Massachusetts kicked off National Foster Care Month with its second Re-Envisioning Foster Care Conference. On May 6, a broad cross section of people gathered in Holyoke to harness creative ideas, mobilize collective energy and maximize financial resources -- all directed toward better serving our children and youth whose lives have been impacted by foster care.
My journey into the world of child welfare began on May 11, 1999 in a Boston suburb. My 12-year-old daughter and I stood in our driveway waiting for the social worker's car to appear. Earlier that day I had received a phone call asking if we would open our home to two little sisters. I left work, picked my daughter up from school and drove to the store to buy high chairs, car seats, cribs and diapers.
My daughter grabbed my hand as the car approached, excited to meet the two little sisters they were bringing to our home. A sweet five-month-old baby was placed in my outstretched arms. My daughter was introduced to a 17-month-old toddler with gorgeous brown eyes.
These two beautiful little sisters led me into the world of child welfare and taught me the value of investing in the lives of the half-million children who experience foster care in this country. They showed me what our nation's child welfare system looks like. They inspired me to collaborate with others to create new realities.
The girls were exceptional teachers. As a result of the lessons learned while parenting them, I sold my businesses and became a full-time child advocate.
It was clear that most Americans think there are only two ways to support a child who has been placed in foster care: adopt a child from foster care or become a foster parent. This is too much to ask of most people. The result: hundreds of thousands of potential resources turn and walk away from the children who need them the most.
How can we change this reality? By establishing a corps of community members in every region of the country who invest in the well-being of children in their backyards; folks who actively engage in creating a caring safety net for the infants, toddlers, school-aged youngsters and teens whose lives had been impacted by foster care.
Every year nearly 25,000 young Americans "age out" of our foster care system at risk for homelessness, incarceration, teen parenting, unemployment and lives of poverty. Here in Massachusetts, we are crafting road maps that will take us in a new direction.
For the past decade I have collaborated with outstanding people to build a compelling new menu of engagement options so that citizens of all ages can easily support children in their communities. Together we have established three nonprofit organizations: the Treehouse Foundation, Sibling Connections and Birdsong Farm.
Each of these nonprofits is dedicated to ensuring that every child is rooted in family and community so they can lead fulfilling and productive lives. The Treehouse Foundation focuses on moving children out of foster care into loving, connected families that are surrounded by caring neighbors of all ages. Sibling Connections provides year-round programming so sisters and brothers who have been separated when placed in foster care can create joyous shared memories. Birdsong Farm aims to address the educational needs of students in foster care.
We have partnered with a broad cross section of like minded people to develop new national models so the menu can be available to children from coast to coast: educators, philanthropists, mental health professionals, parents, colleges and universities, business leaders, nonprofits, marketing professionals and interested citizens.
This May, as we mark National Foster Care Month, we wish all of our children and youth in foster care health and well being. We wish them loving family and community connections. We wish them opportunity and a level playing field. Here's to Re-Envisioning Foster Care in America!
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In order to move forward, we need to stop thinking of child welfare and foster care as being synonymous, and focus on improving the welfare of vulnerable children and families. The time has come to set aside our emphasis on foster care and seek true innovation (see ‘Building a Better Abacus’; http://bit.ly/m6U9j5, for my thoughts on the future of foster care).
Thanks for the differences you're making.
Also special situations for kids who have been sexually abused..I think they need special care and sometimes other children in the home need protection from them if they act this out.
I don't know what the answer is exactly...something like Boy's Town I would imagine, with special houseparents, a community and home that does not change even if the houseparents can not continue in that role...mg
www.thesupportivefosterparent.com
So what else is new? Nothing better indicates the extent to which the way we choose to “help” children through foster care is really about adult self-indulgence than the willingness to discard most children’s best resource, their own parents and their *own* extended families.
We use horror stories to demonize the parents so we can rationalize what we do to the children by tearing them from everyone they know and love as “helping.”
Yes, some children really are brutalized and really must be taken away, but far more common are cases in which poverty is confused with “neglect;” others fall on a continuum in between. So instead of lavishing scarce funds on a Potemkin Village where children get substitute parents and “honorary” grandparents, how about spending a fraction of the time, energy and money to help children’s real parents and real grandparents?
Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
www.nccpr.org
This is an important distinction because my experience has been that extended family often want nothing to do with addicted biological parents. They've been screwed over by them for years, and see the child as just another tether to an individual they don't want around.
In our conversations with our oldest's biological mother, she said that she had no extended family willing to even talk with her about it. She gave birth in prison and is there for another 12 years. The father an unknown. Our youngest will never be privy to the conversations that went on about him. We had no concept that he would not be reunited with a biological relative. We knew them all (grandparents, aunt and biological mother), had friendly relationships with them, and figured it was just a matter of time. Then we listened as one after the other said 'no', including the biological mother.
Those types of stories are the saddest to me because they indicate that even if a biological parent gets clean; they've destroyed their support systems, making the concept that much more daunting to them.
But I realize your primary point was about whether relatives will come forward in those cases. I'm sure that sometimes they don't. But please be careful about generalizing from personal experience. The far bigger problem is child welfare agencies refusing to place with relatives or not trying hard to find them. Check out this story from St. Louis about what happens when they make an extra effort: http://bit.ly/jb4NvS
And finally one request: The term has been around so long that most people don't know "biological parent" was coined originally with the specific intent of being pejorative - and it is. It conjures up an image of someone no more important to a child than a test-tube. So how about using "birth parent"?
Thanks,
Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
www.nccpr.org