Kinship Foster Parents:

Are We Part of the Problem or the Solution?

Susan (age 15), Bobby (age 6), and Asia (age 6 months) were removed from their home on Monday afternoon and taken to emergency foster care. When the police and child welfare came to remove the children, Mama Rose claimed that she had no living relatives. A cocaine habit had blurred her vision about many things. She was a long-term welfare mom who had never married the father of her three children. The father, Big Jim, had lived in the household for 17 years and held responsible jobs with the State and with a housing agency. Jim brought cocaine and marijuana home for their pleasure. Mama Rose had become addicted and could no longer look after herself or their children. Jim continued his work, faring better than the mother of his children.

Becoming Kinship Foster Parents

Big Jim, Mama Rose, Grandma, my partner and I all went to court on Tuesday morning. Family Court in New York City is unlike any place in the world. Security is the only well staffed unit. Public service lawyers run from room to room, mothers are crying, children are screaming and everyone is waiting .........all day! The judge recommended that all three children be placed in kinship foster care with my partner and me. Three children would move into our two-bedroom "adults only" apartment. We purchased a crib to put in our room for the baby. Susan would sleep in the second bedroom with a double Murphy bed, and Bobby would sleep in the dining room alcove, which we would set up each night as his bedroom.

The children arrived at our apartment Wednesday at 8:00 PM exhausted, crying and confused. Proud that we had purchased all the beds and diapers and food in one day, we showed the children their sleeping arrangements. They brushed their teeth and all three body-locked themselves together on the double Murphy bed. "We can either get a crowbar or just let them go to sleep," I remarked as my partner and I emotionally collapsed into bed.

Ironically, I had asked my staff of 12, just one week before, for a volunteer to learn more about kinship foster care. As I arrived at my office with stories of the previous day in court and the previous night of a thousand tears, we all decided that the spirits had nominated me to become the expert in the kinship system.

Challenges of Kinship Foster Parenting

First on the list of "to do?" was medical care. Second was a foster care assessment interview, and third was figuring out what to do with three kids during the summer while their two foster parents worked full time.

Medical Care

The children had Medicaid cards, but no private providers would take such little reimbursement. We shopped for and found a community health center that took Medicaid, was walking distance from the apartment, and could give us an appointment that week. The baby (born with positive toxicology) had received no medical care. Bobby thought that he had one or two shots but he was not sure. A family physician gave the children full medical exams and found them quite healthy. The children were scheduled for all required shots.

Foster Care Interviews

We had at least two three-hour interviews. The worker had good enough intentions, but he had very little interest in our answers as long as he had words to fill each line on this sheet. He could not answer any of our questions. He gave us a number to call that was always busy. He was only interested in completing our exhaustive personal histories. He had no suggestions about what to do with the children while we worked. His questions about my deceased mother? maiden name and medical history made me wonder if I was not in the twilight zone.

What to do with the children

In our one-hour of decision making, we had bought beds, diapers and food. What to do with three children for ten hours a day was going to take some work. I remember saying, "There are 25,000 other children in kinship foster care in New York City... there must be an agency that helps people like us--we cannot be the only folks in this spot!" I continued, "Let's visit one of the settlement houses in our neighborhood. I think one of my doctoral colleagues is an associate director at Henry Street.

Three children and two adults trooped off to find him. We arrived tired and without an appointment. That seemed typical of how we arrived everywhere. My doctoral friend could not have been more surprised. He ushered us in to see one of his social workers, who assured us that we could find a solution to our problem and that she was there to help us. This was a welcome relief after the inquisition by the foster care worker, who made clear to us that he was a monitor and not a helper. Henry Street Settlement provided us with a number of options. We paid tuition for Bobby to attend eight weeks of day camp. The agency provided Susan with a modest stipend as a counselor-in-training at another of their day camps. Henry Street had no day care available for the baby, but they gave us phone referrals to call in the neighborhood. By the end of the week, we were lucky and had found a licensed worker who takes care of three babies in her apartment. It was located about a 30 minute walk from our apartment so getting everyone off in the morning and picking them all up in the late afternoon proved to be a great challenge. Just one rainfall would push us to the brink--until we got used to being wet. Dinner was another challenge we overcame with the assistance of inexpensive restaurants. Full time jobs, children's pickups, laundry, house cleaning, and five baths with one tub made cooking an impossible dream.

Unlike most kinship families, who are more likely to receive AFDC (33%) than their unrelated foster care counterparts (6%) (Thorton, 1991), we were not under financial strain. We tripled our spending after the children arrived, but we did not regret using savings for this emergency. We knew that we might recoup some foster care reimbursement but we were sobered by the situation of the New York City system, which was terribly backlogged in paying kinship parents.

The Expected and Unexpected

On day one, I called a premier foster care administrator at Leake and Watts Services, Inc, a private child welfare agency in New York. "Phyllis," I asked, "could you tell me what I need to know about raising three foster children? "That's easy," she said. "Don't, under any conditions, for any reasons at any time, ever argue with the birth parents." "What else?" I asked. "That's it," she said.

I got home from work to find the birth parents in our apartment. They made an unannounced visit, began rearranging our furniture, gave the eldest child a beeper and began outlining when, how and where they would see their children. They were demanding unsupervised overnight stays, which are against foster care rules.

The next day I called Phyllis. "I am taking your advice and will not argue with them, but murder is not out of the question." Ralph Waldo Emerson said that a man himself not rejuvenated ought not go out to save the world. I say that parents who have their children removed from their home due to abuse and neglect should not dictate to others how to parent their children. I found myself in a constant rage. In deciding to take the children, I had not for one moment thought about their parents. My naive fantasy of their being grateful was usurped by their fear, anger, jealousy and drug grogginess.

The three children were amazingly resilient. At 15, Susan thought it was her responsibility to take care of her two younger siblings. She had been trying to protect and care for them for a few years. It took a few weeks for us to convince Susan that parenting was our role and, though we appreciated her help, her job was to be a teenager. We took her for a hair cut and manicure and gave her some movie passes. We taught her to ride the subway, which was hard for her.

At six, Bobby was all boy. He loved to go to the park, play catch and play on the monkey bars until he had blisters. One day on our way to the park I asked Bobby if he knew why he lived with us. "Nope," he quickly replied. I took out a dollar bill and asked him to guess for a dollar. He thought for a minute and said, "I think it's 'cause my Mom smokes cigarettes." I told him it was a great guess and gave him another dollar for another guess. "I think the cigarettes are the funny kind you are not supposed to have." I let him know that he was a mighty good guesser. I also let him know that he would be staying with us until his Mom felt stronger and then he would move back with her. I asked him if he had any questions for me. "Where can I get some candy with my two dollars?" he asked. I believe that Bobby was reticent in the beginning because he feared that I would criticize his mom. Knowing that we all loved him and that we were not going to fight seemed very reassuring to him.

Baby Asia had the hardest and most dramatic adjustment. She came to us with such a sad face and was so jittery at night that she rarely slept more than two hours without waking up. A regular schedule with lots of holding and cooing was just what she needed. She never stopped awakening every two hours, but she began smiling and cooing all day long. My partner and I were worried about neurological damage from prenatal maternal drug use. The doctor said that he needed to wait awhile to tell.

Big Jim and Mama Rose wanted the children to live with them on weekends. We would not agree. We compromised by having the children spend some weekends at their grandma's house, which was close to the parents' apartment. When the children returned on Sunday night, they were upset and disoriented. I did not like their leaving on weekends. I believed that the parents needed an incentive to correct their drug use, and getting their children back could have been the best incentive.

After two months, we got a call from the child welfare worker. "Have the children packed and ready to be picked up between 9 AM and 6 PM tomorrow." I was shocked and very upset. No one had consulted us. The thought of sitting eight hours in an apartment waiting for a minibus from child welfare was more than I could bear. I called back the worker. "I will deliver the children with their belongings to your office at 9 AM." My partner and I sat down and told the children who were delighted. Big Jim and Mama Rose had gone to court that day and the judge decided to return the children to his custody. Neither the parents nor the child welfare worker had told us that this petition was coming before the court.

The morning that we dropped the children at the child welfare office was one of the hardest days of my life. The children were being returned to the identical household from which they had been removed. The father had pretended that he lived somewhere else and was now telling the judge that he would move home to care for the children. Mama Rose had attended a 12-step program sporadically which appeared to reduce her drug habit for the time being.

I was not sorry that we had taken care of the children, but I was devastated that they were returning to almost the same situation. The court, the parents, and child welfare all had taken the easy way out. I resolved not to fight any of them. The children were very important to me and I would not initiate anything that would have those who loved them fighting. I wanted to remain a loving and supportive force in their lives.

The Outcome

It is now five years later. The children visit often and stay with us for the weekend about once a month. I speak to them every week, and we are all together on holidays. We have given the children the message that lots of people love them. The parents stopped resenting us after about three years and reluctantly expressed their thanks on one occasion. Big Jim and Mama Rose are happy now to get a break for the weekend and do not cancel or inconvenience us as they often did the year following the summer that the children were removed from them.

Is this a happy or a sad ending? It would be far too simple to know the answer. Yet, it is a typical ending in kinship foster care. The children have love, the birth parents take too many drugs, and the child welfare system thinks it protected the children. My dreams of how it would work out were crushed. My fantasy had Mama Rose in residential drug treatment for six months, her transition out of depression and welfare, and a future with optimism and organization for both the parents and children. I am left to wonder as a kinship foster care parent whether I was part of the problem or part of the solution. This question remains unresolved and I think about it enough to want to write about it five years later.

Conclusion

It is interesting to read literature from the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse about "making the decision" (National Adoption Information Clearinghouse webpage). They suggest that potential relative caregivers explore the following issues:

Are they ready to make significant changes in their life?
How do other family members feel about it?
How will potential caregivers relate to the child's birth mother or father?
How do they feel about the child?
Can they afford the cost?
Does their health allow them to make this commitment?
What services and resources are available?
Answering these questions thoughtfully takes a few weeks, yet many of us make the decision to care for our kin in less than one hour. The impulse of family members to care drives rational people to make a leap-of-faith decision that feels like no decision at all. Therefore, it is critical to provide kinship caregivers with the information and support they need in order to make the process less difficult. Each situation is different, and each caregiver has different needs that must be considered on an individual basis. However, some systemic changes could prove helpful. Things that might have helped us, for instance, include:

a foster care worker who informed the children while they were in emergency care that family members would be taking care of them shortly;
a court that examined both parents' roles and drug use;
a foster care worker with the knowledge and training to advise as well as monitor.
What did help us? Advice from Phyllis, assistance from Henry Street Settlement, and disposable income. Not all kinship caregivers are so fortunate to have these resources.

References

Thorton, J.L. (1991).
Permanency planning for children in kinship foster homes. Child Welfare, v. LXX (5), pp. 593-601.