Growing need for foster parents strains region

In the middle of the night, Lydia Brownfield's cellphone began to ring. Although she keeps it by her bed, she missed the call. But when her husband's phone rang a moment later, Justin answered it groggily, reflexively offering the greeting he uses at his job as an insurance agent.

But it wasn't a client. It was the Indiana Department of Child Services calling to see if the couple could take a baby.

Justin turned to Lydia, and in seconds they agreed.

"I got up and put on my sweatshirt and went downstairs," Lydia Brownfield said. "We were just ready."

About 20 minutes later, a caseworker arrived with an infant — a baby in desperate need of a bath and fresh clothes. Half asleep, Lydia Brownfield washed the infant and sterilized baby bottles.

Most parents have months to prepare for a new child. Since the Brownfields began fostering nearly three years ago, they've learned to prepare on the fly. They have bins of kids clothes arranged by size. Sometimes the couple knows that a placement is imminent, but other times, there is no warning.

Foster children can show up hungry and tired. They show up reeking of cigarette smoke. They show up with scrapes and bruises.

The state relies on foster parents to soothe wounds and provide a temporary home for children whose own homes grew so unstable they had to be removed from them.

Across the state, increasing numbers of children are entering the foster care system, but the number of foster parents is not keeping pace. In the past year, the number of Hoosier children in foster care rose 25 percent. The shortage of foster families is putting pressure on the pool of people licensed to foster and making it more difficult for caseworkers to find local placements.

"We always are able to manage to find foster homes that are equipped for our children. It's just that often times it's not within our community or it's not within their county," said Angela Smith Grossman, local regional manager for the Indiana Department of Child Services. "We would like to be able to service that child here in our area because the outcomes are better for them."

To meet the growing need, the department aims to recruit new parents in Tippecanoe and surrounding counties.

Challenges and rewards of fostering

The Brownfields speak frankly about the challenges of fostering.

To begin with, dealing with the foster care system can be a logistical hassle. Foster parents must submit masses of paperwork to ensure that children receive benefits. For many children, it's been months since they visited a doctor or dentist, Justin Brownfield said. Foster parents also field visits from three caseworkers, who typically come within the first two weeks of a placement.

"It is a whirlwind of scheduling," he said.

Moreover, fostering can be emotionally draining. Separating children from their biological parents is a traumatic experience, and for some children that trauma is compounded over and over again by small parental failures.

For example, when biological parents visit their children, they are supposed to bring necessities such as diapers, food and formula — a small way to prove they're ready to parent. But when they don't bring those items, the foster parents are left to deal with the fallout, the Brownfields said.

Once, when the Brownfields fostered a group of siblings, the kids were scheduled to visit with their biological parents. Minutes before the children were supposed to leave, the parents canceled. The 3-year-old already had her shoes on.

"My heart broke for her," Lydia Brownfield said.

"I think the hardest thing for me is just the emotional roller coaster. And it's emotional for me, and it's emotional for the child," she said. "Sometimes it's super emotional because they attach to you so strongly. … And sometimes it's the opposite, like, they don't want you anywhere near them and they're angry at you."

For all the challenges they face, the Brownfields say fostering is among the most rewarding experiences of their lives. They eventually adopted the first set of siblings they fostered, and many of the children they've fostered since have successfully returned to their biological families.

"We're making a difference for kids and for their parents, even if their parents are just able to get the help that they need now and get back on track," Lydia Brownfield said.

The Brownfields expect they will slip out of the foster care system the same way many parents do — by adopting themselves out of business, as Smith Grossman puts it.

"About 70 percent of our actual adoptions that happen come out of foster homes," Smith Grossman said. "That's not why most foster families get into the work, but what happens a lot of times is that they will either adopt children that were in their care at some point or perhaps their families have changed over the course of time. Maybe they did it when their children were older, but now they are moving away, or they feel too old to reach this need."

Many people decide to foster when someone close to them needs care.

Mary Beth and Cordell Kenner started caring for a friend's children more than a year ago, and now they are raising six kids — including five foster children and their biological daughter. Their house is hectic. The bathrooms are crowded, the grocery bills have gone up and they bought a bigger car to fit their growing family.

"With that many kids, we really have to be organized," Cordell Kenner said.

But Mary Beth Kenner, who grew up with 14 siblings, doesn't worry about the daily challenges.

"You are not alone. (DCS) is with you every step of the way," she said. Their church, neighbors and local organizations also are incredibly supportive.

"We want to make sure that these kids are OK, so that they end up becoming productive citizens in society. We don't want them alone and lashing out in other ways."

Fixing broken families

The truly difficult part for the Kenners and the Brownfields is knowing that most children who go through foster care return to their biological families.

That's by design.

The first goal of DCS is to reunify families, said Angela Guimond, director of the Tippecanoe office. If DCS is unable to return children to their parents, staff look for extended family or close friends who can take the children. Placing children with unrelated foster or adoptive parents is the last option DCS pursues.

As a young caseworker, Guimond said she found it difficult to accept the focus on returning children to parents who had been abusive or neglectful. But working with families changed her perspective.

"Really, in the end, that's where the kids want to be. That's what they know, and that's what is their home," Guimond said. "I don't believe that parents set out to bring a child into this world and abuse them and neglect them. … Our role is to really provide them with better choices, better opportunity, (and a) stronger support system so that they don't have to resort to a bad choice."

Foster parents need to understand that most placements are temporary, she said.

The only foster-to-adopt program in Indiana is the Special Needs Adoption Program, which is mandated by federal law. It helps pair parents with difficult-to-place children who are free for adoption. Children in the program are typically older or part of a group of siblings, according to DCS spokesman James Wide.

If families are interested only in fostering children whom they can later adopt, the agency may place a child in their custody who has already been freed for adoption by the court, said Iona LaBaw, the foster parent specialist supervisor in the Tippecanoe office. Until the court severs the rights of the biological parents, however, DCS is working toward reunification.

"Foster parents have to be able to ... work toward preservation of the family," LaBaw said. "Sometimes that doesn't happen, and we do go to termination, and then it could be adoption with a relative or with the foster family they've been in, or we could be looking for someone, a new adoptive parent totally."

Lydia and Justin Brownfield are on board with the goal of restoring children to their biological families. But it's still heartbreaking for them to give children back to their biological parents.

"You love them instantly," said Lydia Brownfield. "But it's best for the kids (to go back). And we're the adults. We're the adults who can … look at it all and weigh it all and say, 'This is what's best for them. They are going to be a part of our family, we're going to love them like they're our kids, and it is going to break our heart when they leave.' "

When the Brownfields started fostering, Lydia said she was angry with the biological parents. All she and Justin saw were their failures and the ways they had hurt their children.

With their first set of foster children, Lydia Brownfield said it wasn't until she saw the parents at a court hearing that she began to empathize.

"I remember so clearly sitting in the first court appointment and one of the parents was up on the stand and just realizing that they are people," she said. "It just changed that whole thing because there were truthful things that I could say to the child that did demonstrate the parents' love. I didn't feel like I was having to make something up."

Growing need

In the past year, the populations of children in need of services and children in foster care have risen sharply.

In June 2014, DCS oversaw 14,763 Hoosier children in need of services. This year, the number reached 18,621. Of those children, 13,134 are in foster homes — nearly 25 percent more than last year.

Locally, the population of foster children also has grown rapidly. In the past year, the number of foster children in Region 5 — Benton, Carroll, Clinton, Fountain, Tippecanoe, Warren and White counties — rose about 18 percent, from 368 to 433. Because the number of licensed foster parents has not kept pace, DCS is relying more heavily on placing children with relatives.

The increase in foster placements is primarily due to drug use among parents, Wide said. The same phenomenon is taking place across the country, putting pressure on the foster care system.

Parents who use drugs are not necessarily abusive or neglectful, Smith Grossman said. But environments in which children are exposed to cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine are unlikely to be safe.

DCS has 136 licensed foster homes in Region 5, according to Wide. Last year, 129 families were licensed to foster children. But not all of those homes are prepared to accept children at any given time: Family circumstances may prevent them from fostering, or they may be licensed to prepare for the possibility that a close friend or relative enters foster care.

With a growing number of children in need of care, DCS must ask the pool of local families to take on more foster children, and children are matched with families that aren't necessarily a perfect fit. The Kenners, for example, ended up taking a child who was younger than they originally planned.

The local DCS office does not send children to group homes when staff struggle to find placements. In Indianapolis, DCS occasionally places children in temporary group homes, Smith Grossman said. In Region 5, however, there are no group homes available. Instead, DCS staffers are tasked with calling potential foster parents until someone agrees to take the placement.

"We keep looking till we find a good match," LaBaw said. "Sometimes it can be one phone call, but sometimes it can take hours. ... Some of it depends on the special needs of the children. We do have children with special needs, and the trauma that kids go through — even being removed from their biological home can be traumatic."

If caseworkers are unable to find a foster family to take a long-term placement, they may place a child or siblings in a temporary foster home. Children who cannot be placed locally are placed with foster families in other areas of the state.

"What we would like to do is be able to have more options, so we have a better opportunity to keep them in the same school district or keep them in the same neighborhood — maintain those essential connections that sometimes get lost if they have to go into a foster care setting," Guimond said. "My best-case scenario is that we're not looking within the county, we're looking within the neighborhood."

By the numbers

18,621

Indiana children monitored by DCS as of June.

433

children in foster homes in Tippecanoe and surrounding counties.

225

children in Region 5 fostering with relatives in June.

136

foster families in Tippecanoe and surrounding counties.

How to help

To request information, sign up for foster parent training or learn how you can support foster parents and children, contact the Tippecanoe office of the Department of Child Services at 765-742-0400 or visit fostercare.in.gov.