(light upbeat music) - And welcome back to Family Health Matters.

I'm Shelley Irwin.

With me today, Kellie Oom, Director of Child Welfare Services from D.A.

Blodgett St. John's.

Chad Saxton, Foster Provider, and Adoptive Parent from Eagle Village, and Jessica Mayhew, Grand Rapids Director for Foster The Family, and more.

Good that you are all here to talk about a very important topic, National Foster Care Month this month, should be every month.

How are you involved in the trenches, Jessica?

- Yeah, I work at Foster The Family, and we serve foster and adoptive families and kinship families as they take kids into their home.

So within the first 24 hours, we show up with all brand new items, clothes, hygiene products, comfort items, toys, a meal for the family, a gift for the foster parent, and then we provide monthly support with support groups, respite events throughout the year.

We just really wanna come around and support these families who are doing the hard work.

There's about a 50% rate of closure in homes, and so just wanting to take some of the burden off of these licensing agencies and do that support for these families.

- And you yourself have been a foster parent?

- Yeah, I was a foster parent for eight years and I have three kiddos adopted from foster care.

- Thank you for that.

Share your story, Chad.

- I'm Chad Saxon.

I'm the Director of Admissions at Eagle Village and have been a foster parent since 1994, my wife and I.

And we have adopted three through foster care.

Our oldest is 33 and our youngest is 16.

- Kellie, how are things at D.A.

Blodgett St. John's?

- They're very busy.

We currently have 130 kids in care, so I work with a team of professionals who recruit and license foster homes, as well as a team of staff who oversee those kids once they're placed in those foster homes.

So we've got quite our hands full right now.

- [Shelley] Let's open the can of worms, for lack of better terms, and I'll start with you, Kellie.

What is this foster care system, how does it work?

- The system here in Kent County, or actually anywhere, is for whatever reason or circumstance, children have to be removed from their homes.

The goal is, at least with D.A.

Blodgett St. John's and most others, is to reunite those children with their family.

But for a time, while we're getting the resources and supports in place, they have to be in unrelated care.

We will always try to place them with a relative if we can, but if we can't, then we have licensed foster homes ready to provide that support for them.

- [Shelley] Chad, would you expand on that, please?

- Yeah, in Hersey, we're in Reed City, Michigan, and we license home in a 70 mile radius of Big Rapids.

And we have currently have 35 licensed homes with about 70 kids in care.

And we're always in need of foster parents and looking for great homes for kids to be able to go to.

- How busy are you and why did you decide to foster?

- Yeah, I decided to foster, honestly, I was a single woman in my 20s and thought I can do it.

I have the time and you know, I know that the need is out there.

And so my goal was never to adopt.

I was just gonna do foster care and eight years later, three kids later, but then saw the need and what was lacking and support for me as a foster parent, and so that is when I reached out to Foster The Family.

And we launched that here just to bring that support because I, again, I saw that need.

And, you know, foster parents don't often know about the resources that are available to them.

And you know, like they're sharing, like, we need more foster parents.

And so the way that we can keep them and recruit new ones is by giving them the support that they need.

- Yes.

Mentioning of a 50% rate of closure, what does that mean?

- Yeah, there were a lot of parents that are just after a year not renewing their license because, you know, I think it's various reasons.

It's hard, foster care is hard.

And if you don't have the support and the resources and the trainings to learn how to cope with the things that you're going through, with the loss and the grief that you can experience in foster care, you know, I think it's just really hard.

So what we all wanna do is just help these families get through those things and have the tools that they need to continue.

- I wanna get right into dispelling a few myths.

And Kellie, if you can answer the question.

If Jessica fostered as a single person, is that perhaps a myth that one has to be a couple to adopt?

- It is a myth.

We at D.A.

Blodgett are very inclusive.

We have single foster parents like Jessica, we have same sex couples that are fostering.

I just got a call the other day from a gentleman that said, "Do I have to be married and would you even consider me as a foster parent?"

And we said, "Absolutely."

What we're looking for are people that have the supports and the willingness to meet the needs of these kids.

So you need all different kinds of people to do that.

- Chad, take me to a situation where one is raising their hand to foster.

What are the beginning steps?

- Yeah.

At Eagle Village and across the state, you start to just have a conversation, a dialogue, learning about foster care.

Are you a good fit?

Will this work?

Is it something you want to pursue?

And then there's a 21 to 24-hour training that people go through.

It's different at Kent County and across the state.

It's called GROW.

And it's a training that is put on by the state of Michigan.

And you go through that training and get equipped to learn about trauma, to learn about loss and what these kids have experienced in their lives and how you can be a support to them.

And so that training happens.

And then there's a licensing process where your home is looked at, your water's tested, measure of your rooms to make sure that you can adequately take care of your home and it's safe and a good place for kids to live.

- And Kellie, how are the matches made?

- That's the tricky part.

And I think sometimes we find ourselves finding a home instead of the home.

And that's why the need for more foster parents is critical right now, because different kids have different needs.

So in the best situation, we would look at the needs of the child and the strengths of the foster home and match 'em that way.

But all too often with the lack of foster homes, we have to put 'em in a home that might not be a good match.

So that is a real critical need right now.

- Foster The Family, how are you fostering a family?

- Yeah, and so, in situations like that where maybe they aren't equipped to take a younger child or an older child, and so they don't have the items that they need.

And so we can show up with those resources and you know, like, here's bottles and here's a diaper bag and formula, provide those.

So we just had a family recently.

Cribs aren't something we keep in our stock, but we had a family that wanted to keep siblings together because that's a huge thing too.

Siblings are separated all too often and this family said, "We'll keep 'em together, but we need a crib."

And so we put the word out and someone donated a crib to them.

So just wanting to support them, however we can, come alongside them in order to help them take these cases.

- Back to a bit of Fostering 101, Kids can be fostered as early as infancy to age?

- 21 and they actually have funding.

They can have funding up until 23 years of age for independent living, but it's voluntary after 18.

And so kids can stay in a foster home until they're 21 to finish school, finish college, and just have that support that they need.

Across America today, 18 to 25 year olds is our fastest growing homeless population.

And so there's a lot that foster care is doing to try to prevent some of our kids becoming homeless.

- What would be another myth, Kellie?

I know in my research, the foster care system's broken, lots of negatives.

Anything specifically that you'd like to make sure we move forward with that might not be real?

- I think a lot of times back to reunification, a lot of people come into fostering thinking it's the fast track to adoption.

And I wanna challenge that myth that it does happen as these two panelists had said.

But the goal is always, if we can, to get those children back home.

And the myth, as we said before, was we're not trying to keep kids safe from their families, we're trying to keep kids safe with their families.

So that's a myth that we wanna make sure that when people come in ready and willing to foster that they're willing to walk alongside those biological families and help them address those barriers and so we can safely return those kids.

- So Jessica, did that happen in your beginnings?

Were you in touch with the biological?

- Yeah, and with even the kiddos that I have in my home right now that I've adopted, we have contact.

And so, obviously they didn't reunify, but I think, either way, contact is important to maintain for those kids because they're still their family.

So yeah.

And I do have some that have unified over the years and yeah, I think it's really important to be able to, my mindset has shifted a lot in eight years.

When I got into it, I didn't understand the need to walk with the family and thought it was more protecting the kid.

And then I learned so much in how wrong that was.

And now the goal is to help these families, walk with them, and preserve those relationships as much as we can.

- [Kellie] That's so important.

- And talking more about the child, the young teen, is it important to try to keep siblings together?

I'll start with you, Chad.

- Yeah, really important because that's their family, and a lot of times, because of the lack of homes or homes large enough, siblings do get separated, but there's always visitation for those kids.

But yeah, families need to stick together and as much as we can keep those siblings together, it helps them to have hope.

I think there's a lack of hope when they're separated from their parents and then their siblings as well.

It just compounds that.

- How best is the educational system treated during a foster situation?

- It's difficult because if you're removing a child from a certain school district and they have to not only leave their family, but now they have to leave their school too.

If they're gonna be in care for any length of time, then we're gonna wanna put 'em in a school closer to the foster home.

If we can, we try to keep them in their school.

Is that what you're asking?

Yeah, that's why it's important to have a variety of foster families to choose from.

But sometimes we have to make a large change there too.

So like Chad said, they're getting removed from their parents, then they're getting removed from their siblings and their school and everything that they know.

So we try really hard to keep 'em in the area that they're coming from.

But it's not always easy.

- Jessica, how important is it that the kids know what's happening?

- Yeah, I think it's really important because whether or not they're vocalizing it, they're aware of what's happening.

And so being able to get them in services that can help them, counseling or play therapy, something to help them process, but being honest with them at an age appropriate level.

You know, letting them know when the next visit is, when they're gonna be seeing parents or even just in your home, these are the next steps, or this is what tonight is going to look like.

They've lost everything and so they have no control.

So giving them some information, again, at an age appropriate level, gives them a little bit of control over what's happening in their life.

- Is there an end range to fostering?

Say one takes an infant, could that child be fostered through his or her 18 years of life?

- They really work towards permanency.

- Yes.

- And that's the goal, if they can't go back to their family or a kin or some type of relation that, and you have them in your home and you want to adopt them, that that's the goal 'cause we don't want the kids bouncing around from foster home to foster home, and finding permanency is the best way to help them get to heal.

- [Shelley] Kellie?

- The state would like them to have permanency within a year, and that's what we shoot for.

And so in a year's time, if it doesn't look like that child's going home, like Chad said, then we might change their permanency plan to adoption or something else.

If they cannot go home, like we said, to their biological parents, then we will look for relatives too.

That's our second best bet, but they will not remain in foster care for that long a time.

The plan will change.

- Jessica, when did you know it was time to adopt?

Share a bit of your story.

- When the kids in my home, when their case went to adoption, yeah, it was something that I, she had been in my home for a year and so, it was, I mean, I loved her.

We were bonded and she had a sibling coming into care shortly after.

And so yeah, it was just kind of not weighing the options and making it sound like it was an easy choice or like a simple thing.

But yeah, I mean, I loved her and I knew that she needed the permanency and that was, I was her mom.

You know, I had been her mom for the last year as we worked on this case while also having her birth mom.

And so yeah, once we got there, I mean, it was a pretty easy decision because she was mine, mine in the sense of she had been in my home and I had cared for her like her mom.

So yeah.

And then three times total that happened over and over, so, yeah.

- How does Eagle Village work?

- We're contracted through the state of Michigan to provide foster homes.

We're a bigger organization in the fact that we do residential care for kids in the foster care system that can't be in a foster home because of behaviors, because of the trauma that they've gone through.

So they come to us so that we can help regulate them, so that we can help work through their trauma and get them ready to go to a foster home.

And so we have that.

And then, again, we have 70 kids in foster care right now in 35 licensed homes.

We average about 24 to 30 adoptions a year that we help facilitate and then supervise those for the first year.

- [Shelley] What's an adoption day like?

- Adoption days are the most awesome thing in the world.

And as a judge, like they do those on Fridays because a lot of times 'cause they don't have a lot of good things that they're dealing with in a week.

And to end on an adoption where they're seeing permanency, where they're seeing this child that they worked with from being taken out of the home to having a permanency, to having a forever home.

But they're parties, their judges become, I don't wanna say less human, but more human.

They allow kids to come up and grab the gavel and they take pictures with 'em.

There's presents.

It's a great day.

It's whenever we see one of our young people become adopted and get that forever home, it's a celebration for us too.

- And same question to you, Kellie.

How does D.A.

Blodgett St. John's work?

- What we do is primarily foster care, and like I said, recruiting the homes and training them and then placing children when they're removed.

But we too have adoption.

If there's a reason that the children we find we have to change that plan, then we do have a team of adoption workers that can do that.

But it's funny, when we celebrate, of course, adoptions, but we have a big red bell at D.A.

Blodgett St. John's, and when a worker comes back from court, when a family has been reunited, we ring that bell all through the floor and everybody knows when they hear that bell that a family has been reunited.

Because I think that goes to dispel that myth to that.

Whereas we want them to find forever homes when they can't return home.

But the goal is to get them back home with their family.

- Jessica, what do you tell a foster family to be when it comes to preparation?

- Learn as much as you can.

Talk to other foster parents, we invite them to our support group.

You know, come sit and listen to the families that are sharing their stories now and learn from them.

Get a community around you, have a village of people that are willing to step in and help.

It's a lot, taking in a new kid in those first couple of weeks, you're adjusting to a lot and you find your groove and it gets easier.

But having someone who can show up with a meal or babysit or, you know, just help run errands, drop off things that you need, which is part of what foster the family does.

You know, we try to do some of that, but having your community around you that can do those things is huge.

You can't foster alone.

- I think that's something people don't think about a lot, when you have a baby, there's showers, there's people coming in, your church provides a meal chain, and there's just lots of support.

When you take a kid into foster care, that's not always, that's not always there.

So places like Foster The Family are there to help out and support.

It's huge for that family.

We had a radio station up north that did a gift card drive that we can give gift cards to those families to get dinner, to get clothes, to get those things that are needed that they might not otherwise had.

- Fun activities to do in the community.

- Is it helpful to get foster kids together to bond in each of their own lives, obviously age appropriate, but do you bring the 12 to 15-year-old foster kids together to talk?

Is that appropriate?

- Sometimes we have done that.

- With their support?

- Yeah, they're a mix.

Some like it, some don't want to be involved in it.

I don't know, have you had that?

- We have some where we have foster parent training night, and so we'll have childcare and so they come in and they get involved that way and there's support along those lines, but we don't have a lot of that, but just when we're doing foster parent training.

- And even for my kids, when we do things like the support group, when we have the childcare and they hear that another kid had been adopted and they're like, "They were adopted like me."

So I think the more you see your own story in someone else, the more it normalizes it and just makes you feel seen and just not as different.

So I think it's really important when they can just, not even necessarily in a support group setting, but just in life, if they can see other scenarios like theirs.

- Do you work to make sure the kids aren't stereotyped when perhaps that comes up in a conversation on the playground?

- It's hard.

I mean, our situation's probably different than Jessica's.

Our children sometimes do feel a little bit isolated depending on the home that they're in and the area that they're in.

Back to your question of, I think our teens, they don't always want people to know that they're in a foster home.

They do try to assimilate and be like everybody else, but the younger ones, it's a little bit different.

I think they want as much support and attention as we can give them.

So I don't know if you... - I think that's part of erasing the stigma and education for people in the community, not just foster parents, but educating the community that this, so that the stigma isn't there anymore.

You know, when the kids on the playground are saying something, they're learning that from somewhere.

So if we are teaching our kids to be inclusive of kids from different lifestyles, all the things, then we can stop some of that so that our kids don't feel so isolated and different.

- I remember, my children were adopted, I adopted two children too, but not through foster care.

But they would say that kids, when they found out they were adopted, they were like, "You're adopted?"

Like, what does an adopted child look like?

You know, they were surprised by that.

- Chad, tell a little bit about your story.

You're a foster parent, adopted parent than more.

- Yeah.

My wife and I worked at Eagle Village in residential care, and we saw kids that just needed a place to go for a weekend that needed a place to go on the holiday because they didn't have family, they weren't going any place.

So we got our license originally to be able to have some of those kids come to our home and have a normal Christmas, a normal Thanksgiving.

And turned out, really quickly, that we started taking kids into our home.

We didn't want teenage girls because we worked with teenage girls in residential care and that's the last type of kid we wanted in our home.

But God has a sense of humor and our first kid was a teenage girl that we were supposed to have for two weeks for her mom to finish some things.

And she ended up living with us for two years.

And so then we couldn't take teenage boys.

And so we ended up with four teenage girls in our home.

And it was, it was crazy.

But we grew a lot.

We dealt with anything you could with a teenage girl while they lived in our home.

And we ended up adopting a 10-year-old.

So that was a young, young girl.

And so she came to live with us when she was nine and she very stubborn, very hard to work with.

But today she's been married for 10 years, has worked at a Christian camp and just is a strong woman and very fun to see where she's ended up.

- [Kellie] Thank you.

- We had another adoption that was a little bit longer and different that a girl that we had at birth.

And she lived with us for two years and we were supposed to adopt her and then she went back to her birth home.

They moved out of state.

She ended up in 19 foster homes and a broken adoption and we adopted her at age 15 and she's now a mom and married.

And so it's different stories every time.

- Yes.

What do you need from the community for your services with your organization?

- Yeah, I think one of the myths is that foster care, you have to be a foster parent to be involved.

But we have so many opportunities, if people wanna make a meal or they bake bread, we have a freezer where we give meals to our families.

If they like to shop clearance deals and they wanna buy clothes or items for our stock room if they wanna do childcare.

You know, we have so many ways that people can be involved.

So yeah, it doesn't have to be as a foster parent, but if they're just interested in kind of getting their feet wet in the foster care circle, they can contact us and we can plug them in wherever they're best fitting in.

- Other financial incentives for fostering, I hate to bring that up, but does one get paid to foster?

- Yes, and it's different.

It depends on the needs of the child.

The greater the need of the child, the more compensated, the more the compensation goes up.

We wanna make sure that it is not a financial hardship on a family taking in another child.

Does it cover everything?

These people will probably say, "No, it does not."

But the state tries, yes, there is a daily rate that they get.

- Chad, what other needs are out there for this foster opportunity?

- I think one of the biggest needs across the state of Michigan right now is foster homes for teenagers.

And I believe like people think they're not equipped to take in a teen.

They want little kids, but our kids need loving homes that they can come to.

And ways that you can do that is start by mentoring.

We look for mentors for our kids.

Just come out, spend an afternoon with 'em, get to know them, and I think that kind of breaks down some of the barriers where I can do this and to maybe to start by mentoring a teenager and then have them start to move in towards fostering teens.

But that's one of the biggest needs out there right now, I believe.

- Chad, what do you leave us with and your resources, please?

- At Eagle Village, we have a continuum of care where we have summer camps for kids that can't go to a regular camp.

So there's foster kids that can't go to a regular summer camp because of behaviors.

We offer that camp because every kid needs a camp experience.

We offer trainings for parents, parenting classes.

We offer just that support for foster families that they need.

We're always looking for people to volunteer and to come alongside families to be a support.

There's some churches that will do, they'll do like a dinner, a movie night for the kids so parents can go out and shop or go out to dinner and just, I mean, just anything that people can think of, we can see if it might work.

- Dip the toe and get it wet.

Eagle Village, how do I find out more information?

- Eagle Village is EagleVillage.org.

You can find a lot about us there.

And our phone number's 231-832-2234.

- Great.

Thank you for your professional and personal service.

What do you leave us with, Kellie?

- I would like to challenge anyone that's watching this segment to, if they're not, even if they thought about fostering, maybe come to one of our information sessions, that is, we offer 'em every month and that information is on our website.

But also if you're not interested in fostering, maybe some of the services like Jessica talked about or just tell somebody about the great need 'cause there is a critical need in Kent, and at least in Kent County and in the state for more homes, so we can make those right placements for these kids that they feel safe, they feel comfortable, and people will walk alongside of the bio family.

So spread the word.

That's what we can do.

And our website is dabsj.org and you can find lots of information about what we do and what we need.

- Good, yep, that's where you start.

couple minutes left to you, Jessica, to spur us on to make this happen.

- Yeah.

And just like I shared before, we have so many ways to get involved.

So like she shared, if you're not ready to quite jump into foster care, but you wanna dip your toes in in some other ways, we have so many ways to get involved.

If you have a restaurant and you wanna donate meals, really we can fit anybody in to what we need and how we can serve these families and these kids.

So I would say just reach out.

It doesn't hurt to ask and this is what we have to offer, can you use it?

And most likely we can, as a nonprofit, we're always looking for financial donations as well.

So yeah, there's something for everyone.

And you can find us at fosterthefamily.org.

- When I was doing my research, fostering is not new.

It's been around for a while.

What's the future of foster care?

- Well, the good news is the number of children coming in to foster care is going down.

So I would love the future of foster care to have more kids remain at home and not have to have the great need for fostering.

- I'd like to be out of business.

- Yeah.

- I was gonna say that.

I didn't wanna throw you under the bus.

- I mean, yeah, that's the goal.

I mean, to having a lot of prevention programs where we can work with the families in their home to try to save those kids from going into foster care.

- Yeah, well, one step at a time.

Thank you all for your service, again professionally, but personally as well.

So take care to you and have a good day.

Thanks for watching.

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