May is Foster Care Awareness Month. Adoption has always been an interest of mine. Many families I love have adopted. Many of the people I dearly love have been adopted. It is such a beautiful process. Not always a fairytale. But completely worth it.
Foster care, however, was not something I thought of often. I wasn’t exposed to it the way I was to adoption.
When I was finally able to engage a little in the process, my heart was so full. It is messy. The process is even more unpredictable than adoption. But it is such a beautiful picture.
I want to take advantage of this Month of awareness because if I had very little exposure to the process, I would imagine many are in the same boat.
Foster care is very different than adoption. The ultimate goal of foster care at its most successful is reunification of the biological family. The hope is that children will be removed from the home for a short time while the birth parents are able to get back on their feet, or get the help they need to parent well. This is not always possible, but that is the goal.
The system is obviously not perfect. Many times the children are not able to enter the home again. Often they are returned and have to be removed multiple times.
So there are risks of being a foster parent if you are not fully prepared for the process. It is likely that the child that enters your home will not remain there permanently. It is also likely that the child has been in other homes before yours.
Someone once asked me what the point to fostering was if the child would just get taken away again. In my (admittedly) idealist view, I think the point is that the child is safe. Sometimes we need to be reminded that the process is not about us and our family. It is about a hurting child that needs a safe home. What’s best for that child might be to be reunited with their biological parent. And hopefully that child was able to experience a safe, loving, and functional home in the meantime.
Many in foster care have never experienced a home with a mother and father. Many have never experienced consistency in discipline and unconditional love and affection. Some have never had a father figure that respected them or protected them. Some have been so busy taking care of themselves that they never learned how to be a kid. To laugh and relax.
The biggest concern I have heard is the fear of getting attached. But attachment is good! Children need to learn to attach in a healthy way, even if it’s not forever. Because isn’t it worth it to show a child what life could be like. To give them hope that it can be different. That the cycle can be broken. To model ways to cope with life and succeed. How can these children pursue happy and healthy lives if they don’t even know what it could look like?
We won’t be solving all their problems. That isn’t our job. But we can love them. Encourage them. Protect them. Spoil them a little bit even. Pray for them. Laugh with them for a season.
We have been given so much. I am a firm believer that we aren’t given so that we can keep. But so that we can joyfully give it away. What a picture of the Gospel. Christ gave up all the comforts of Heaven to enter into our world and rewrite our story. He loved us in our messiness and provided hope for our future. He gave us Himself.
I hesitate to write on this subject because I have a very limited experience with foster care. Like super limited. Most of my knowledge is second hand. But I hope to one day engage with foster care in some way. For now I can pray. I can help educate others. And I can enter into lives of those who are on this journey. And so can you.
The Archibald Project is an awesome advocacy organization that is doing a series on Foster Care for this month. I highly recommend you check it out.
But here are a few interesting statistics from their site for those of you who don’t think that the Foster care system affects them.
“You see 20% of children aging out of foster care instantly end up homeless, 80% of men who age out of foster care are arrested and 60% of these men are convicted, 1 out of 2 kids who age out of the system become substance dependent, 7 out of 10 girls who age out of foster care are pregnant by the time they turn 21 and their children often enter foster care, thus repeating the cycle of breaking down families and growing our nation’s foster care crisis."
“The problems associated with aging out of foster care also affect the communities these youth live in. A 2013 study by the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative showed that, “on average, for every young person who ages out of foster care, taxpayers and communities pay $300,000 in social costs like public assistance, incarceration, and lost wages to a community over that person’s lifetime. Do the math and you can conservatively estimate that this problem incurs almost $8 billion in social costs to the United States every year.””
Also, foster children are the most vulnerable people in America. They make up some of the highest percentage of prostituted and trafficked people our country. Many just disappear after aging out of the system. Homeless, drug addicted, taken advantage of, even murdered.
Basically invisible. Where is the Church to them? Who are the hands and feet of Jesus to them? The least of these.