Welcome to Forum 360.

I'm Stephanie York.

Your host today.

Thank you for joining us for a global outlook with a local view.

Today on Forum 360, we meet a couple whose story explores and challenges what it means to build a family.

Ron and Kathleen Paydo have raised their own children while also opening their home to more than 200 foster children over the years.

It's a journey marked by compassion, resilience and difficult goodbyes as Ron leads one of the region's major financial institutions.

Together, they've led something just as impactful at home, creating stability and hope for children who need it most.

Let's dive into and hear what fostering has taught them and what it asks of all of us.

Ron and Kathleen, thank you so much for being here today.

- Thank you.

- Thanks,Stephanie.

- Yes, of course.

So can you both just give us a little background on yourselves where you grew up, how you met and what you do.

- Yeah, I grew up in Mentor Ohio - Okay.

- I'm a proud graduate- a proud 1983 graduate of Mentor High School.

- Okay.

You just aged yourself but, very good.

- I- I did, and I grew up in a very, very loving and supportive home.

And I think as I think about our journey, it has that that focus on family and devotion to family is something that I've carried with me through my life in terms of looking out for people and and taking care of people.

Went to Kent State, graduated at Kent State in 1987 was a big year.

I started at the bank.

I got married and we moved to Wadsworth and 38 years later, still married, still at the bank and still in Wadsworth.

Awesome, and what bank is this?

- Huntington Bank.

- Right.

And you guys, you met in college?

We met.

We met at Kent State in the band.

- Awesome.

Tell me a little bit about your background, Kathleen.

- Well, I grew up in the Bath area.

I went to Saint Vincent, Saint Mary High School, and met Ron at Kent State.

And I remember as a young child, my dad taking me up to Cleveland to see the play Little Orphan Annie, my mom and my dad.

And I remember coming out of there and saying to my parents, oh, that old Miss Hannigan was so mean to those little girls, right?

And I think when I grow up, I'm going to run an orphanage.

Well, fast forward all these years later, I'm a nurse, and Ron and I got married, and I said, what do you think about doing foster care since there really aren't orphanages around anymore?

And believe it or not, we started this journey at age 22.

So we have been in it our whole married life.

- That's unbelievable.

So I have a 25 year old and a 22 year old, and I can't imagine them at that at this age.

- Sure.

- Starting to bring in foster children.

So we're just going to jump right in because we have I have so many questions and so many things to find out.

What led you to consider fostering?

I mean, Little Orphan Annie, but but it had to be more than that.

- Just a great love of children.

We were blessed with four of our own, but we actually fostered before we even started having our own children.

So we just kind of did that along the way.

And we just changed.

As the years went by, when our children were very little, we took older foster children, and when our children got to be older children, we took younger foster children.

And we've just always had a great love for children and community and have wanted to do what we can to help and, you know, leave a mark in life somewhere along the way.

- Sure.

So you told us about your upbringing in a very loving home?

Did your upbringing shape your decision to foster?

Do you think?

- I think so.

I think so.

We always had lots of animals in the area.

We grew up more rural, so there weren't a lot of kids around.

And so I always just wanted to be around a lot of people.

And I loved having, you know, four biological children being very blessed with that.

We loved having their friends to the house, you know, that house that, you know, you like to have lots of kids.

And I always I think it's funny, I have a sign in my home that says, you know, there's a time for a beautiful, clean and proper home.

And that time is not now.

- Or ever in your household I would think.

- And that's okay.

You know, we just love having a lot of people around, a lot of children around and sense of family and community is very important to us.

- Well, it's interesting that you're also a nurse, so you have that very nurturing.

I have a nurse in the family as well.

So that nurturing disposition.

So I think it comes a little naturally.

- Well, and because of that, Stephanie, through our journey, we have taken our fair share of medically fragile foster children as well into our home.

Because of Kathleen's background and agencies being comfortable placing those kids in our homes, whether they be on feeding tubes or drug babies.

- that's a that's a lot of responsibility.

- What kind of training goes into having to foster somebody?

- You know,there’s a pre-service training process which if you call Summit County Children's Services and you can ask about the pre-service training program, there's a certain amount of classes that you go to.

Then there's a home study process.

And then if you do something like medically fragile children you'll also have specialized care also.

And there's always continuing education that we're going through every year to continue to keep our license current.

And so you try to take things that are applicable to your family.

So if we have children on oxygen or something, we'll go to hospital and we can take a class with their respiratory care and they'll teach us about the pulse oximeter and things like that.

So you could you get very good training and very good support from the agency with the childrens workers will call in and check in on the children.

And also kind of unique to Summit County.

We also have a foster care coordinator who is also a social worker.

But for us in our home.

So that's kind of a really nice way to get good support regarding whatever kind of child we're taking care of.

- Well, you've had over 200 children in your house.

Foster children.

Okay.

My husband won't even let me bring a second dog home, so this really blows my mind, right?

Yeah.

How many foster children do you have in your house at the same time?

Like, what's the most you've had, or is there, like, just one at a time type thing?

- Kathleen will have to spot check me but I think the most we've had at one time was eight.

Wow.

January, before Covid hit, we had a brother and a sister.

In February, we.

I came home from work one day and I saw six girls sitting at our kitchen table.

They were seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13.

- Oh my gosh.

- I looked at Kathleen, kind of like, what are you doing?

And she said, oh, Ron, it'll be fine.

She goes, I'll get him up in the morning, I'll send them to school.

I'll regroup.

They'll come home, we'll do homework, we'll have dinner, we'll do an activity, we'll go to bed.

And then in March, Covid hit and we broke the law every day, having too many people in one spot at the same time.

- Right.

Right.

But you were family, so.

- That's right, that's right.

- They came home with eight Chromebooks and I said, what's a Chromebook?

So I had a lot to learn.

- Yes you did.

- getting children through that many levels of grade.

And in the morning we'd have a meeting and we'd say like, okay, today third grade will be on the couch.

I need fourth grade at the kitchen table.

- Wow.

So did you ever work outside the home since you started fostering?

- Yes I spent 22 years at Wadsworth Rittman Hospital as a registered nurse.

But I spent a lot of time on night shift.

And at one point it kind of got to be too much working at night.

Ron would get a call in the middle of the night for a child needing care, and then I wouldn't be able to sleep during the day, and it got to be a lot.

So eventually I retired from that and became a full time foster parent only about 15 years ago.

- Well, that's a full time job.

So like I much kudos for that.

- Thank you.

Did- you had biological children along the way.

So do they know any other way?

You know I was I was prepared to ask you, how do you prepare your biological child to bring in foster.

But they might not know any other way of life.

- I would say no, Kathleen could probably talk to that better, but I just have this really vivid memory of these set of brothers that we had.

We had one twice, and then his other brother the second time, and they were, I don't know, four and six, five and seven, and our older daughters, or are two and four at the time, and they became the best of buddies to the point where we're still in touch with them today.

We've been to weddings, we've been to Cedar Point, we've been out to dinner.

I know they don't know a different way.

- Do you have a minute of your life that's not like spent in family time, other than when you're at work.

- It's busy.

- Your family is so extended.

- There's always something going on.

- We did weed The garden yesterday.

- We did, we did.

-You probably have lots of hands to help if you need it.

- Yes.

Not yesterday.

- You’d think.

- They scatter when there's work to be done right?

- Most days.

Yes.

But I'll tell you what.

We have kept the foster kids in our home busy.

Either either doing work at our home, the neighbor home, our family's homes, just to kind of instill that, that that work ethic and that work value.

Periodically, Kathleen's dad will give them a couple of bucks for their work and, you know, to to see the pride on their faces for getting $5 for, for, for spending the afternoon, at Peepaw’s house, that goes a long way.

- And I will say regarding raising your own children alongside of foster children, there's not a lot out there.

There's not a lot of training out there for that.

It's, I think, an area that maybe people are unprepared when they become foster parents, and we lose about 50% of our foster parents after their first year of service or their first child placement.

And a lot of times they'll come back in sight that it wasn't what I expected in regard to my own children.

You know, I was worried about my own children or whatever, but it can be done well.

And I think you have to understand that you're raising your children alongside of these children to understand that they play an important role being a foster sibling to these children, and they can be a good example to them.

And they understand that there's some things that they see or hear in our home that they're expected not to repeat.

And they understand They have to dig a little deeper for, you know, to be organized and have a strong work ethic with a lot of other kids needing our attention.

But then on the flip side, I think the great thing with our biological children is that they're excellent caregivers.

They understand growth and development of children, they understand drug exposed babies and why they act the way they do or traumatized children, and why they escalate so quickly.

And so we've learned that as a family.

And I think that's helped to make our children as adults more well-rounded adults.

And I think they see outside themselves very successfully because of that.

- Well, you're definitely role models for that.

Any of your children follow in your footsteps yet?

- I don't know.

They're all kind of busy having their own babies right now.

We have four lovely grandchildren under the age of two.

- Wow.

- So that's a lot of fun.

So they're a little busy right now, but I do think their hearts are in the realm of doing for others, whether that- whatever their charity work and life that they choose will be.

- So I think a lot of people hav the concept- or misconception.

I should say that you foster children to adopt them, you know, like as a pathway to adoption.

That's really not what fostering is about, is it?

- Yeah, really.

Stephanie, the goal at the end of the day is reunification.

And and through the years, we've worked really, really hard trying to reunify the kids who have come into our home, getting them back, back, back to their home.

And I think you've got to be really intentional about that.

And I think you've got to be proactive.

And so I can tell you through the years, Kathleen especially, has spent as much time with the foster kids in her home as their biological moms and or dads.

Having them to our house, her going to their, their, their house, inviting them to doctor's appointments, inviting them to games, texting, sending pictures, just building that relationship and building that rapport.

Sometimes I think foster parents are viewed by the biological families as as the bad, the bad people.

- Kind of like a threat.

- Yes, Like you've taken my kids and now you're going to keep my kids.

And literally on day one, we send the message that, hey, we're just here to help.

We tell the kids that, we tell the the biological parents that.

And we want nothing more to help get your kids back home.

We we we got a child from the hospital, and Kathleen has a story about how we were able to reunify that child with her mom because of something she did.

- So the whiteboard in the room, you know, the baby was nine months old and I put on there hello Sky’s family.

We are Ron and Kathleen Pato, here's our phone number.

You know, we like to get in touch with you.

And that mom told me later when she walked in the room to see her baby later that day.

She knew right then and there she was going to get her child back because she felt like we were there to help support her.

- I got goosebumps.

- Thank you.

And so all in the next nine months, in that case plan was all about wrapping services around that mom.

So the agency does their part with housing or maybe domestic violence or, you know, whether cessation classes or parenting classes.

So it's very important, the agency aspect of it, the courts aspect of trying to get that child home to a safer place.

And for us personally, we're trying to build that child up in any way we can, whether it's a young child and just, you know, some developmental skills or if it's a teenager and we're teaching life skills just to make them stronger and more competent when they leave, and being understanding that their home situation hopefully was better in the time they were in foster care.

Just a chapter in their life doesn't have to define them forever.

But you know, take that time for us to get all of these services wrapped around your family, and we're just trying to be a bridge to get the children back home to their families, keep them in their communities as much as we can, and we have pretty good luck with the agency in general.

About an 80% success rate.

- Amazing.

So maybe about 20% are going up for adoption, but then also something new that's kind of come about in the last couple of years is the push for kinship placements.

So we're trying really hard.

If they can't stay in their primary home that they are then looked to.

Yes, a relative could be a non blood relative, could be a teacher, a counselor, a neighbor, a coach.

And the agency is working very hard to get those children then placed with kinship.

And then if kinship doesn't work, then they'll come into foster care.

But there are still there's still great need for foster parents.

There's still a lot of children that make it into foster care.

So we do need homes.

-Yeah, I think I think right now there are more kids in foster care in Summit County than have ever been before.

And we know that there's more kids out there that should be in foster care, that the county and the agency just doesn't have the resources to to do their work to, to, to bring them in.

- Sure.

So I'd like to remind our audience and those who have joined late that we are in the studio with Ron and Kathleen Paydo, and we're talking about their extraordinary journey as foster parents, having opened their home to more than 200 children and the impact their experience has had on their family, their perspective and their commitment to helping others.

So you develop relationships with parents, obviously.

Do you keep in touch with parents and kids and how does that work?

- We do.

We think that's important.

Right?

But but we follow the lead of the adoptive parents or the kinship parents or the biological parents.

We transition from foster mom and foster dad to Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Ron, and some embrace that.

Some homes embrace that, some don't.

Doesn't make it right or wrong.

It happens for different reasons.

But if and when we are asked to be included in stay part, we do.

And it's been so much fun watching, watching these kids and reconnecting with these kids through the years and just seeing how they have grown and developed and really turned out to be great human beings.

Not only do we have not only be blessed with four grandchildren, but we now have our former foster kids having kids as well.

- Do you have reunions?

Like, do you have reunions?

Are they like, like a thousand people?

- We have a fall harvest every year and invite the families who have, you know, stayed in our home and now they're getting to know each other.

So that's kind of fun.

And then we have kind of reunion weekend every summer.

We have a couple sets of kids that lived in our home together when they were toddlers.

- Yes.

- And we've kept them in touch with each other through the years.

And, you know, one of my old foster sons, I call them foster care alumni son.

He said, can we still call them our brothers and sisters?

And I'm like, you sure can.

So now they're teenagers.

And so both of their families have agreed to let the children stay in touch.

And so they'll come to our house for, you know, reunion weekend.

And, you know, we found this great water place down in Ashland.

I took a bunch of them there a couple of weeks ago, and we had such a wonderful time at their YMCA.

- Oh I can't even.

- That was fantastic.

- Probably took over the whole place.

- Yeah, yeah, basically we did.

And the children enjoy each other's company and I think it normalizes foster care.

- Sure.

- Having other friends that have gone through it, and again, it just doesn't have to define them forever.

It's just a short period of time that hopefully we made you and your family stronger.

And the reason we have had so many children is because we don't adopt.

So God bless those wonderful people who do.

They are the true superheroes.

But because we only foster, there's a lot of in and out.

So, you know, we can have children for a few days or a few weeks or even a couple of years, but they do turn over and then we'll take more children.

But I think we've been in it most of our 38 year marriage.

So I took a little time off in the middle to raise our own kids.

But we did rotary Exchange student teenagers during that time.

So we've had the opportunity.

We've almost always had somebody else living in our house with us.

I can't imagine all the shoes at the door and.

- Lots of tennis shoes.

- Lots of tennis shoes.

- With a dog who enjoys taking tennis shoes.

Shoes, I'm sure.

- So that creates some problems if we aren’t organized.

- Absolutely.

Kathleen, I just found out you wrote two books on fostering and parenting.

One is Fostering Love A Glimpse into Foster Care and the other is Parenting love.

Clever ideas learned from raising 200 children.

Over 200 children.

- Yeah.

- Can you tell us how this started?

And where on earth do you have time to write a book?

Gosh, it started from me collecting little pieces of paper of things that kids said or taught me through the years.

And then I decided as I aged, I might not remember the order that they went in or who they who said what.

And I've had several people say you should write a book.

And really, the whole idea is we have taken a lot of children into our home through the years, but we also want to teach others how to stay in the program successfully long term and not lose your own family's identity, but to keep your nuclear family strong and then add others into it.

In and out, in and out.

And so that's a little bit where the Fostering Love book came from.

We wanted especially people who are interested in foster care, to have a little bit more clear understanding of what foster care really was like.

And I've gotten some very interesting phone calls from people.

Like, I had one lady say, I'm not sure I can foster after reading that.

And then she called me a year later and said, I reread your book a second time, and now I'm signing up for classes so people feel it on their hearts that they want to be a foster parent.

But sometimes our training is a little bit generic and I think having specific stories.

So what I did in the books was to briefly make a comment on a theory or a topic and follow everyone with a story so people could understand how we relate that to our home.

And then the parenting love.

Clever ideas learned from raising 200 children came about because the editor said, well, that that discipline chapter, like your parenting section, is really long.

You should make your own book.

Another book.

And I said, oh, I wasn’t going to write two books She said, well, you are now.

So that's where the second book came from.

And parenting traumatized children and the way to help them, we're not going to heal their trauma, but we can help them heal through it.

- Sure.

- You know, through counseling and various other places that we take them.

And the whole goal is to make them stronger and to get them some momentum and hope in life.

You know, we want these children to be stronger, to get on with adult life for themselves.

- So what did you learn after fostering that you wish you would have known before That kind of like after your first time or just was like, wow, that's not what I expected.

- I didn't know there were different levels of foster care.

I didn't know there were private agencies and public agencies.

I didn't have a very good understanding of that whole picture.

And I've been very blessed to be able to be appointed to the Ohio Child Welfare Training Program down in Columbus.

- Okay.

- And so I'm getting to understand the system down there and being a foster parent representative to that group, I can bring in ideas from the actual foster home into that group.

- Was there a time or that something happened in your home and you're like, I'm not doing this again.

And then and then you woke up and things were different, but like, have you hit those limits?

- Oh yeah.

We've we've when you foster over 200 kids, you're going to have bad days.

You're going to have bad weeks, you're going to have episodes.

- Have them with your own kids.

- Correct.

- Like take my kid for a day.

- That are going to cause you to say, what am I doing?

And why am I doing this?

And I don't want to do this anymore.

I can't handle this.

But both, both Catherine and I are very rooted in our faith.

And one of the things in the Bible that it talks about is, and Catherine, I have to help me, but it's whatever you've done for the least of my people, you've done for me.

- That's right.

- And so that just kind of centers me around why we do what we do.

Because no matter how bad it is or how hard it is, there are people out there that need help and support, and we're in a position to be able to do that.

And so we want to do it because of that.

- Right So, so with the thought of educating people here today, there are different levels of fostering.

You just mentioned what what?

Tell me about those levels.

Like you don't have to have a kid for three years.

- That's right.

- So you could be a regular full foster family and you get a license and you take children in for however long that case plan goes, and then the children go on from there or you adopt them.

Okay.

That's an option.

- Sure.

- There are respite providers who get a full license also, just like a regular foster home, but they take children in on a shorter term basis.

So emergency placements, respite placements for another foster home, maybe they're going out of town and the children can't go.

Or maybe there was a death in their family and they need a week off, so whatever that is.

And then there's also congregate care, which is more like group homes.

So that's something beyond what we do.

But there's therapeutic foster care which is a little bit higher level.

There's medically fragile foster care.

But then most importantly, what I would really like to mention for the community is the idea of an alternative caregiver.

So Ron was talking about our church and all of these churches, wonderful people.

If you can find a foster home in your church and foster family in your church and say to them, you know, we'd like to help you out in some way.

So we had a wonderful lady named Brenda, came up one day at church, tapped me on the back and said, you know, she was an acquaintance, but I really didn't know her that well.

But she wanted to get to know our home better and our family.

And we did.

And through the years we've developed this wonderful friendship.

And during that time we had those eight children and it was Covid, so the children weren't really going anywhere.

She would come over every Tuesday and pick up my children and take them to her farm to run around in the mud.

Get rid of that energy.

Get rid of that energy.

And I would send them with pajamas and muck boots, and she would send them back bathed in pajamas, fed, and wash their muck boots and bring them all home to me.

- Tired, Tired - Yeah tired and happy.

Yes.

And so, you know, that's something she really didn't want to be a full time foster parent.

But there are a lot of people say, like, I could donate a Saturday a month.

That's right.

And be a foster family.

So I think it takes 3 or 4 really strong families behind every single foster home to make it successful.

We would not be successful without our alternative caregivers.

So I think that's a great idea for community members who might just like to dabble in it a little bit, and then sometimes they end up coming back and becoming full foster families.

So it's kind of a feeder system once in a while.

- So I'm going to put you under pressure.

We have less than a minute left.

So for someone considering fostering, what would you tell them?

- Go for it.

- Yeah.

Please do it.

- Please do it.

If you're feeling your conscience telling you that you would like to be a foster family.

- Just go for it.

- Just go for it.

- Put your reservations aside.

Dive in.

- They'll never.

They'll never be.

They'll never be a good time.

- That's right.

Just do it.

- Just do it.

- I felt that way when people say, I don't know if I'm ready to have kids.

- That's right.

- You're never going to feel ready.

- Correct.

You'll never be ready - You'll never be ready.

- And then you have it, and then you're like.

- Okay, I did it.

Yeah it’s okay.

- Then you have another one I don't think I can add two, but then you do it.

So Ron and Kathleen Paydo remind us that making a difference doesn't always happen in big public ways.

It often begins at home with an open door in an open heart.

Their story is a powerful example of what compassion in action can look like.

Thank you both for sharing your story today.

Thank you for joining us on Forum 360, where we bring you a global outlook with a local view.

- Thank you so much.

- Thanks, Stephanie.

Forum 360 is brought to you by John S and James L Knight Foundation, the Akron Community Foundation.

Hudson Community Television, the Rubber City Radio Group, Shaw Jewish Community Center of Akron, Sisler McFawn Foundation, Electric Impulse Communications, and Forum 360.

Supporters.