big teddy bear are sitting in white medical masks on a blue wooden background. Respiratory medicine.
From the editor: We are pleased to feature another article from Kelly Rose Waller today on the impact of Covid-19 specifically Social Distancing and Foster Care. As a Foster Mom herself, Kelly knows first hand the impact this pandemic is having on these families and these kids. The excerpt below provides some great insight, and we’ve included a link below to the full article.
Are there other moms out there who have been blessed by your state’s Early Intervention program? Google tells me this service has all kinds of names across the country: Help Me Grow, Baby Net, Birth to Three, Infants & Toddlers, Early Steps, First Connections, Babies Can’t Wait. This service in Pennsylvania has been awesome for us as foster parents. We’ve had three different “types” of therapists over the last three years—physical therapy (PT), speech therapy, and occupational therapy (OT).
(By the way, in case you’re unfamiliar—like I was—Occupational therapy, according to kidshealth.org, helps kids with various needs improve their cognitive, physical, sensory, and motor skills and enhance their self-esteem and sense of accomplishment.)
In our state, Early Intervention is a free service—yes, free—offered through the county that comes to your house—yes, to your house—to offer professional services to kids under age 3. As a foster mom who already drives my son to a lot of medical appointments, it’s life-changing. All you have to do is be home (and dressed). Continue reading
Unicef has a program called “1,000 Days.” It focuses on good nutrition during the first 1,000 days from the beginning stages of pregnancy until a child’s second birthday. Their website declares,
“Good nutrition in the 1,000 days between a woman’s pregnancy and her child’s second birthday sets the foundation for all the days that follow… We are the leading non-profit organization working in the U.S. and around the world to improve nutrition and ensure women and children have the healthiest first 1,000 days.”
What an admirable mission!
The “1,000 days” period since my foster son came into our care (not since he was conceived, not since he was born) has now also come and gone. He has been a “ward of the state” (I shiver at that term) for almost 1,100 days in fact, still with no end in sight. For anyone not quick at math, yes, that’s three years “in the system.” Yes, that’s double the time that Federal law allows a child to live like this. Only there’s no one enforcing the law; the judge can flip past the case number literally as many times as it conveniences his grace’s schedule.
I consider myself a positive person. I’m upbeat, maybe even spunky. But the constant drone of the unknown in my child’s life sometimes threatens to squelch my smile. People mean well when they ask if there’s an update on a foster care placement, but there often isn’t. Even when I can give them a “court date” to look forward to, there’s a strong chance that nothing will happen.
Some people handle this with grace, saying that they’ll be praying about it or nodding in understanding that “the system” is hard to navigate. Other people ask questions I don’t have the answer to. Why aren’t they moving faster? Haven’t you told them X-Y-Z?
***Heavy sigh.***
I realize more each day that God didn’t call me to be a foster parent because I would be good at it. He called me to be a foster parent to teach me how badly I need Him. (And possibly that I’m a control freak.)
When it comes to medical care, foster parents operate in a strange sphere – a kind of medical no man’s land! Because I have two biological kids, I was accustomed to a fairly standard procedure when it came to the seeing the doctor. When they were sick or needed a well-check, I’d call ahead to the doctor to schedule and appointment. On the day of, we’d check in, show an insurance card, see the doctor, pay a co-pay, and come home with a sticker (sometimes multiple stickers). It was pretty standard. Now that I’m a foster parent, the relative simplicity of those visits is now a thing of the past. Those were the good ol’ days!
Now, I’m sure the rules vary from state-to-state (as everything in the foster care system does), but in my home state of Pennsylvania, here’s how it looks…
First, birth parents have the right to always be present at medical appointments (as they should). But, honestly, it can be awkward. The kid might be cranky, the doctor NEVER knows who to talk to, and it can easily descend into an opportunity for the bio parents to visit with their child instead of participating or engaging in the appointment.
Some of the best advice I ever received in terms of drawing everyone’s focus back to the medical appointment at hand was to earnestly ask for the birth parent’s opinion on something. For example, Continue reading
Editor’s Note: Several weeks ago, we shared with you the story of Kelley Rose Waller, a Foster mom and contributor to Hope 4 Hurting Kids in an article titled The Winding Road of Foster Care and Adoption as Kelley and her family prepared for and attended what they hoped would be the final court date for their foster son of the last two years whom they’d like to adopt. This past week, Kelley wrote the next installment in that story which we share with you now.
We have presented excerpts from each of Kelley’s three articles below and encourage you to click-through to her blog to read the rest of the story.
I can’t handle another emotional adrenaline rush, so I’m just enjoying today. Tomorrow we go to court. Again.
You know how in Terminator 2, Sarah Connor knows the truth about Skynet and the future and Judgment Day and death and approaching mayhem and no one believes her? She knows what’s coming, and she’s right. So she fights for what she believes and is “rewarded” by losing custody of her son and being institutionalized.
Granted, this gives us one of the awesomest girl-power scenes of all time (pull-ups on the side of your bed in a State Hospital is about as tough as you can get). But I sometimes feel for Sarah Connor as a foster parent.
Walk with me down this long, winding comparison:
Sarah’s hands get tied because she fights too hard for someone she loves. (Ridiculous. As if that’s possible.) She’s fighting primarily against a bunch of government employees who are overworked and underpaid and just don’t have any more energy to care. They no longer look at each situation – at each child – and feel empowered to say, “I can make a difference here.”
