I didn’t get this written in a very timely fashion today because I spent most of the morning on the telephone. For 90 minutes I spoke with Andrew Bridge, author of Hope’s Boy. Before making my next telephone appointment, I paid the guy who brought me more firewood and dealt with the fitness tech who (partially) repaired our treadmill. (It doesn’t elevate now … oh darn. I never liked that anyway!) My next phone call was with Jeff Katz, the driving force behind Listening to Parents—a nationwide effort to improve communication between foster and adoptive parents and the child welfare system.

I thoroughly enjoyed both conversations and I look forward to future communications with these two gentlemen. Andrew begins a book tour shortly. I took copious notes and I will share some of Andrew’s thoughts in upcoming blogs about foster care in general and his experience in particular. Jeff is most interested in generating more traffic to the Listening to Parents website and developing a nationwide swell of voices that legislators are unable to ignore. Jeff’s target population is pre-adoptive parents as well as current foster and adoptive parents. The Attachment & Trauma Network mostly serves parents who have already adopted, although we do occasionally assist pre-adoptive parents. But in terms of services needed after the adoption, ATN’s mission statement aligns nicely with the goals of Listening to Parents.

My conversations with both men overlapped in terms of discussing the foster care system and the needs of everyone involved … the kids, the foster and adoptive parents, and the birth parents. Let me leave you with these thoughts from Andrew, who in addition to being a product of foster care, pursued a career as an attorney advocate for foster children:

** Only the stories that break out of the norm of what it means to be in foster care make the news. Touching, beautiful stories or horrific abuse at the hands of foster parents. What we don’t see is the vast middle or vast majority of kids who lead lonely, quiet lives.

** In terms of abuse vs. neglect, overwhelmingly children are in foster care because of issues around neglect. Under that, there are issues of poverty and drugs.

** There is a generalized absence of mental health care in this country. The government paves streets and removes garbage well, but when it comes for caring for individual people’s lives, they do very, very poorly. We see it across the board—veterans, elder care, foster care.

I asked Andrew his view of the "average" foster parent. This was his response:

The majority of them are making a good, sincere effort to care for kids. This goes back to what I said before about the press coverage. The average parent is a struggling individual trying to do their best and receiving far less support than they should be receiving through their licensing agency. Foster parents are not doing it for the money … when you look at how little money they receive, it doesn’t make sense! There is a class action suit occurring in California right now that has shown you will make more money if you kennel dogs than you will taking in foster kids, and frankly it will be much easier! I do not buy the argument that foster parents do it for the money. The same is true for most social workers, who also don’t receive agency support in their jobs.

I have much more to share from my conversation with Andrew. I strongly encourage you to get his book. Beth started reading it tonight!

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