunification and adoption and finally to adoption. I became acquainted with the Children's Legal Services attorney assigned to the case, Diana Korn, when she reached out to me to answer some of the legal questions I was asking about how the process worked. I was able to see, first hand, how well Bethanie and Diana worked together on this case during this time. Bethanie would talk to Diana about challenges she was facing managing the case, and Diana would actively reach out to Bethanie with suggestions for how to document certain things. All along the way, Diana would call me at various points to make certain that my family understood what was happening in the legal arena and had the opportunity to advise the court of various things we were experiencing as a foster family. I had never had a CLS attorney keep me so well informed of the process of the legal system, but Diana would answer every question I posed to her as soon as I posed them – no waiting for weeks or months for a return phone call. And I know this should be what happens with every case, but it simply isn't. So as I've told my other foster friends about how cooperative and professional Diana is, they've all hinted that they think I'm fibbing to them – until they meet her!

The other person who played an integral role in this case was the guardian ad litem, Karen Isch. I've had experience with wonderful guardians before, but Karen takes the cake. Karen visited Liam at his daycare (which was in a different county from where Karen worked), our home, during vistations with his parents - she even once came to a doctor's appointment to visit him while he was getting shots (and helped me calm him down after those shots). She actively interacted with the parents and the parents of the parents. She visited, wrote reports, asked about the kids and the needs of our family and remained a wonderful source of information throughout the case. I think we chatted weekly or every other week as I would update Karen about Liam’s different specialist appointments or new rounds of testing he was undergoing. When she knew he had an appointment or that we had to travel to Jacksonville for a test, she would call to check in to see if she could help in any way. At the holidays, she even put Liam’s name on the list to receive gifts through the GAL office – which I thought was absolutely sweet and kind!

A few months before Liam turned one, we were told that his mother was pregnant again and were asked if the baby was sheltered would we consider being the placement resource for that child as well. The maternal instinct in me was to say "yes, yes, yes" again, but I knew that my husband and I were already stretched very thin with the two boys we already had as Liam had some complicated medical needs that kept me out of work a lot travelling to the children’s clinic in Jacksonville for his specialists. Not wanting to give up on the idea of keeping the siblings together if the new baby was removed as well, my husband and I started a several-month-long dialog as to whether we could financially afford to take the new baby, whether we had the physical resources to fit a third car seat into our vehicles, whether we could find a center that would take a brand new baby, whether we could handle another child with complex medical needs like Liam had, and whether we had the emotional capacity to go through this again as this case has been the most emotionally draining case we've ever had. We knew our own relationship had been strained through the course of this case because of the emotional nature of the things that kept happening – and we were both exhausted because Liam did not sleep well due to some of his issues and we travelled a lot to the next county for ER, urgent care and doctor visits.

Long story short, after many, many emotional conversations, and many visits to a marriage counselor who acted as a mediator to our emotional conversations, we both came to the conclusion that we could not break up siblings, and we would be the resource for the new baby if it were sheltered - making the decision just in time for the new baby's birth (whew!). We bought a new van as our old car would not accommodate the extra car seat. We prepared our home for a new child and bought some additional furniture. And we told our employers the news as experience had shown us that you take a lot of time off with a new child. And we both decided to say goodbye to the possibility of any sleep ever again.

The interesting thing here is that Bethanie, Diana and Karen were playing instrumental roles in our decision making process for accepting the new baby into our lives - though none of them knew it at the time. We were already drained from the emotional rollercoaster of this case - the highs were so few and far between, and the challenges and lows were so challenging and frequent that we had decided to close our foster care license and home to any more children. But we used the energy that each of the women poured into the job they were doing for the kids on their case loads to help us recharge and stay in it for the long haul.

The day we made the decision to take Elie into our home, I got the phone call from Bethanie that she had been born a little early and would be ready to go home the next day. I was emotionally freaked out thinking of all the work that goes into a new baby – the sleepless nights, the crying, the endless barrage of diapers and butt paste and spit up and laundry and visits from case managers and guardians and on and on and on. I was afraid my husband would end up not being on board with all of this and that it would strain our family to the breaking point. But my oldest son, who had just turned three, and I went to go pick her up from the hospital the next day, and even though it ended up being a nightmare that involved security having to whisk us to safety in another room and part of the hospital and nurses and security having to escort us to the car in teams to protect us, I fell instantly in love with this little squishy baby that would find shelter in our home and love in our hearts.

Things did get crazy again, too. The biological parents who had disappeared for months came back out of the woodwork and brought with them a whole new onslaught of emotional pain. We watched them struggle and once again refuse the help being offered. We watched, helpless to change the course of their destinies, but beginning to understand that Liam and Elie were likely not just going to be with us temporarily. It’s a bitter pill to swallow when you foster sometimes – because you are so uplifted and encouraged by the gains the children in your home make but find such despair in knowing that their family story involves so much loss and pain.

I flash forward now to almost twenty-three months after I got that first phone call from Rachael about Liam. Liam and his little sister are now part of our forever family. Our house is a little messier... our schedules are a little more hectic... we have less disposable cash and much more laundry to fold... but our family is exactly the way it was meant to be! The journey has not been easy. Evan and I have fought and argued and fussed and whined at and to each other. We’ve had financial pain as we’ve discovered the costs of raising children are quite significant. We’ve had sleepless nights as one or more of the kids have been sick, or teething, or experiencing night terrors for the first time. Our marriage has had to grow with our growing family – and sometimes that has meant we’ve had to seek counseling to help us navigate each other’s meanings and fears and challenges and strengths. And we’ve had days where we’ve gone to bed angry with each other (even though they say don’t do that). But through this all, we’ve also grown fonder of each other and learned to appreciate the nuances of each other’s parenting skills.

It’s been interesting for me to observe Evan growing as a parent – watching him make decisions he’s never had to make before and learning how to debate an incredibly intelligent three year old who sometimes uses fuzzy logic. It’s been downright funny to watch him learn how to change a dirty diaper with a squirmy baby who decides to add to the diaper mid-change. And it’s been heartwarming to watch him teach our children how to put puzzles together or learn how to catch and throw a ball.

We made it through a challenging, complex case to form our final forever family partially because the ladies who were charged with seeing that the children in care are protected, safe, nurtured and loved went above and beyond what many people in the system do. The communication from legal, case management and GAL helped us stay focused on doing our part - loving the kids, keeping them safe and allowing them to grow. The support this team of women provided our family along the way helped us through a very difficult two years and ultimately helped us make a forever family of siblings who will always be able to stay together. Through all of this each of these ladies had their own personal lives to attend to as well - but they never lost sight of the kids and their needs - and they never lost sight on trying to help their biological family heal itself.

I know that in many years when my children ask me the story of their beginning I will have some challenges on how to present their beginning in a way that they will understand and not feel loss that their family was formed by graft rather than root stock - but I know that I can also tell them about three amazing women who helped them before they were old enough to even know! I am forever grateful for these ladies.

A few months ago the judge announced the arrival of our Elie for the first time to the world and in the process made us a legal, forever family of five. Now my husband and I will have to learn how to navigate the world simply as parents, and that is going to take some getting used to… for me at least. I think back to the beginning of our foster care journey and I can’t help but think how much life has changed for my family in those short five years. We have three forever children now, have fostered a dozen children along the way, have made many friends who have fostered or adopted, and have seen the ugly underbelly of the dependency system up close and far too personally. But we also have seen the amazing capacity of the human spirit to thrive and rebound, and we’ve met three wonderful women who worked very hard to ensure the safety of one child, but ultimately ended up creating a loving family for his sister too!

I think about all of this and know that my life is as it should be.