It’s Foster Care Awareness Month

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “foster care?” Pause, and think for a moment. And be honest. What did you think of? A broken system? Overcrowded? Baby snatchers? Child abuse? Adoption fast track? Maybe something else-something worse?

In a way, all of those are correct. Foster care is insanely overcrowded, criminally underfunded, and almost laughably understaffed. Except it isn’t funny. An unthinkable percentage of children who have been put into foster care have experienced abuse or neglect of some kind. Every child in foster care has experienced the trauma of being separated from their biological family. And yes, adoption through foster care happens, sometimes in the best interest of a child, and sometimes not. I don’t have to make those decisions, and for that I am very grateful.

It is easy to cast judgment from the outside looking in. It is easy to condemn the system of foster care and walk away, but for Foster Care Awareness Month, maybe it’s time to do something harder. Maybe it’s time to learn.

I work in foster care. I have the privilege of working in a private child-placing agency (not the state system). We function on a smaller level and are able to keep our agency’s caseload at a level to which our case managers can consistently support not only the foster children, but foster families as well as biological families. We typically max out our case managers at around 15-18 kids. State agencies easily have caseload upwards of 30. Maybe it doesn’t sound like a big number, but factor in two visits per child per month, court dates, potentially helping transport children or supervise visits, and the workload quickly becomes impossible with such high caseload numbers.

State foster care workers are often quick to burnout; the turnover rates are high. I heard once of one of our case managers emailing a state case manager one day, only to be informed the next day that there was a new case manager. Upon emailing the new case manager, she received a response a few days later stating the case manager had changed again. The third time she was met with the same response-three case managers, in less than a week. It is no wonder children fall through the cracks, especially if the home they are placed with is open only through the state.

However, the heart of foster care, as I have experienced it to be, the hope, the intention, is not for fast track adoptions, or a state paycheck. The goal is reunification—when possible and when safe. The hope is that biological parents can be given the support that they need in order to regain custody of their children and move forward freshly empowered for healing and hope. Many biological parents with children in foster care have mental health, therapeutic, or medical needs that are unmet. Some of them were in the foster care system themselves. They need help; a fair start isn’t always an equal start. The dream is to help, to come alongside, to reunify but, if reunification isn’t possible, then seek permanency for children. And yet, the system is broken. Is the dream broken too?

Yes, the system is broken. But we don’t have the luxury of boycotting it. In 2022, approximately 391,000 children were in the foster care system in the U.S. Many foster children have special needs ranging from medical to mental health, learning to counseling. And, quite literally, everything in between. The needs are many; the workers heartbreakingly few. It makes me angry when I see a multimillion dollar football stadium go up in a same county where case managers are fighting insurance companies to get children approved for services they desperately need. So many things about the brokenness of foster care make me angry, but staying in a place of anger doesn’t help. Lawmakers need to do better; but this isn’t for the lawmakers. This is for you and me. What can we do?

Maybe some of you should foster. Maybe you’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Maybe you never have before. But maybe, if you have the space in your house and the love in your heart to be a resting place for a child in need, it’s time to look into it. It will challenge you, it will grow you, it will break your heart and give you joy. And you will make a difference.

Maybe you work in the foster care sustem; if you do, I thank you. I see you. I know firsthand the frustrations, the joys, and the heavy, heavy burden. Thank you, for the difference you are making.

Maybe you don’t feel like you can be a foster parent. Guess what—there are still things you can do. Find foster parents in your community and bring them dinner once a week. Once a month. You will make a difference. Offer to babysit every once in a while; help keep those on the front lines, the foster parents, from burning out by giving them even just a tiny bit of balance and normalcy. You will make a difference.Donate to foster care drives, to agencies, directly to foster families who need it. Advocate for foster care. You will make a difference. Vote like you care about foster care. Donate old kids clothes, diapers, wipes, formula, etc. to agencies that offer it to foster and biological families. You will make a difference. Whoever you are, wherever you are in life, there is something you can do. Big or small, you can make a difference.

I think of foster care with the analogy of bailing out a sinking cruise ship with a teaspoon. It feels impossible. It is impossible. But not, perhaps, if we get enough people to bail with us. And it matters, no matter what, because each teaspoon is a child. A life. It matters. Even if a teaspoon at a time.

I invite you; come bail with me. Let us make a tidal wave of difference.