I can say that none of it was a surprise, as we have felt firsthand the effects of the turnover and other issues discussed in the article. We have had multiple workers this past year for one child. Our current worker has been with Children's Division (CD) a short time and is working her tail off- a great young lady, but she lacks experience and background knowledge of CD and our case.
I think the bigger issue is this... as a community we have expected a broken government system to take care of our kids. It is not working well- and I don't think we can point fingers or even be surprised that it isn't working. As members of the community, we need to take ownership that these hurting kids and families are OURS. Personally, my faith in Jesus holds me even more responsible because His word calls me to take care of those in need. And because of my faith, I have hope! I know that He is bigger than a flawed system and still in the business of restoring, redeeming and loving hurting kids/families.
Bottom line... there are kids in our own backyards who need loving foster families. Despite the issues with the "system", if kids have good foster families who advocate for them, they can be mostly protected from the brokenness of the system. I think many more families should consider fostering! Let me be direct- just like you are never completely ready/prepared to be a biological parent or to get married, you are never going to have a season of life when you are totally "ready" to be a foster parent. There will always be something going on in life that makes it a challenge, but "busyness" can't keep us from even considering it. Fostering isn't for everyone- again, being honest- it takes great emotional fortitude, involves sacrifice and impacts the existing family dynamic. Recently someone said "It's awesome that you are a foster parent. I always wanted to do something like that, but it hasn't been in my plans." I laughed and thought "Well, this wasn't exactly in my plans either!" However, there has been a lot of freedom in letting my little life and plans be "interrupted" and jumping in to this messy, hard and unbelievably awesome foster parenting experience.
End of foster parenting pitch of the month :)
On a more personal note- for those wondering about what's going on with the kiddo in our home, here's the update! With our kiddo being older and all of the Children's Division rules, we haven't been able to share as much as I would have liked. It's been about 18 months of life as a family of five. Our kiddo is doing wonderfully and we adore her. After lots of ups and downs, we are moving down the path of becoming guardians. What does that mean? Well, when the court rules that reunification with family isn't possible, they look for a permanent option, which in this case is guardianship. When that happens, we will be done with Children's Division (insert the happy dance here), but it isn't quite as final as adoption. For many reasons, adoption isn't an option in this case and we are fine with that. We feel blessed to have a third kiddo who will most likely be with us long term. We will still have contact with her family/siblings and that has grown to be a comfortable situation and what is best for her. We are still waiting for it to all be final and official, so we are still holding our breath some, but we are far enough down the road that we can finally say we are moving in that direction. When it is final, I will be the obnoxious person posting 18 months worth of pictures on Facebook to make up for lost time!
1 comment:
Great story Emily. I didn't get to ready the news article. There are so many flaws in our government system but gods will and commands don't say to use that as an excuse white tending to the needy. Your example is one that all should inspire too.
Seth
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