Could you be a foster parent?
Lots of kids need a home. Here's what it really takes to give them one
It’s the middle of the night and your doorbell rings. There on the front step are three sleepy and confused children. They come without suitcases; what they do bring with them is lice and impetigo. Their faces are discoloured with weeks of built-up dirt that will later disappear down the drain when you scrub them in the tub.
This is what Irene Victor* faced 10 years ago when she took in the first of 24 children she has fostered. The three kids were six, four and 16 months, siblings who had been severely neglected by their parents. “At first, they didn’t want to drink milk because they were used to sour milk, and they wanted to know why my bread wasn’t blue,” she says.
Victor and her husband, Peter, who live in southwestern Ontario, introduced the kids to activities such as playing in the backyard sandbox, going on bug hunts and climbing trees — all things they had never done before. “We even taught them how to hug — how to stretch out their arms and put them around someone,” says Victor. “They were astonished by the simplest things, like the fact that they got fresh clothes to wear every day.”
Ten months after they arrived, the children were reunited with their birth mother, who had received skills training from the local Children’s Aid Society (CAS) on how to keep house and care for her children. But it wasn’t long before the siblings landed back in care and on another foster parent’s doorstep.
Such is the reality of foster parenting: taking in kids who may have experienced unimaginable horrors; loving, caring for and understanding them as best you can; and then letting them go — sometimes to face an uncertain future. As many as 70,000 children are in foster care in Canada because of abuse or neglect by their parents, usually resulting from drug, alcohol or mental health problems. Child welfare agencies across the country are in desperate need of loving homes to place these children.
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What do you think?
natasha (not verified) says ....
i have been a foster parent for 2 years now and i am being placed this week with 2 children age 2 and 4 4 days before xmas and i couldnt be any happier we also have two children of our own
jackiepenney says ....
How can I be a foster parent? I need to find out cause I am getting married on June 16, 2012. I want to find out about this. Please let me know.