Today on Inland Journal, we look at Washington’s foster care system.
This fall, Ross Hunter, the head of Washington’s Department of Children, Youth and Families wrote a column for his agency’s website. He talked about his department’s plans to improve the foster care system, both for children and for foster families.
Washington, he says, has about 9,200 foster children. It’s a number he says has been steadily climbing as the state “works through the opioid epidemic and the aftermath of the great recession.”
To care for those children, there are about 5,100 licensed foster care families. That was the number from mid-2018. It was about three percent higher than the previous year, but, he says, it’s still not enough. He says there’s a need for more providers as families cycle in and out of the system.
Later in this program, Ross Hunter will join us to talk about his agency’s plans for change in the foster care system.
But first, a few minutes with Meaghan Flowers. Flowers and her husband have been licensed foster care parents for almost 10 years.
“We talked about being foster parents for a long time, even through our dating years and early marriage," Flowers said. "We always thought we would do it someday when our kids were grown. We had some friends who were foster parents and they asked us to babysit one Saturday so they could go to CPR. We came home and we realized we could do this.”
So they began the training needed to get their licenses, then backed away and then went back to it.
Meaghan Flowers: “I think there’s so much unknown in foster care and so much unexpected. Being a person that likes predictability and likes change, foster care is a stretching and growing experience for me.”
Doug: “What kind of orientation and training did you have to do to become a foster parent?”
Meaghan Flowers: “We’re licensed through the state of Washington and so we started with a three-hour orientation. It’s a class you go to to get your questions answered and find out about the paperwork you need to do. From that point there’s training courses, application, home study visits, things like that.”
After all that, the Flowers family accepted its first foster child.
Doug: “Do you remember what that first one was like?”
Meaghan Flowers: “Yes. We called him our little grunter because he was two-and-a-half and only had about eight words, but he could communicate just about anything he needed with his grunts and his laughing. Our social worker told us we had been baptized by fire. He was a little spitfire and we…he came into our home a week before our son’s first birthday and so we had a one-year-old and a two-year-old and here we go.”
Doug: “Was he a pretty mobile little guy?”
Meaghan Flowers: “Oh yes. He never stopped moving. He liked to throw his shoes out of the car at the grocery store, so you had to really watch for his shoes to go flying.”
Doug: “How long did you have him?”
Meaghan Flowers: “We had him for 60 days, until he was able to move to a family member with his siblings.”
Doug: “What was it like to part with that little guy?”
Meaghan Flowers: “I think I was unprepared for how challenging it would be. Looking back now, I want to always say goodbye and have that grief, because when I stop feeling that grief, it means I’ve stopped investing and I’ve stopped adoring these kids. There’s some kids you love deeply and you’re their mama and they’re really hard to say goodbye to and there’s some that you love and you advocate for and you encourage them along their way and then there’s some that come into your home and you’re just heartbroken when they leave. It’s different with each kid what that grief process looks like, but it’s something we have continued to process along the way.”
Flowers and her husband have three biological children and two adopted daughters. She estimates they’ve had about 70 foster children through the years. The challenge, she says, is identifying each child’s individual needs and addressing them.
Doug: “So what about the support system, outside of your family, when you’ve got who’s a real handful and you say I’m not really sure how well we can take care of this one?”
Meaghan Flowers: “Yeah, we have had some really challenging kids in our home. Through Fostering Washington we have five support groups that meet in Spokane, so we’ve been active in those groups. We’ve worked closely through our social workers, the child advocate, which can either be a guardian ad litem or CASA. We also have good support within, just networking with other foster families, our church support, our friend support. Often if we’re going to say yes to a placement, I check with our village. Is our village ready to say yes as well?”
Sometimes that village includes the children in the foster family, who suddenly have an extra, temporary sibling or more living in their home, taking some of their parents’ attention.
Quinn Conner is the 12-year-old son of Stacey Conner, another peer mentor for foster families in Spokane.
Doug: “Quinn, when your mom and dad bring in a new child, do they ask you? We’ve got an opportunity to bring in another child. Do they ask you whether this is something you want?”
Quinn Conner: “Not necessarily, but they do give a heads up and they don’t expect too much, so it’s pretty easy. When everyone comes in, it’s always usually more fun than it is difficult.”
Doug: “And what happens when there are difficult things? What are the things that happen that are hard?”
Quinn Conner: “Sometimes the kids have been through rougher things than others, so they can be a bit rougher than the rest. In the end, it’s just about getting to know them and making sure that they’re ok.”
Doug: “And do you have a sort of responsibility if mom and dad say, ‘when we have a child, this is what we need you to do to help’?”
Quinn Conner: “Not necessarily, but it’s implied as an older brother usually.”
Doug: “Are you the oldest of the family?”
Quinn Conner: “Middle. Exactly in the middle.”
Doug: “How old’s the older one?”
Quinn Conner: “He’s 13. I also have a sister who’s 13.”
Doug: “All three of you are old enough that you can help, especially with little ones.”
Quinn Conner: “Yeah. We also have three younger ones.”
Doug: “Do you have to change diapers and stuff like that?”
Quinn Conner: “I have never done that before, but my sister has. It can range from helping with baths to just playing with them down in the basement until they’re tired.”
Doug: “And do you get tired of that sometimes?”
Quinn Conner: “I mean, sometimes it can get tough, but usually, as I said, it’s pretty fun.”
Doug: “So is it a good thing in your life?”
Quinn Conner: “It’s definitely probably a good thing. I enjoy it a lot.”
Doug: “Do your friend know that you have foster brothers and sisters?”
Quinn Conner: “Yes, all of them know.”
Doug: “And do they come over and play with them too?”
Quinn Conner: “Most of them enjoy the kids a lot.”
When we spoke, the Conners were in the process of adopting another little boy. You can hear our conversation with Conner’s mom in theSeptember 18 edition of Inland Journal.
And now we bring in Ross Hunter. He’s the secretary of Washington’s Department of Children, Youth and Families. He’s a former state legislator who became head of his agency in 2017. In October, he wrote a column explaining his agency’s plan for improving the state’s foster care system.
Now we’ll go back to Meaghan Flowers, the foster mother in Spokane.
Doug: “Do you feel like you get the support you need?”
Meaghan Flowers: “So I feel like my perspective is a unique perspective because I’ve been working in the foster care system as a recruiter/peer mentor and so I’ve been in that role for about five years and so I really know the ins and outs of the system very well. I can tell who I need to ask, when I need to ask. If I don’t know what I need, I can find someone who can direct me to someone else. So, often with the families I work with, I try to be that bridge when I can, whenever they’re having an emergency, when they’re having challenging behaviors. I like to tell my families please call me before it’s an emergency and help direct them to resources that they need. Sometimes we’ve had instances, especially medical things like getting consent signed at the hospital for a sedated procedure, things like that where we’ve had interruptions and need to seek out someone who can help with that. But for the most part, being able to navigate the system has been a strength for me and I’ve had the support that I needed. But sometimes there’s a lack of understanding about the emotions of how fostering can affect a family.”
Doug: “Is that a case of not enough orientation, not enough preparation for foster parents or is it something deeper than that?”
Meaghan Flowers: “I think you can only prepare so much because you hear stories and you go through the trainings but you don’t understand what it’s like to live in that situation and to see the faces of the kids and see the heartache and see the brokenness. I’ve gotten to the point where we really love a lot of the biological parents that we work with and we see the heartache on their end and we see the heartache on the kids’ end. We see the brokenness of the system. It’s a big complicated issue.”
I asked Meaghan Flowers about how she would advise Ross Hunter about how to change Washington’s foster care system.
Meaghan Flowers: “I think some of the biggest things that I would request or I would look for, the timelines to permanency. We have foster families who have had kids for six months, 12 months, 18 months, two years. Both of our girls’ cases were three years long and that’s a long time for a family to be in limbo, not to mention the child in their home. That is something I would love to see some movement on. We desperately need more resources with child care. Child care is very hard to find for kids in foster care. But a big piece we’re missing is for the other children in the home. Most of our foster families have one child in their home.”
Doug: “More than one foster child.”
Meaghan Flowers: “Both. More than one foster child or more than one biological or adopted child. We often have one foster baby and then our five kids at home and, more often than not, I can have a month with between 10 and 30 appointments and so juggling that schedule and juggling the child care can be really challenging.”
Doug: “Do you feel like you are busier because there are fewer foster parents and you’re one of the ones that they know that they can count on so you get a lot of calls, maybe more than you would if the foster system was bigger.”
Meaghan Flowers: “I think it depends because you can have more foster families, but it also depends on what they’re open to take placement of.”
Doug: “And are you pretty open to stuff?”
Meaghan Flowers: “We’re pretty open. We have taken kids from zero to about 12. We’ve done respite up to about age 16. It just depends on what our family needs at that time and we’ve been able to adjust within that range.”
Doug: “What’s the compensation that you get for taking children in?”
Meaghan Flowers: “It’s a four-tier system, based on the child’s age, the child’s needs, and different factors, like are you working, are they in child care, are they in school, those kind of things.”
Doug: “Is it enough to compensate you for the work that you do? Or do you sometimes feel you could really use a little bit more?”
Meaghan Flowers: “I’m probably not the best person to answer that question because compensation is really…”
Doug: “Secondary?”
Meaghan Flowers: “Secondary.”
Doug: “But your expenses are taken care of?”
Meaghan Flowers: “One way to look at it is that our compensation is less than what most people would pay for full-time child care. So we receive, for 24-hour care of the child, less than what you would pay to put your child in child care. However, we haven’t ever had an issue. We make sure our kids have shoes and clothes and food and all those things.”
Doug: “You’re in a good enough financial situation that it’s not a huge deal.”
Meaghan Flowers: “Yeah and you have to be in a steady financial situation to be a foster parent.”
Meaghan Flowers and her husband are foster parents in Spokane County. Hear more from fellow foster parent and peer mentor Stacey Conner on our September 18 edition of Inland Journal.
Thanks for joining us for today’s program and podcast. Hear past programs at the Spokane Public Radio website. You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, NPR One or Google Play.