Come Fly With Me

Foster (fos`t r), v.t. 1. to promote the growth or development of; further; encourage. 2. To bring up or rear, as a foster child. 3. To care for or cherish. 4. Obs. To feed or nourish. -n. 5. A cherisher. 6. nourishment. See cherish.

Life continues to change and expand, pointing this Mama in new directions. I recently joined the staff of Angels Foster Family Network, a truly different non-profit organization I’ve been championing for awhile now.

Angels works in a unique way to scoop up our most vulnerable babies, ages newborn to three, and give them a home with ONE family who is prepared to love and nurture them for as long as it takes … until they either return to their birth families or are adopted. We give them the gift of attachment. And it’s huge.

Here are a few of the stories I’ve been involved with these last several weeks …

BG (stands for baby girl, she’s not yet been named) was born in an abandoned car. Her mother is still a teen and BG’s father was afraid to take her for medical care. Right after the birth they made their way to the home of a relative who called the police. Mother and baby were taken to the hospital, where both tested pos-tox (drugs were found in their blood and/or urine). BG will be discharged as soon as her withdrawal subsides.

Brett is a tiny newborn who was born 6 weeks premature. Shortly after delivery, it was discovered that Brett’s parents, a long-time couple who both suffer from severe schizophrenia, have  had two babies removed from their custody by child protective services in the past because they simply weren’t able to care for them. When he got big enough, Brett was taken home by his Angels family and is thriving. A Family Court judge is likely to terminate the parent’s custody permanently, but that takes months. Until then this sad, damaged couple will visit with him and bond with him. Then they’ll have their hearts broken again.

Edgar Lugo has a different kind of story. He’s the 14-year-old who grabbed international headlines last week as the baby-faced hitman for a Mexican drug cartel. The world was shocked to discover that Edgar is a U.S. citizen who was born in San Diego to parents whose lives were fractured by drugs and domestic violence. He, too, was removed from his mother after testing pos-tox at birth. He and his 5 siblings were bounced around the foster care system, eventually landing with a grandmother in Mexico. The rest, as they say, is history.

These stories are not unique. They happen every day in every town and city. These parents aren’t bad or evil people. The vast majority suffered the same kind of childhood they’ve inflicted on their babies. They’re providing the only kind of care they know.

What can be different is how we respond. The dirty little secret is that we know how to prevent this sad wreckage of human lives we see over and over. It takes one stable, loving primary caregiver. Just one.

The research and our experience at Angels has repeatedly shown that even the most heinous abuse, the most awful neglect, can be made right if children are given the chance to heal in a caring home. The resilience of the human spirit is amazing, but there’s a catch. The window of opportunity doesn’t stay open very long.

Newborn to three years. That’s all the time we have. If we don’t heal the wounds by age three, chances are they will never heal completely. We can try to bandage them and stitch them up. We can help them knit together, but scar tissue will remain and rear its head in the form of ruptured lives filled with pain. Edgar’s story may be extreme, but there are countless Edgars out there.

So if we know it, and it works, why aren’t we doing it? Why isn’t One Child, One Loving Family the model for foster care everywhere? Because it’s hard.

It’s hard to find families whose hearts are big enough to do this. What I often hear when I talk about this is, “I could never do it — I couldn’t fall in love with a baby and then have to give her back.” The fact is, more than half the babies we place are adopted by their Angels families, but we can never promise that, and the goal is always reunification with the birth parents.

And it’s expensive. There’s a reason why the typical foster parent in a County system takes in multiple kids — sometimes up to six (!) — because otherwise it doesn’t pencil out. At an average of $450 per month taking in one child doesn’t go very far. But six?

There’s the rub.

We shouldn’t be caring for these babies to pay the bills or to fill our homes, we should care for them because they are our babies, too. They live on our block and they go to our schools. If we don’t love them now, one day they will fill our psychiatric hospitals and our prisons. A full 80+ percent of the incarcerated population spent time in the foster care system.

These are our babies, and yes, it takes a village.

Foster (fos`t r). See cherish.