What made you decide to become a Foster parent?

[HopeTree]

Our organization has gone a whole month without a single phone call from anyone interested in becoming a foster parent. I'm hoping to get some different perspectives from you all so I can best decide how to approach recruiting more parents.
So what factors ultimately led to you picking up the phone and making that first call? Was there anything that helped influence your decision. What would have kept you from becoming a foster parent?
I don't if it is strictly the recession that is keeping people away or not. Maybe people aren't aware of the stipend they get paid by the state. Maybe they don't know that there is training. Or maybe they just can't find us.
So how 'bout it? What made you take on this great ministry?

[Leighy]

I am a single, 44 year woman who is considering fostering. I'm feeling led by the Lord to foster and possibly adopt. I've always wanted kids but have not yet been married.

[HopeTree]

I am a single, 44 year woman who is considering fostering. I'm feeling led by the Lord to foster and possibly adopt. I've always wanted kids but have not yet been married.
Many organizations, including my own, do not require foster parent applicants to be married. So don't let that deter you.

[greengirly]

Let me say, I like this question its great to revisit orginal reasons, current reasons etc... My husband and I became foster parents because we wanted to give back to our community and to kids, because we lived overseas for two years (Peace Corps) and it changed our entire world view, because we believe in not procreating (enough kids on the planet all ready) and because we love love kids and felt uniquely suited to help kids with special needs.

What was instrumental for us in the early days was our placement social worker, who held our hand through the first few placements. Who we trusted and had built a relationship with. Mentor foster parents help too. The recruiters I actually dealt with were a major turn off. LOL.

Best of luck.

[fosterdad]

Well, it certainly wasn't the stipend! That doesn't cover it if you truly take good care of your children. We take them places, do things, go on vacation, etc.. We probably blow through double the stipend a month. We got into it as foster to adopt. But please be honest about the placements. We were disillusioned by the case worker and agency. Maybe the fear of the system is keeping people away. Read away here about all the horror stories. If you want more, I can provide a few as well. If it wasn't for a completely broken system, I think you would have an easier time getting and keeping good foster homes. We don't need the extra liability, heartache, stress, coldness or to be a part of a heartless process that destroys children. These kids are treated like that mean nothing and the biological parents get all the rights. Fix that and you will find more homes.:eek:

[Leela]

I am in the process of becoming a foster parent so let me tell you why i am going though with it. Frist i met a lady that has foster kids and she has a kid of her own and i could see the diffrence in the way she treated her own child as oppsed to the foster kids and that truely killed me all kid reguardless are a blessing from god and deserve love and attention. Also my husband was raised in and out of foster care and he tells me horror stories about the people he was place with it wasnt til he was 14 that he was blessed with a family that treated him like he belonged. (he did return to his family when he turned 18) To this day his foster mother is my mother in law she is an awesome women and i would love to do as much for a child as she did for my husband

[peggyb101]

We decided early on that we did not want to have kids and never planned on fostering/adopting even when we made that decision. I was driving past a billboard advertising for foster parents and it just struck me how selfish we were since we had 3 bedrooms (2 of which were empty) and there were kids, who were already here, that had nowhere to go. I went home and asked my husband if he would do it and to my surprise he said yes. The rest is history. We have adopted 2 kids and are on the road to adopting 2 more this year. I do agree with what everyone is saying about this beast called "Children Services". It should be called "Messed up Birth Parents" services because they are the only ones that get anything done where they repeatedly mess it up and get chance after chance while the children suffer. The world would not have so many aged out foster kids if we/you shut these people down when the kids are young and adoptable. I know I do everything in my power, which isn't too much because I have no power, to push for change so it is up to people who work in this system to get it changed. I have been through the ringer and I now understand why most people would never even consider fostering/adopting and most of the reasons have nothing to do with the kids...a little respect would be great.

[b_artsie]

Well, it certainly wasn't the stipend! That doesn't cover it if you truly take good care of your children. We take them places, do things, go on vacation, etc.. We probably blow through double the stipend a month. We got into it as foster to adopt. But please be honest about the placements. We were disillusioned by the case worker and agency. Maybe the fear of the system is keeping people away. Read away here about all the horror stories. If you want more, I can provide a few as well. If it wasn't for a completely broken system, I think you would have an easier time getting and keeping good foster homes. We don't need the extra liability, heartache, stress, coldness or to be a part of a heartless process that destroys children. These kids are treated like that mean nothing and the biological parents get all the rights. Fix that and you will find more homes.:eek:


I could not have said it better myself fosterdad. My husband and I have only been foster parents for a little over a year, but after we no longer have our current placement(hopefully because we get to adopt her but of course who knows) we won't accept anymore placements because of our experiences with the broken system. And have no doubt about it, I make sure to tell anyone that asks me about fostering about our experiences. The kids and the foster parents are the innocent victims of our cruel system.

[Marcyw]

My husband and I opted to become foster parents so that we could adopt a child from our community. We requested that any placement offered to us would have to come with a low legal risk. That did happen, but 4 months into the placement(and the kiddo has been with us since he was 3 days old) his birth mom decided to come into the picture. Things were going smoothly until that point. Now, we've found that our foster child's case manager is hardly the greatest and that she seems to be more of an advocate with blinders on for the mother and less so for the child. She does not provide necessary information to us, the visitation worker, the guardian ad litem or our licensing worker. So...like "Fosterdad," I agree, the system needs a major overhaul before I would encourage another to become involved in foster parenting. The monthly stipend is not of concern, but how foster parents are treated and the inexpericence and lack of guts of the child welfare workers absolutely has deflated our bubble. We will hang in there with this child, but if we are unable to adopt, that will be our first and last foster child. He's a joy, the system - not so much!

[Nanna]

I became a Foster parent because I love children. I want to make a difference in a child's life. I agree with an earlier posting. It is not because of the money because it do not cover the expense of dressing and feeding and carrying them on trips. Furthermore, most children come with few clothes. In otherwords, before we got our first check we had already spent a lot on clothing him. We take in older children. The clothes are more expensive and they expect to go more places and play sports. However, I feel this is my calling from God and I dare not to complain. I pray that more people, if they can will open their hearts and homes to these children.

[HopeTree]

Thank you for all the responses everyone.

I just wanted to clear up that I was not inferring that anyone on here would get involved in foster care because of the stipend. I know that it is not enough to completely cover the cost of care for each child. I just know that couples considering foster care are quick to turn down the idea due to its cost. I was just wondering if, knowing that there is some monetary support, it would further entice those people to continue pursuing the idea of foster care.

That being said, I think the stipend is right about where it should be. I was talking to one of HopeTree's staff of our residential care program (in addition to foster care, we also provide services to at-risk youth on our main campus in Salem, VA) and he said something interesting about the staff who work in our cottages.

"Only 10% of the population is crazy enough to want to work in the cottages. And only 10% of that 10% is sane enough to pull it off."

So I asked if the relatively low pay only adds to the difficulty in finding qualified staff and he told me that a higher pay rate would only attract the wrong kind of people. You need to be in this job for the kids and not the money.

So I think it's the same way with the stipend. If it were too much it would attract the wrong kind of parents.

[MidwestPapa]

My wife and I considered becoming foster parents for 3 years before we finally committed to it last summer. The turning point for us was a free "lunch and learn" that was put together by a foster parent who works at the same company we do.

Several things covered in this program that convinced me to stop taking about fostering and start getting involved were
1. two working parents can do this. There was a panel of experienced foster parents and case workers who spoke on their experiences. This was very helpful
2. One foster parent said "If you have apprehension, think about the kids. They have more than you can imagine." This hit me like a ton of bricks!



Other reasons why I was initially interested in fostering was

my grandmother was an orphan
time I spent in Haiti in the military in the mid 90's

[MrsCCQ]

We decided early on that we did not want to have kids and never planned on fostering/adopting even when we made that decision. I was driving past a billboard advertising for foster parents and it just struck me how selfish we were since we had 3 bedrooms (2 of which were empty) and there were kids, who were already here, that had nowhere to go. I went home and asked my husband if he would do it and to my surprise he said yes. The rest is history. We have adopted 2 kids and are on the road to adopting 2 more this year. I do agree with what everyone is saying about this beast called "Children Services". It should be called "Messed up Birth Parents" services because they are the only ones that get anything done where they repeatedly mess it up and get chance after chance while the children suffer. The world would not have so many aged out foster kids if we/you shut these people down when the kids are young and adoptable. I know I do everything in my power, which isn't too much because I have no power, to push for change so it is up to people who work in this system to get it changed. I have been through the ringer and I now understand why most people would never even consider fostering/adopting and most of the reasons have nothing to do with the kids...a little respect would be great.


Your story sounds so much like mine. My DH and I didn't want kids. Some of that was because I suffer from PCOS and knew it would be hard, the other part was we were very comfortable with our lives together. When my sister (back up surrogate) got pregnant with #3 she decided she would get her tubes tied, and I encouraged that. We did 5 medicated cycles trying to get pregnant, but all along I felt like we were meant to adopt.

We have two extra rooms and all of the love in the world to give. We've just started this process though and are still in training.
Good luck to you!

[The_Gardeners]

HopeTree -- totally agree that the risks of attracting the wrong people by offering more realistic stipends outweighs the unfortunately high out-of-pocket expenses of foster parents.

My husband and I disagree on the issue of having children -- I'm a "no", he's a "yes" and since I'm the one with the ovaries I get the tie-breaking vote. :) We're foster parents largely because of this -- we learn SO much about each other and ourselves in the course of foster parenting that if/when we decide to adopt or conceive we'll have a very good idea of what we're getting into.

But possibly more useful for recruitment efforts: there was a magazine ad a few years ago with a sloppy, terrible-looking home-made birthday cake on it and I don't remember what the text was the message was along the lines of "you don't have to be perfect, you just have to be there". On Tim & Wendy's Foster Parenting Podcast they once were talking about what it takes to be a foster parent and in the end they said that the ONLY things you need to be a foster parent are a big heart and a spare bedroom. I think that's a very nice, no-excuses way to look at it.

Maybe you could ask local churches who do premarital counseling to give information to couples? I know that newly weds aren't ideal foster parents, but it would be a self-selected group of conscious couples who would contact you and it's the biggest adventure a couple can embark on together.