Foster Parents Need Support, Too

By Natasha Santos

A few months ago, I visited Circle of Support, a monthly meeting for foster parents in New York City. I expected to find a few old ladies shaking their heads and grumbling about how hard it is to be a foster parent and saying things like “Kids these days have no respect!” What I discovered instead was a group of women who come together to get advice and give support to other members of Club Foster Parent.

Difficult, But Rewarding

I was curious to hear what foster parents have to say about the kids they take care of, and I wanted to know how Circle of Support helps them. As I spoke to the foster parents, many things they said reminded me of what foster children say, like that the system makes them feel isolated, helpless, or abandoned at times, or that they feel shifted around and ask for support they don’t get.

Despite that, they also described forming intensely close bonds with the kids in their care. Fostering has had an unexpectedly difficult but rewarding impact on their lives.

Circle of Support meetings are held monthly at sites all over the city. At the downtown Brooklyn meeting I visited, several people from ACS, the city’s foster care system, were there to serve food, provide daycare for younger children, and make sure everything was running smoothly. The half dozen women gathered around the table seemed both comfortable and anxious about discussing the night’s topic—talking to your teenagers about sex.

The Patience for Little Ones

One of the first foster parents to arrive was Lourdes Alvarez, who is middle-aged but looks about 20 years younger. Lourdes has a blunt tongue but an easy manner. She has been a foster parent for about 17 years, taking after her mother, who was a foster parent while Lourdes was growing up.

Lourdes began to foster once her own boys grew up and didn’t want to hang out with her anymore. She said that she felt lonely so she decided to get foster kids, and she chose to take in kids with serious medical or mental illnesses because she thought she had the patience to handle their needs.

Siblings for Her Daughter

The presenter that night was Shawnese Parker, who has four teen girls at home, one biological and three adopted. Shawnese was in foster care herself, so when she became a foster parent she felt that she had something unique to offer the kids she took in. “I learned from my experiences,” Shawnese told me.

Shawnese said she became a foster parent partly because she wanted more kids, but it seemed complicated to give birth again since she is gay. “As my daughter got a little bit older I felt that it was wrong for her not to have someone to play with,” she said. “But asking a dude to have a baby with me wasn’t OK with me.”

While Shawnese prefers having teens in her home, Lourdes said that teens worry her. Lourdes takes children between 3 and 10. “Younger kids are more controllable, you can guide them more,” she told me. “Some teens have been through so much. They don’t trust, they don’t believe in themselves. It’s like pulling teeth.”

‘Some Kids Come so Sad’

Lourdes and Shawnese both have had many kids in their houses—“over 60,” Shawnese told me. The most rewarding relationships were with children who stayed long enough to grow, they said.

“Some kids come so sad, so fragile. They can’t read, they’re not at their age level, they’re not climbing or jumping, they’re withdrawn” Lourdes said. “You give them the proper attention, love, physical and play therapy. You see them go from withdrawn to speaking up. You see a child getting better.”

One of Shawnese’s most rewarding but difficult relationships is with an adopted daughter who has a mental illness. Shawnese didn’t know how to handle her behavior and found it hard to find help from the system when she needed it.

Serious Trouble

One time, when her adopted children were young, that daughter and another child duct-taped the baby-sitter’s arms and legs together while she slept on the floor, then wilded out around the house.

Then the daughter killed the family bird and the family dog, and set fire to the toy box. “When I asked her why she did it, she said because she heard the devil tapping outside her window. It was a tree branch,” Shawnese said. “I knew I needed help.”

At Loose Ends

Shawnese felt her adoptive daughter’s home visits should stop for a while. “A lot of it had to do with seeing her parents,” she said. “She went to spend time with them, and when she came back home, I could see the difference.” But the agency didn’t agree. “They didn’t want to listen to me even though I’d spent three years with this child,” she said.

Shawnese got so frustrated that she asked the agency to temporarily place the girl in a residential treatment center, but the agency threatened to take all of her kids out of her home. Then she tried to get her daughter evaluated by a psychiatrist and into therapy, but the foster care agency wasn’t helpful.

Finally she called ACS, which supervises the foster care agencies, and said that she was a lawyer representing Shawnese. The next day, her foster care agency finally responded and she got the help she needed. For a while all of them went to family therapy, and her daughter is still in therapy to this day.

‘He Destroyed My House’

Lourdes also has been through a lot with some of the kids in her care, especially since she takes kids with the greatest needs. One girl who came to Lourdes at 4 years old was disabled and mentally retarded. Now, at 21, she still wears diapers and is on a feeding tube. Another child has a life-threatening illness and was put in care because he wasn’t getting the medicine he needed at home. Others simply have difficult behaviors or are recovering from severe abuse.

In 17 years of fostering, Lourdes has only asked the agency to remove one child from her home. “I had a 3 year old who destroyed my house. He was very, very hyper, and he was emotionally disturbed. I couldn’t control him, and even the little ones can do damage,” she said. “He’d tear his own clothes, scratch himself up, pull the other kids’ hair, bang his head on the floor, and scream and scream. He broke the TV. He broke a bed, put holes in the walls, and would beat up the other kids—even a 10-year-old!”

‘I Couldn’t Deal’

Lourdes asked that he be put on medication to calm him down so he could control himself, but the agency said he was too young. “After five months I couldn’t deal,” Lourdes told me. “All the other kids were suffering. It was not fair to them. He needed to be in a home where it was only him, with a foster parent who could devote all the attention to him.”

Even years later, Lourdes sounded sad when she remembered that little boy. “He was beautiful. I felt so bad for him,” she told me. “There was nothing else I could do. I’d had a couple of the other kids for a long time.”

Broken Bonds

Shawnese and Lourdes said one of the hardest parts of being a foster parent is having to break a relationship with a child you’ve had living in your home for years. “Some kids you never see again. It hurts. Sometimes you just want to know how they’re doing,” Lourdes told me.

After kids return to their biological parents, foster parents have no right to see them again. “I had one sibling group for a year before they went back home,” Lourdes said. “One day I was in Queens shopping and I saw them with their mom. I said, ‘Hi’ but the parent didn’t want them talking to me. She was like, ‘Just say hello and keep moving!’ These kids were in my house for a year!” The shock and hurt were evident in her voice.

Keeping Connected

Lourdes said that it’s easiest for everyone if the foster parent and the biological family can find some common ground while the child is in care, and keep in touch once the child returns home. Some biological parents have come to her house for dinner, or for visits with their kids.

“If you have bio parents that can work with you, it helps,” she said. Some kids she still regularly sees once they go home.

‘We Were All Determined’

The great thing that these two foster parents and many foster kids have in common is that, although they’ve had difficult experiences, they are still determined and giving. Talking to these parents, and looking back on my own life, I had to marvel at our perseverance. Foster parents and foster kids all need perseverance to withstand the rejection we often face, and to keep trying to connect.

Shawnese is still with her adopted children today because they believed in each other. “We were all determined. We knew that we wanted to stay together,” Shawnese said, with a definite lift in her voice.

A lot of people could have given up and decided that the task of parenting a mentally ill child was too much for them, but Shawnese stuck with her and found the help they both needed. Today, her adoptive daughter is doing much better—she’s a student with a 90 average.

A Way to Give Back

Both of these women have used their own experiences to help others. Shawnese co-founded a Circle of Support group just for foster parents of LGBTQ youth. Lourdes is an “anchor parent” of Circle of Support and Chair of the State Foster Parent Association.

Lourdes said she enjoys coming to Circle of Support because she likes helping people who come to the group with problems. “I enjoy the socializing,” she added, smiling, “and I get information that I need sometimes.”

Shawnese told me she enjoys giving back to other foster parents who don’t know they have rights to get services for their foster kids. It feels good to be able to guide others, she said. “I felt so alone when I was going through the worst time of my life with the kids, and I didn’t know where I could get help,” she told me. “It’s a great feeling when I hear, ‘You know, that number you gave me helped a lot.’”

More Similar Than We Seem

The day I visited, Shawnese was giving a presentation on how foster parents can teach their teens about sexuality. Not too many foster parents (or parents!) feel good about speaking to their kids about sex, but there was no denying that Shawnese put everyone there at ease. She went about the subject brazenly and with little inhibition, presenting purple dental dams, female and male condoms, and information so detailed that even audacious me cringed in embarrassment.

But the parents were remarkably open, and I soon found myself caught up in their questions and conversation. I couldn’t help but smile and think about how many similarities there were between us. By going to the group and getting to know Lourdes and Shawnese, I had discovered a bit more humanity in the system.

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