No.Nonsense.

I’ve been a foster parent since 2012. My son is now 12 years old and I would like to tell you our story. I’m sharing this story with you because it illustrates serious deficiencies in the system through our very personal pain.

I never had my own biological children but I had always wanted to be a mother. Through friends, I learned that I could do so through fostering, helping children in need to heal and feel loved. I embraced this new role in my life and looked forward to what the future held. I never set forth to adopt, although I said if the right situation came along, I would be open to the possibility. My goal upon beginning this journey is that I would love and care for these children for as long as I was blessed to have them and then I would wait for the next child to love. I was able to let go when they had to leave because I had set in my mind that I wanted to see them happy, healthy, secure and loved. If that was accomplished with their birth family, I saw that as the best option. If it was with an adoptive family, that was nearly as good. I partnered with social services and with the birth parents to do my best to help them regain custody of their children, my focus always on what would be best for the children to ensure they would thrive. I became known as a fierce advocate for the children in my care because I saw my responsibility to them as being first and foremost. I worked hard to lobby for any and all services and supports they would need. Of the six children in my care before my son, two were reunified with birth parents, two went to kinship placements, and one was adopted into a loving family. Only one returned to foster care when an adoption fell through then ultimately to a kinship placement. She has now aged out of the system. I see that track record as a success from my standpoint. It matters not to me if these children remember me. I’d, in fact, prefer they didn’t hold memories of that in-between time. It just makes me happy that I, for that brief moment in their lives, was able to give them some sense of security.

In 2017, I took a placement of a 3 year old boy. He was an absolute doll and feisty to boot. I knew he would challenge me and I looked forward to it. I took every opportunity to try to connect in some way with his birth mother. The man he had always believed to be his father and I actually built a friendship and co-parenting relationship over the years. Birth mom was a different story, however, and posted every barrier you can imagine. When she felt that this little boy was showing any affection for me, she did everything within her power to try to undermine that connection, even going so far as to scold him in front of whoever was present. He was the youngest of her large family and relished not just the security of my home but the quiet as well. As a result, he and I connected from the start and it was apparent that he felt comfortable with me. That connection was not from anything that I had done beyond simply caring for him and was never meant in any way to circumvent her role as his mother.

When he would come back from supervised visits with her, he would be dysregulated, easy to upset, and often crying. He needed a lot of holding on those nights. He would suffer from night terrors if he could fall asleep at all. He often did not want to be away from me and would be absolutely inconsolable when I left him at preschool. After a year and a half of these visits, his therapist said they were too traumatic for him and, with the support of social services, recommended to the court to end the visits. The judge concurred and the visits stopped. It was only after that decision that he was able to begin to heal. He continued to have visits with his “dad” and enjoyed those times immensely.

During this time, he had transitioned into elementary school and was struggling to adjust. He would become severely dysregulated and we had to bring in an educational advocate to get a 504 and, later an IEP, into place and we brought in in-home therapists to assist him. He didn’t need the support in my home so they agreed to work with him in the school setting. He had been demonstrating issues with attention and impulse control for as long as he had been in my care, and I was continuously advocating for him to be assessed. Even though her visitation rights had been revoked more than six months earlier and she had not had any communication with him in that time, his birth mother still had parental rights and did everything possible to block every attempt to get him assessed. Our social worker at the time, along with an entire team of professionals, managed to finally get her to agree to a comprehensive clinical analysis. The result of that diagnosis was severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and unspecified trauma and stressor related disorder which is a form of PTSD. The therapist who conducted that assessment recommended the best course of action as therapy and medication. He was already in therapy but, again, given her penchant for blocking anything that was recommended for him, his birth mother would not consent to medication and as his parent she continued to have that right. As his ability to function in school diminished despite our interventions, the social worker fought for him in court and the judge signed an order to remove birth mom’s medical rights, allowing social services to proceed with approving medication for him. He was started on the medication over Christmas break of his kindergarten year and was finally able to begin building a foundation in his education. With that said, the delay he experienced made his development difficult and it took him five more years to reach the level that his intelligence and ability indicated he could be. He was able to be released from his IEP at the end of fifth grade.

Over the course of these two years, his birth mother made multiple accusations against me that were summarily dismissed because I had done nothing wrong. She tried repeatedly to have him removed from my home and at one point nearly succeeded. Only the support of the social worker kept him with me. Birth mom failed to complete even one part of her plan for reunification. She continued with the behaviors that led to the children being in foster care. Prior my son’s birth, she had had her older children previously removed and placed in foster care and, against the advice of social services and the guardian ad litem at the time, the children were returned into her care by the court. All in all, she had been investigated more than 25 times over more than ten years and had shown no effort nor desire to change.

In 2019, the court ruled that the permanent placement plan would be changed to adoption. By this time, the man known as dad had learned that he was not biologically related but he continued to be a vital presence in my son’s life. He was deemed to not be a viable permanent placement and withdrew from the case but was allowed unsupervised visitation. He and I continued to work well together as co-parents and we built an unconventional family that worked. I expressed that I would like to be considered for adoption, now that we knew that reunification would not be possible. Social services was supportive of my pursuing adoption since I had been a stable presence in his life for two years at this point and the connection was unmistakable, so we began the process.

Six years after that change in the placement plan and eight years after the initial placement, we finally received our finalized adoption decree.

That’s right. Eight years.

Of course, in 2020, the world experienced COVID and the courts shut down, but even then, we had already been waiting for a year to even get a hearing for termination of parental rights. The standstill was hard but we weathered it, knowing that when they reopened we would be able to have our hearing and move forward. That’s not what happened. See, she had the right to request in-person hearings only which is precisely what she did. As a result, it was another nine months or so before there was ever even a hearing. At this point, we’re almost two years into the plan change and four years into the placement and still there is no progression in the case.

For three years, she dragged everything out by changing attorneys multiple times and putting up every roadblock imaginable. In 2023, we finally won the termination of parental rights which should have been the end of the fight. Then she appealed the ruling. It was nearly a year more before the appeals court dismissed the appeal and we were finally awarded the TPR in 2024. Then we were relegated to bureaucratic purgatory waiting for an adoption worker through DSS. The issue at that point was that they had been assigned other cases that had dragged on longer than anticipated and so they were unable to take on any more cases until those cleared. We finally were assigned our adoption worker in December 2024. Then there was another delay when our county changed to an e-file system without notifying my foster agency so we had to work out logistically how everything was going to be filed with the court and who was going to do it.

All in all, it has been a nightmare and it should have never happened this way. My son and I should not have been forced to live in limbo for eight years. And it all could have been prevented.

What this entire process has proven to me is that I cannot sit on the sidelines and let other families experience this kind of pain and uncertainty when I can share our story and advocate for change. In order to do so, I’m going to move now from the anecdotal and share some facts.

Our state is one of only nine in the US that have a decentralized foster care system that is managed by the individual counties instead of by the state. State statute says that if a birth parent has not made progress on their reunification plan in one year, social services can proceed to petitioning the court for a plan change. The problem in this scenario is that each county has its own policies and the timeframe is determined by the individual guidelines of social services and the courts in those counties with no standardization from one to the next. Statistically, in our state, the average stay in foster care is two years and within that timeframe 33-66% (2002) of children are disrupted twice, meaning they are moved between foster homes. Children who experience multiple disruptions have difficulty with attachment and feelings of security resulting in barriers in relationships into their adulthood. Their trauma is increased the longer they are kept in limbo resulting in high incidents of post traumatic stress, anxiety disorders, and even physical ailments. They have poorer outcomes in their education, higher potential for incarceration and/or substance abuse, and are more at risk for continuing the cycle of the foster care system for their own children. I have been fortunate to work with exceptional social workers who have understood that my advocacy for the children in my care is not intended to undermine the birth parents and have allowed me to be that voice for them; but that is often not the case among other departments and children are routinely disrupted if the foster parents voice any concerns. Keep in mind, we are the ones who are handling the trauma in these children on a daily basis and are the best people to express what the children need in terms of support. Our role should never be diminished to that of merely a babysitter.

My son has been fortunate that I was stubborn enough to not quit on him and this process. With that said, it has been emotionally draining and has led me to make the decision to no longer foster now that we have finalized our adoption. I would love to care for more children but I am spent. What’s more, my son has dealt with eight years of uncertainty and I feel my obligation is to him and to helping both of us heal. With that said, despite the obstacles, I have seen him grow into a remarkable young man who has tremendous opportunity ahead of him, and I’m happy I’ve had the chance to be instrumental in his success.

So what can be done now? We experienced numerous failures in the system that have led us to this point. Initially, our case was not adjudicated for the first six months that he was in the system. That means there were six months of wasted time where nothing was being done. Secondly, the statute that gives the one year deadline for making even some progress on the plan has no reinforcement component so that each county can operate on its own timeline and allow for as long as they wish, prolonging the uncertainty for the child. Thirdly, there need to be measures in place whereby the rights of the birth parents are preserved while still considering what is in the best interest of the children. It should never be an either/or situation. Foster parents should be respected for the work they do and it should be part of the plan that the birth parents and the foster parents should have to work in conjunction with each other, again in the best interest of the children. Once a plan has been changed and the case proceeds to the TPR process, there should be a time restriction on how long the case can be drawn out. As it stands now, the state pays for the birth parents’ legal representation which I support; but that financial consideration should come with a caveat that if they appeal the decision and the ruling is upheld that the birth parent should have to pay at least a portion of those legal fees. In doing so, it would eliminate frivolous appeals done simply for the sake of prolonging the case. If a case proceeds past a designated timeframe, additional resources should be provided to the adoptive parents to allow for more supports for the child to counter the trauma from the extended time to achieve permanency. Taking any of these steps would be beneficial to the overall wellbeing of the child and ease some of the stress that can come from a protracted foster to adopt process.

What it all comes down to is one question: how much do these children matter? We have an abundance of children in the foster care system at this time and far too few foster parents to care for them. How can we recruit more foster parents when the system seems to work against them and the children? For those of us on this side of the equation, it’s difficult to see that there is no standardization to this process, with each county doing it’s own thing and knowing that our contribution matters little to the powers that be. We all want to know that what we did was worth the effort. We all want to see these children happy and whole. We want to feel supported in giving them a hope and a future. The foster care system exists to keep children safe. It should not be designed in such a way as to exacerbate their trauma.