Partnerships in fostering: a newsletter of the Georgia DHR Foster Care Unit, Summer 2000

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A NEWSLETTER OF THE GEORGIA OHR FOSTER CARE UNIT

A Child's Story A Birth Mother's
Story A Case Manager's
View Fostering Kids
With HIV
summer

Coope
Through Conflict

Most people want to avoid conflict, yet conflict is a natural part of teamwork, especially when the team is resolving a crisis - which is what foster parents and case managers are all about. Cindy Conine believes that working through conflict is a natural and even useful part of helping families. Based in Houston County, Conine is a DFCS supervisor of resource development for seven counties in middle Georgia.
"If all team members thought the same way, families' problems probably wouldn't get solved," Conine stated. "Every one of our families has different strengths, needs and personalities. There are no two cases that are exactly alike, and no one solution will work for every situation. Case managers, foster parents, teachers, birth parents and everyone on the team has different ideas to contribute. It helps when we can all be open to considering everyone's ideas."
In helping families, conflict also can arise because of pain.
Conine explained, "In MAPP, foster parents learn about how birth parents are going through the grieving process. They've lost a significant person from their lives. So the parent may not show up for the visit, and that's upsetting for the child and for everyone else involved with that child. But we need to look at why the parent missed the visit. Maybe they're in that stage of grief where they're going through depression. If we see that, we understand there's a reason for the behavior - not just

that they don't care or that they're doing it to be contrary to what we want."
The parent may also show his or her grief through angry behavior.
"It's natural to feel angry when someone's angry at you," Conine noted. "It's a natural response to throw the anger back. But we need to remember that any of us might be in that parent's place. What if we had grown up without our role models or didn't have our support systems? What if we had grown up around drugs? It could have happened to any of us. We need to think of how we'd want our cases to be handled if we were these parents."
While conflict can be unpleasant and counterproductive, there is also a kind of "good conflict" when team members can feel invigorated as their differing ideas come together so good solutions emerge. Seeing from the perspectives of others requires mutual empathy, respect, patience and a strong sense of self-worth.
"There are so many people involved in making decisions about one child," Conine observed. "They're all teaming together around an emotional issue: the life of the child. There is DFCS, the child, the foster parents, the birth parents, the court system, sometimes therapists and other team members. There can be so many different ideas about what's the best way to parent or what's in the child's best interests. We need to work together because no one has all the answers."

If we all thought alike, could problems be solved?

Experiencin
Foster Care: One Child's Story

"At first in foster care, I was feeling like, 'Where am I? I don't know this person!'" recalled Toiya Crosland. Crosland entered foster care when she was 13. Now 20 and living in Stone Mountain, she recently discussed the years she spent in foster care.

"After my sister and I moved in, I remember we didn't want to eat for a couple of days," described Crosland. "We didn't come out of. the room. Patricia our foster mom would come to the door and say, 'If you want to come out, I've cooked.' When we wouldn't come out, she'd say, 'OK, but if you need anything or if you want to talk, I'm downstairs."'

Crosland said she was "in a shell" at that time.

"I didn't want to talk to

anybody," she

explained. "I was just

to myself and wanted

to be left alone. Patricia

Toiya Crosland remembers how foster care helped her.

really got me to open up to people. I remember plenty of nights

going to her room and

waking her up and saying, 'I want to talk.' She

would get up - I don't care what time it was -

and say, 'What's on your mind?'"

Helping Children A dj ust

Group discussions were a regular part of the household routine.

"She always had three to four girls staying there," Crosland remembered, "so if some of us had a confrontation, Patricia had us all sit down and talk about it. She also had 'family nights' where we'd all sit around a table. She'd say, 'If things aren't going the way you want, you can say so now and get it out,' and we were allowed to talk about anything we wanted. She told us if we didn't like things, we could talk and work it out. I wasn't used to that, and I liked it."
Crosland's birth mother, who was struggling with various difficulties in her life, usually spoke with anger to her foster mother.
"My mom started off despising Patricia and never really got over that," Crosland stated. "I thought she should feel thankful we were with someone who was taking care of us, but if I'd even mention Patricia she'd have animosity in her face. She'd say things to start stuff with Patricia. Patricia could have acted nasty back to her, but I guess she wanted to spare our feelings. She never said anything bad about my mother and would always call us to the phone to talk to her whenever our mom called."
Balanci ng Rules and Freedom
One of the things Crosland most liked about her foster home was its orderliness.
Crosland recalled, "We had homework hour from seven to eight, and we were in bed by nine o'clock. Meals were on a time schedule, which was new for me. Also Patricia didn't want you to be just sitting mindlessly at home watching TV all day. She's a really neat person and showed us how to clean the house. We'd vacuum and do dishes and sometimes do yard work - nothing too strenuous. Patricia took us swimming and to the library and places like Six Flags and Whitewater. Some summers we went to camp."
While their foster mother provided them an allowance, she also allowed them to have jobs.

"I had different jobs, like working in a grocery store and a Wal-Mart," Crosland recounted. "Then if I wanted something that cost more than I could buy with my allowance, I was able to afford it.

2

Putting the Child's Needs Over Our Own

Having a job teaches you how to have your own money."
Their foster mother was a church-goer who did not pressure them with religion.
"Patricia didn't care if we went to the same church she did," Crosland said. "Sometimes we wanted to go to our grandmother's church, and she'd take us there. I remember she took in one girl who didn't believe in God and didn't want to go to church. Patricia's attitude was like, 'I can't make her go. Maybe she'll eventually go on her own.' I still talk with that girl, and now she's really into church. With Patricia, it wasn't like you had to go to church."
Keeping Family Ties
Soon after Crosland entered care, her birth mother moved to New York. Her foster mother routinely kept Crosland connected with her family of origin.
"Patricia encouraged us to keep in touch," Crosland described. "She'd say, 'Did you call your grandmother today?' Her church was near my grandmother's house, so she'd say, 'Do you want to go by and see your grandmother after church?' and sometimes we'd stop by after church and talk for a while. I have a favorite aunt, and if we said we wanted to go see her that weekend or for awhile during summer, Patricia would call her. My aunt lives kind of far away, so sometimes they would meet halfway and we'd go home with my aunt. My aunt would talk to us about my mom and help us see why some of the things took place ."
Crosland calls her former foster mother "a special person." Most days, they still talk by telephone or visit.

Opinions often clash when case managers, foster parents and other team members meet to discuss a child's needs. Everyone on the team has legitimate and worthwhile ideas and contributions; however, each person can become so focused on his/her part of the process that he/she loses sight of the most important thing: they are there not to disagree with each other but, rather, to work together for the child. When children see all the adults working together in their behalf, they feel more secure and can concentrate on healing.
A photo can refocus a meeting: When adults are clashing during a meeting, a good idea might be for them to place a photograph of the child in the middle of the table. If a photograph is not available, they can write the child's full name on a piece of paper and place it in the middle of the table. Then each adult should take a moment to share what dazzles them about Tamika or Michael, sharing the child's strengths, the funny incidents and the small wonders. Perhaps someone could volunteer to write these strengths on a flip chart to help everyone there remember the importance of joining together for this child.
Foster parents need to be heard: I have sat in many a meeting where ~y voice as _a psych?logist (who met the child one time) was given priority over the impressions of foster parents who had lived with the child for months or even years. Too often, meetings can focus on the professionals in the room, even though the foster parents usually know more about the child than any other person present. It is essential that the meeting's facilitator empower the voices of the foster parents so that their knowledge, feelings, and impressions do not become lost in a "sea of experts."
Kids should not have to choose: When the adults in a child's life clash, the child feels tom between them, feeling as if they expect him or her to choose between them. The adults can avoid putting the child in this dilemma by making a habit of acting respectfully to one another, even when they disagree. This includes respecting birth parents, even when they are at difficult places in their lives so they may not return all the r~spect they are given..The biological families are part of the children, and m foster care these children belong to two (or more) families. Team meetings should never "put down" any present or absent participant because doing so could cloud other team members' attitudes, which children can sense more than we might think.
Decisions about a child in care are sacred in nature. The adults in the child's life are making decisions that may impact the child for a lifetime and reverberate throughout the generations when that child becomes a parent. Team members need to remember that differing opinions can reveal new solutions, especially when they occur in an atmosphere of respect, courtesy and deep caring.

One irth Mother' Story: Dismantling the Wall of Hate

"I built a wall of hate when DFCS took my children into foster care," recalled Clarissa Taylor of Macon. "DFCS had its job to do, and it took me awhile to w1derstand that."
A young, single mother, Taylor was working two jobs at a fast food restaurant and a cleaning service. Pressures continued to mount when her third child was born with serious health issues and developmental delays. After her baby entered foster care and DFCS placed her two sons with a friend, Taylor became depressed, recalling, "If I wasn't sleeping, I was crying. The social worker probably did her job properly, but in my mind DFCS was wrong and I didn't want to accept it. I had trouble taking in what the social worker would try to tell me. I think I just shut down. You see that kind of stuff on TV everyday, but you never know what it's like until it's you."
Panel Reviews Are Scary
At her first panel review hearing, Taylor felt "like it was an interrogation - like they were looking at me like I'd done bad things. Maybe I was

The panel members continued emphasizing they were there to help Taylor.
Taylor described, "They'd say, 'Ms. Taylor, we're not here to beat you down. You know and we know something happened and it's over with, and we want to get down to what you need and what your kids need so nothing like that will ever happen again.' Even though they kept drilling that in me, I had to get that in my head for myself. Finally I realized, 'OK, they're not here to hurt me and my kids. They want to help us get back together.' It took me awhile to get on the right track thinking like that."
Healing Takes Time
Taylor's spirits were lifted when she encountered members of her panel around town.
"Sometimes I'd see one of them in the street or in the store," Taylor related, "and I'd think they were thinking, 'She's that woman who didn't take good care of her child.' But they would come up to me and say in a very respectful way, 'Ms. Taylor! How are you doing? How's your case going? You keep praying and think positive!' That would make me feel really good. I'd call my mama and tell her all about it."

As part of her case plan, Taylor agreed to take homemaking classes, though she was initially skeptical of doing so.
Birth Parents Need Patience
"I was thinking, 'Look, I'm over 20 and have three kids. I don't need any classes telling me how to raise children,' " Taylor said. "I thought I knew everything. But I got really interested and started asking more questions in class than anybody else! Before, I never let my kids help with cooking, but she showed us how doing snacktime togetherlike making cookies or pizza - could make kids really feel wanted. She talked about child-proofing the house-like, my boys love to play with marbles, and I learned about putting their marbles away so the baby wouldrt't get them and swallow them."
When Taylor's children returned home, she also began having "family night" each week, taking the children to eat at Shoney's or taking them to get their faces painted. After church on Sundays, she would set aside time to play games with them.
"I learned how little things like that make a difference," Taylor noted. "Before, I didn't do

Sometimes we'd go out for lunch. She'd invite me to go with her to take my daughter to the doctor and physical therapy. She'd call me to let me know any little thing, like if my daughter had a cough or a cold. It was like my daughter had two families, but she knew I was her mom. I enjoyed the time we spent together."
Taylor was interested in watching how the foster mother applied many of the childcare methods she was learning about in her homemaking classes.
"She's older than me and is a mom herself, so she's had lots of experience," Taylor said. "She

However, Taylor continued to struggle with trusting her team members.
"Whenever it was time for a panel review, I guess I'd get scared and nervous, so I'd start feeling tension and hate," Taylor described. "I'd have to calm myself down. I'd have to tell myself, 'OK, it's not like you think. They're not coming after you. They're trying to help you.'"

things like that or take them anywhere because I'd be thinking about things like paying bills. I wouldn't let them go outside because I thought they'd get in trouble. I thought being a good parent was feeding them and giving them a place to stay. But I learned deprivation can be things like keeping them from being outside with other children. That's depriving them of their childhood. The classes really opened me up."

invited me over to her house for Thanksgiving, when everyone brought dishes, and I got to meet her own children, who are adults now. I could imagine the kind of parent she'd been to them for them to turn out to be such respectable and nice people. I thought, 'I need to watch what I do and say around my kids, so they'll respect me more when they get older.' There was a lot I could pick up on just by watching how her kids and she

Taylor's case manager helped strengthen her sense of trust.
"I remember she sat down with me and said

'f Birth Parents Need Examples

would react to each other."

1

At first, Taylor's visits with her children were

Taylor still keeps in touch with her daughter's former foster parents, considering them her

that putting my kids in foster care was really hard

supervised at the agency. Later, the case manager friends.

just thinking that because I was angry. I didn't want to fool with them or deal with them. I just wanted to take care of my own kids myself."

for her because she was a mother herself," Taylor explained. "That helped me come to reality about how hard her job was for her and how DFCS was really working with me. I knew I had to wake myself up."

asked the foster parents if they were willing to meet Taylor, and they said they were.
''I'd been worrying about them- how they were treating her and if they were telling her I was a bad mom," Taylor explained. "But when I met

"We still keep in contact when we get the chance," Taylor said. "I might call her and say, 'I have the day off-let's go to lunch.' We get together for holidays and my daughter's birthdays."

them, I knew everything was OK. Everything

went well, and we just blended in like a family.

4

They invited me to birthday parties at their house.

5

What Should We
Know About
Case Mana ers?

Lloyd Wells became a case manager because he wants to help others, which is why, prior to becoming a case manager, he was an Episcopal minister and at one time worked for the Red Cross.
"I've always been in a helping profession," said the Barrow County case manager. "At DFCS, I like being a part of a team with the mission to protect, nurture and change circumstances for children. The foster parents I work with have a spark of deeply caring, which I respect a great deal."
Lloyd Wells offers some ideas to improve
teamwork.

as needed. He also stated that if birth or foster families are not receiving the response and support they need, they have the right to get impatient with the case manager; however, he also hoped they could be understanding with busy case managers because "sometimes there's just not enough time to go around."
Asked how foster parents can most effectively interact with case managers, Wells said, "Because I'm so busy, it really helps me when foster parents and birth parents can be really concrete and specific about what they need. For example, I remember a communication gap I had with a foster parent. She was caring for a child she'd even talked about adopting. Then one day she told me she wanted me to find the child another foster home."

Concreteness Helps

Because the child had been staying in her home for more than a year, Wells assumed that finding the boy a new home was not an urgent priority. He began the process of finding another foster home, but in two weeks time the foster parent angrily called him.

Asked what he would most like team members to know about his job, Wells said he hopes birth parents and foster parents will understand if he is not always able to spend as much time with them as he would like.
Helpi ng Many People
"Case managers are responsible for about 35 or 40 different children," Wells explained. "With each of these children, the case manager needs to work with birth parents, foster parents, other caregivers, relatives, the school system, the courts, medical staff and other service providers. So there's a lot to organize and a lot of people to coordinate ."

"She told me she had given me two weeks notice to move the child," Wells said. "But she hadn't specifically spelled out to me that a twoweek deadline was important to her. She hadn't been concrete in letting me know a particular date. Too, when she'd told me the child would need to be moved, she talked in a way so I didn't think there was that much rush."
Wells added. "We'd had a mutual misunderstanding. Ideally I should have asked her at the time how long she was willing to wait. Too, I know it was difficult for her to tell me the child needed to leave her home. She cared for this child, but it just wasn't working anymore. That was a difficult decision for her to make, and I know she was feeling mixed-up emotions about it. Often we can avoid misunderstandings like this when we trust each other and try to be really specific in describing the things we want from and can offer each other."

Wells emphasized that foster and birth parents

6

should not hesitate to contact their case managers

Living Life Fully:
Fostering Kids With

"Angela Wilson" (as this article will call her) had not planned to foster children with HIV. An unexpected event changed her life, and during the past 12 years she has fostered eight children - all of them HIV-positive. The Clayton County mother is in the process of adopting two of them.
Describing how she came to foster, Wilson recalled, "In 1986, my brother was diagnosed with AIDS. At that time, I was waiting for my daughter to finish high school in two years so she could go to college and I could go on with my life. One day, I was in the hospital with a friend whose son was sick, and I noticed a little girl all alone in her room. The sign on her door warned about dangerous bodily fluids. I knew what that sign meant because I'd seen it on my brother's hospital door."
Kids With Illness Need Love
Wilson asked the nurse if she could read to the girl. She was told she needed to be approved.
Wilson said, "The little girl died before I got through all the protocol to be allowed in there. I felt bad because she was deathly ill without anybody in there making her feel better-nobody holding her and telling her everything was going to be all right and that somebody loved her. I said to my friend, 'I'm going to be a foster parent to children with AIDS.' What I feel in my heart is the decision wasn't mine, but was God-given - like I was put there with that little girl to make me aware there are children in the world who need to be cared for."
Wilson has been surprised at how most of her children have thrived.
"My 9-year-old wasn't expected to live to be 3," said Wilson. "He was so sick at first. Every other month, I was in a hospital with him for days at the time. But he hasn't been in the hospital in six years."
Love Is Healing
Wilson said it is "almost comical" how healthy the children have been, explaining, "I remember when one of my girls was 10 months old, the doctor told me not to get too hung up on her because she was too sick to live. I said, 'OK, if she's going to die, we need to make her as happy as we possi-

bly can while she's alive.' The other kids and I went out of our way to cater to her every whim. So 12 years later, my other kids are saying, 'OK, she's happy- what about us?'" Wilson lovingly joked, "Here we are with this spoiled-rotten kid who's doing quite well!"
Wilson acknowledged that not all stories can be so happy.
"I had one to die," she shared. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done. At that point I was like, 'I can't do this anymore.' And a friend of mine said, 'You can and you will.' She said 'This is hard, but you'll get over this, and you'll continue.' In the last two years, I've told the kids they're HIV-positive. It doesn't compute for them because they don't feel sick. My way of thinking is, 'You're alive, so live your life. We'll worry about ofher stuff later.' We don't sit around worrying about what's going to happen, because we can't do that."
Opportunities for Ill Kids
The Children's Wish Foundation International (CWFI) added to the family's happy times. CWFI fulfills wishes to seriously ill children. Wilson's case manager told her about CWFI and helped her apply.
"They gave us plane tickets and spending money to go on a cruise and to visit Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida," Wilson described. "My son's wish was to see Michael Jackson. They couldn't do that, so they granted his second wish, which was to go to Disney World. And they don't just give a child a wish and that's the end of it-they keep doing things for children who qualify. They give my kids school and Christmas stuff. Sometimes they give us passes to see movies."
If you are caring for a child who has a serious illness, ask your case manager about the Children's Wish Foundation International, which might grant your child a wish.

For more information about the Children's Wish Foundation International, call
or log onto

Foster Care Unit Division of Family and Children Services
Suite 18-222

What is the Average

Here are some characteristics of an "average" 4-year-old. Don't assume something is wrong if a child in your care or on your caseload differs from these characteristics. Remember that children change a lot in a year, and all children develop at different paces.
Four-year-olds like to ask "why?" and enjoy learning new words. Though their language skills are improving, they have not mastered using words and sometimes feel frustrated when trying to express themselves. Then they may feel bad about themselves and act out. They have not mastered self-control but are increasingly interested in controlling their own behavior. They usually express their emotions through behavior, not words. Thus, if they have strong feelings about something, they may act out-of-control. They

need and want a lot of adult help in learning to use their maturing abilities.
Four-year-olds enjoy using their developing imagination and may boast or exaggerate. Their active imaginations may also cause them to have new fears. It is good to encourage their enjoyment of being imaginative. However, if a child seems to be telling too many "tall tales" or is overly concerned with fears, it can be a good idea to talk with him or her about the differences between fact and fiction and telling entertaining stories and lies.
Four-year-olds should be able to take turns without adult supervision and attend to a task for about 10 to 12 minutes. They are interested in learning to read and sometimes pretend to read books out loud, remembering the stories from memory.