Wake County needs homes now for hundreds of foster children. Find out how you can help.
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What to know: The number of foster parents in North Carolina has declined 20% since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
What to share with family and friends: Wake County has over 400 kids in the foster care system but only about 90 licensed foster homes This article will tell you how you can become a foster parent and details of an information meeting being held in Raleigh.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gaile Osborne found herself in Asheville waiting at a Walmart for a woman driving from Tennessee.
Osborne was down to half a can of formula, but the medically fragile child she was fostering needed a special prescription. She was able to get it, but the incident reminded her of the struggles many families faced during the pandemic.
“The COVID families, they are the families that took a hard hit in the middle of all that,” Osborne said, referring to those who cared for children during the pandemic.
Being a foster parent is hard. But helping a child can also be a rewarding and beautiful experience, said several foster parents interviewed for this story.
In North Carolina, however, hundreds of foster children need a loving home.
In Wake County, where the number of children far outpaces available homes, foster kids have had to sleep in government offices or been moved to other communities, sometimes across the state.
In May, Wake County had 404 foster children but only 94 foster homes licensed to care for them, according to previous reporting by The News & Observer.
What’s it like to foster?
In a May 2023 presentation, the N.C. Division of Social Services reported 10,164 children 17 and younger in foster care, with another 832 between the ages of 18 and 21 in extended foster care.
There were only 5,849 foster homes.
The number of foster families in North Carolina has declined 20% since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, said Osborne, the executive director of the Foster Family Alliance of North Carolina.
In an interview with The Duke Endowment in June, Osborne cited three main reasons families leave foster care: inconsistent policies and expectations from different counties, child behavioral issues and foster parent grieving.
A foster parent for 14 years, Osborne remembers picking up a heartbroken and tearful foster parent for lunch because the child was being reunited with her birth parents and it was time to say goodbye. Osborne said the alliance is hiring therapists to do grief counseling when these children leave.
“As a foster parent, you don’t go in this to love with your pinky toe in the water. You go in full body, jump or plunge,” Osborne told The Duke Endowment. “And so when you come out, whether you step out or a kid leaves your home, you leave your heart just wide open to be hurt.”
Foster parents describe their experience
▪ Jerri Teague has fostered 48 children and adopted four with her husband, Daniel, over about 10 years as a foster parent. When she was young, she said, her uncle adopted her, which eventually inspired her to do the same.
Foster families need support, and the Foster Family Alliance has resources to aid families who foster children with complex trauma. Though not all foster children have experienced trauma, it may arise from physical, mental, sexual or emotional abuse or from experiencing different hardships, such as homelessness or witnessing parents argue and divorce.
“We are truly just about loving the families, and the children and providing them with education and advocacy and helping them with creating their village,” Teague said.
When one Teague’s foster children recognized a person from their past, Teague sat by their side as the child had a panic attack.
“It’s not easy. I will say that having a support network is huge,” Teague said. “Had I not had the support of my family, it would not have been an easy task for us to take on”
▪ Tanya Best McCrimmon is a foster parent in Alamance County. She and her husband are an adoptive family and began their journey in 2020.
McCrimmon started fostering children even before learning she was adopted as a child. She just saw a need for children to be in good, loving homes, she said.
She believes more families in areas like Wake County would foster if they saw more people who were like them. She has a mixed-race family.
“People often don’t see families that reflect what their family looks like. Sometimes it’s very discouraging,” McCrimmon said. “[My family] went through the [foster] classes; the people teaching our classes didn’t look like us. It leads to a lot of questions about why there’s a lack of diversity and how do we break that barrier.”
Foster care organizations should highlight foster families of all races, genders or sexualities to get more people to apply, she said.
▪ Karol Berrospi has been a foster mom for almost 10 years. Originally from Guatemala, she now lives in Johnston County and is the representative for bilingual families at the Foster Family Alliance.
“There’s a lot of kids that don’t speak any English because their parents only speak Spanish,” Berrospi said. “Those kids are going through the trauma of being separated from the family, and besides that, just trauma of not being able to communicate with whatever foster family is going to be able to take care of them.”
She said people can learn more about supporting foster kids through agencies, organizations, even YouTube videos and asking around in your community.
“Education is the key, and that doesn’t mean they have to be reading books after books,” Berrospi said. “Just talking to somebody, let’s say like me.”
What is foster care?
Foster care is a temporary living arrangement for children who have experienced abuse or neglect, or whose biological families cannot care for them, according to NC Foster Care’s website.
Basic requirements:
You must be at least 21 years old.
Families must “have adequate income to financially support themselves without relying on a foster care payment.”
You must be willing to participate in Shared Parenting, or “working with the families of children placed in your home if a supervising agency determines this is appropriate.”
You must pass a background check.
Home conditions and health:
Your home must pass a fire inspection and an environmental and health regulations check conducted by the supervising agency.
Your home must have a working telephone.
You need to provide each child with their own personal bed.
You have to meet minimum “physical and mental health requirements as indicated by a physical examination completed by a licensed medical provider.”
Family members 18 and older must have a tuberculosis skin test.
Training and licensing:
Complete 30 hours of training before being licensed.
An additional 10 hours of training is required for prospective therapeutic foster parent applicants.
With the assistance of a supervising agency, applicants must complete a licensing application.
What is Wake County doing?
In May, Wake County released a series of video interviews of experienced foster parents in the hope of enticing more prospective foster parents.
Officials at Wake County’s Division of Human Services were not readily available for an interview, but at a State of the City, County and Schools event last month, County Manager David Ellis called upon people to help children in need.
“This is a tremendous community,” he said. “But we can and we should be doing much better when it comes to children in foster care.”
Wake County provides foster parents with a stipend:
For children up to 5 years old, the stipend is $702 per month.
For children 6 to 12 years old, the stipend is $742 per month.
For children 13 and older, the stipend is $810 a month.
Information meeting
Wake County will hold a foster parent information meeting from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 13, at the Swinburne Health and Human Services building at 220 Swinburne St. in Raleigh. More meetings will take place through the end of the year. For details, call 919-212-7474 or email foster4wake@wakegov.com.
NC Reality Check is an N&O series holding those in power accountable and shining a light on public issues that affect the Triangle or North Carolina. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email realitycheck@newsobserver.com
This story was originally published August 5, 2024 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Wake County needs homes now for hundreds of foster children. Find out how you can help.."