Foster Care Mentoring

In my all things adoption group, a woman asked – I want to get involved in the foster care system in some way to help people in my community, but I’m trying to learn the best ways to do so without contributing to the flaws in the system. While I’d like to eventually foster myself, my husband and I are not yet in a place where we’d be able to. I recently learned that you can become a mentor to foster youth who will age out of the system and there seemed to be some research on improved outcomes through mentoring. Do any of you have any experience or advice related to the foster mentorship program? Is that a good way I can get involved?

Someone asked her – Are you interested in family preservation? Because that’s the purpose of foster care … mentoring & helping families stay together would be better than focusing on keeping families apart, don’t you think? She replied – Yeah that’s what I want! Would becoming a foster home be “focusing on keeping families apart” in your view? To which a long answer came – in a word – yes. It’s the very nature of being a foster home. You are caring for other people’s children in your home. Food for thought if you’re serious about helping – have you considered being a sort of respite home for a family rather than just taking the kids? Or welcoming a woman with her children together? Helping them get back on their feet? Providing child care while they work, go to school, etc? Mentor a family on life skills? Going grocery shopping for them? Driving them places? Helping them get a driver’s license? Help them get a job, go back to school, get technical or trade school training? Volunteer at Big Brother or Big Sister? There are so many ways to help without just taking kids away. These are normally just temporary problems. Do you know how many women get their kids taken away by CPS just because of poverty? Have you thought about what happens when someone loses their job due to cutbacks? Or during the pandemic? How do they look for work if they have kids? Why do people ALWAYS just want to take children???

To which she answered, I’m writing this out not to argue or say I’m right or something, I genuinely want to know what your thoughts are in response as I’m trying to learn. I definitely don’t want to take children away from their parents, especially not unnecessarily. I understand that the foster care system is broken and CPS is trigger happy and defective. My husband and I actually have talked about wanting to be a place where someone we know who’s in need can stay with us and we can provide help. My thought is, and if you know the answer to this I would be grateful, how would I be able to get in touch with families like you describe? If I knew of a family before CPS intervened, I’d absolutely want to help them to hopefully prevent their children from being taken away. But I’m not sure how to find those families, and in my area, there are more children being taken away and placed into the system than there are homes for them to stay in. I view that as a need that should be met. Those kids are unfortunately and most of the time unfairly being taken away anyways, and I’d much rather offer them a place to stay than they be placed in group homes, hotels, juvenile detention centers, offices, etc. And then I’d also be able to be a foster home that isn’t automatically against the parents and working to keep them apart, like so many foster homes are. Do you not think that would be a positive thing? I want to be a force for good in a broken system that actually wants family reunification, when so many foster homes and case workers are against the families. My goal is not to adopt, it is reunification.

An adoptee added – Being a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) is a great step, if you have time and organizational skills – and aren’t afraid to speak up when you see something that isn’t right. CASA are volunteers from the community who complete training that has been provided by the state or local CASA office and advocates for abused or neglected children. LINK>Be a CASA or GAL Volunteer.

Only 33% of youth in foster care have a driver’s license and only 56% graduate from high school. Youth in foster care often lack consistent relationships. They may struggle academically, developmentally, and relationally. High-quality relationships are the foundation for all other learning to take place. Adult mentors provide ongoing emotional support and guidance to youth in foster care. Mentors actively listen to hopes, fears, and dreams. They become an important part of the child’s journey toward better outcomes. LINK>Fostering Great Ideas – Reimagine Foster Care

One woman shared – We fostered a long time and then I did work mentoring parents with kids in the system. I did it informally, case by case, referred usually by caseworkers or attorneys I knew. But, that’s where the real difference is made, I think. Helping parents navigate the system, gain skills, have someone to talk to and support them, etc.

“Whether the burdens come from the hardships of poverty, the challenges of parental substance abuse or serious mental illness, the stresses of war, the threats of recurrent violence or chronic neglect, or a combination of factors, the single most common finding is that children who end up doing well have had at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult.”
~ National Scientific Council on the Developing Child

Ancestral Reverence

It is the final Dia de los Muertos and my thoughts are on my ancestors. The image comes from LINK> Christiane Pelmas site for Women’s Ancestral Reverence Group – Weaving Our Radical Roots In These Darkening Times. It is an Autumnal Equinox Kiva. I have scattered roots of American, Mexican and Native experiences in my life having been born in Las Cruces New Mexico and growing up in El Paso Texas. My family often vacationed on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation campgrounds in Ruidoso New Mexico. Once my sons, husband and I spent Christmas Eve at the Acoma Sky City Pueblo.

My ancestors include my deceased parents, their original parents and their adoptive parents. Therefore, I have 8 grandparents instead of the usual 4. The original grandparents are people I never knew but that I now know had lives – information that was kept from me until after my parents deaths. I like Christiane’s site because when adoption is part of one’s core self there is trauma. It can’t be helped but it can be healed. I believe much of what I have been doing since I set off on my genetic roots journey in the Autumn of 2017 has been to heal the broken threads.

So for today, I will share some excerpts from Christiane’s site. I would add that I am aware that many people have uncomfortable relationships with one or more of the members of their family. She writes – “Nearly all human cultures (with the exception of western industrial, capitalist culture) practice complex rituals designed to foster on-going intimacy with, and healing of, their ancestral lineages (deceased relations of our blood lines). In western industrialized culture (and increasingly around the world, as Patriarchy colonizes more, and more, of the globe) we suffer from a devastating orphaning.”

Christiane writes of 3 intentions for practicing Ancestral Healing –

[1] to make connections with people of our blood and bone; those ancestral relatives who are vibrantly well and eager to provide us with their support, love and guidance as we journey through our lives. And in the case of my adoptive grandparents, I will add the people of my heart.

[2] to heal the significant trauma burdens woven deeply into most human lineages today; trauma burdens caused by endless war, poverty, social and economic injustice, environmental devastation and the diaspora it causes, racism, sexism and all forms of intolerance and violence toward the multiplicity and diversity of Life’s expressions. So much pain. In this healing process, the brilliance and medicine of each lineage is excavated and brought forward into its present-day expression, which is my very life, the life of my daughter and the lives of my grandchildren. We all live because they lived.

[3] to do the intimate ancestral healing work necessary – so that we are capable of turning our attention to the tremendous harm we continue to cause the ability of the Earth to sustain us all. I remember within my online social networking community there was developed what was called the Gaia Minute. A daily communion with the Earth (I often did mine in the darkness at night under the stars). From that practice I came to see the Earth as my deepest core mother. Not to leave the Sun out, I acknowledge the father energy that sparks all life with existence.

In my Science of Mind magazine Daily Guide for today written by the Rev Dr Dennis Merritt Jones, he shares this affirmation – “Everywhere I go, I see only the sacred presence of the Beloved One clothing itself in a multitude of divine disguises.” He also writes that Ernest Holmes dined with a vase of weeds on his table. A reminder that the only difference between a weed and a rose was the value we place on one over the other. Through a long reckoning in my own heart, I am balancing my genetic grandparents with those who adopted my parents.

What Pro-Family Preservation Is And Is Not

I would NEVER advocate for ANY child to remain in an abusive or neglectful environment. That’s NOT what being pro-family preservation is about.

A family is a fundamental institution that provides a sense of identity and feelings of belonging. However, conflicts can affect the functioning of the family, which endangers a child’s development. In homes where there is a high level of conflict between parents, the children are at a greater risk of developing issues with concentration and managing their emotions.

A surprising 70% to 80% of Americans consider their families dysfunctional. While violence, abuse, and neglect are common forms of dysfunction, many families reported feelings of estrangement, emotional disconnection, and non-traditional family structures as well.

This has led to the development of family preservation services to strengthen the community and ensure safe environments for children. The aim is to create good quality parenting that advocates for emotional support and positive reinforcement within families to reduce conflicts.

Family preservation is a movement by state and child welfare agencies aimed at helping families cope with whatever stressors are affecting their ability to nurture children. This movement grew due to the recognition that family separation leaves some lasting adverse effects on the children. It’s possible to protect children from unwarranted traumas by offering information, guidance, and support to parents.

Millions of children worldwide live in care institutions worldwide, but a shocking 80% of kids living in children’s homes have at least one living parent. The increased number of orphanage-style institutions—coupled with an increase in people wanting to adopt babies—has motivated families in vulnerable situations to willingly take their children to the orphanage. Most of the parents who would do this are simply hoping this will give their children a better life.

Although these institutions offer refuge to such children, even the best caregivers can never replace biological families. The separation from family can harm the child emotionally and affect their cognitive behavior. The effects are worse the younger the child is and an infant is as much at risk of separation trauma as an older child. Do not think because they are preverbal that they don’t have an instinct for the mother who gestated and birthed them.

Family preservation services can benefit any parent who needs a non-judgmental environment to learn parenting strategies and other beneficial skills for their families. Typically, all families will face financial, employment, parenting, substance abuse, or illness cycles that affect the bond between members. In such challenging times, rather than giving up on your family, you need the proper support to help you safely stay together.

Much of the above (with some minor modifications from me) came from the source of my image – Camelot Care Center. There is more about their services at the link. I am not recommending them or do I have any complaint against what they do. I simply wanted to address that wishing to see fewer children adopted and more vulnerable families supported does not mean that I do not recognize that some families are in difficult straits for whatever reason. Some of those children will end up being removed. Some of those will be placed into foster care. Others may be adopted. If there is any good quality to their parents, that is where they need to grow up.

Is It Really ?

One hears this a lot from people who want to adopt a baby – “I applaud you for your courageous choice to give your daughter a chance at a better future. There are so many women with infertility issues like myself who would love to adopt a child. Please keep me in your thoughts if you know of other women in your situation. I have a lot of love to give.”

One cannot really say if being adopted gives anyone a “better life”. Both of my parents were adopted. They both would have grown up with some degree of poverty had they remained with their original mothers. And the truth of the matter is, my dad still grew up with some degree of poverty. In fact, he actually experienced food insecurity and hunger as a child. We always had more food on our table at dinner than we could eat. My mom told me that was the reason why. And my dad was so obese as an adult, he relished his nickname Fat Pat.

I do appreciate his adoptive parents. My granny was hugely influential in my life. We often spent days and weekends with her. A word from her that was very serious about some issue had the power to change the direction I was traveling in. Having learned my parents more or less full background stories, I believe had it not been for my granny, my teenage mother who conceived me out of wedlock, would have been sent away as so many girls in the 1950s through 1970s were, to have and give me up. I believe my dad’s adoptive parents insisted he do the right thing and quit college and go to work, after quickly marrying my mother so I would be born legitimate. And my nuclear family experienced hardships but we knew we were loved, even though our parents were strangely detached, having had their own familial bonds broken before the age of one year.

And how about my mother ? Her dad was the vice president at a large bank in downtown El Paso Texas. Her mother was a socialite and charity do-gooder. She was also influential in my own life for different reasons than my granny. She modeled for us good manners and good taste in home decor and clothing. However, my mom – while wanting for nothing of a financial basis – struggle with her adoptive mother. My grandmother was always thin and trim (she would starve herself if necessary, her mother and sister were quite rotund) and my mom’s body type was never going to be that – big boned Scottish farm girl stock that she was. My grandmother also dangled her wealth as a carrot and a stick over my mom.

My mom’s father was very poor and her mother’s family was also poor. My grandmother lost my mom when she gave birth while separated from her lawfully married husband during a massive flood on the Mississippi River. Unable to contact him for support or reconciliation, Georgia Tann along with her enablers the Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley and the Porter-Leath Orphanage supervisor Georgia Robinson (to whom my grandmother turned for temporary care while she tried to get on her feet financially without family support) exploited her financially precarious situation and coerced her into surrendering my mom for adoption. She tried to undo this 4 days after signing the papers but Tann was not letting my mom loose as her soon to be adoptive mother was already on her way from Nogales Arizona by train to Memphis Tennessee to collect her. My grandmother had previously adopted a son from Tann.

One cannot actually say my mom had a “better” life either. The truth about adoption is – the child has a DIFFERENT life from the one they would have had with their original parent(s). Better is a subjective concept that adoptive parents like to believe in order to justify taking a child, due to their own infertility, from another woman. It honestly is that simple.

The Ethics Of Praying To Adopt

Actually, come to think of it, this is good advice – IF – by praying one is seeking guidance rather than to coerce the outcome to what they believe they want – when what they may get is not what they are expecting.

Adoption is a practice fraught with tension, pain, suffering and little reward – though the agencies that sell babies to couples wanting to adopt may not want you to know about that part.

Bottom line, it is NOT okay to want and pursue another woman’s baby. Adoption is always the sad outcome to some kind of trouble in the original parents lives. A case worker forcing the original mother to sign relinquishment papers reminds me way too much of my maternal grandmother’s sad circumstances at the hand of a master – Georgia Tann.

Every pregnant woman at risk should be given time and space. Surrender should never be rushed and in the best circumstances delayed for some months to allow the new baby to continue the bonding process post-birth. My maternal grandmother was married. It may be that a Super Flood on the Mississippi River before my mom was even born kept my grandfather from knowing the danger my grandmother and mom were actually facing.

Maybe the guidance you will receive will be to help this family stay together rather than tear it apart and separate a child from its original family.