Foster Parents Deserve Support
Opinion
By Marianna Litovich
May is Foster Care Awareness Month, an opportunity for child-welfare advocates and professionals to shine a light on our work in the hopes that folks will be interested, learn about the challenges and rewards of what we do, and engage with us — because everyone can do something to make a difference.
Currently in Western Mass., there are almost 2,000 children in foster care as a result of their family’s inability to meet their needs. These families are typically plagued with social welfare concerns, poverty, substance misuse, and lack of social support, which renders them unable to care for their children.
If a relative or other known adult in the child’s life (such as a teacher, coach, or friend) cannot be identified to care for them while their parents attempt to rehabilitate, they will end up on the doorstep of someone like me — a foster parent who will welcome them, embrace them into the fold of their family, and care for them as long as is necessary. It can be an overwhelming commitment, one my spouse and I made for 15 years.
Despite my training as a psychologist, I was overwhelmed and surprised by how taxing being a foster parent can be, and how much the journey can impact one’s mental health and well-being. A handful of years into our journey, I also started a nonprofit to support other foster families, creating a community of folks all in the daily trenches of foster care. Through All Our Kids Inc., I met countless families who were struggling in the same ways, dealing with the same things, taxing their mental health through the same means.
The challenges of foster care are numerous. It can be complicated and messy and frustrating, pushing many of us to question whether we’re really cut out for this. A lot of people assume the hardest part is managing children’s behavior, or the uncertainty regarding if and when you’ll say goodbye to a child you love. These are hard, but typically not the deal breakers.
Working with hundreds of families over the years, I’ve learned what actually pushes people beyond their tolerance is the stress of dealing with the system: managing appointments, court dates, home visits, lack of response from overworked social workers, juggling all the therapies, the bureaucracy of getting permission for mundane things like haircuts and out-of-state travel, customer-service representatives at a child’s health insurance company … the list goes on and on. These cumulative stressors can really take a toll on a foster parent’s mental health. We need support. And it’s more simple than it sounds.
These days, our society is more open about mental health, giving ourselves and each other permission to seek help through therapy and medication. I applaud these strategies and employ them myself. But they do not reduce the stressors that wear us out and spread us thin. For that, we need to look to each other.
During Foster Care Awareness Month, I encourage everyone who is not a foster parent, and is able, to seek out a foster family and offer one piece of support: cook a meal, mow the lawn, offer a ride, offer childcare … anything that puts actions to the words, “you’ve got this, and we’ve got you.”
You’ll be amazed at the impact a small act of support can have on a family struggling to manage it all. You could, very literally, be keeping a family together. Sometimes the most powerful medicine is support from each other.
Marianna Litovich is the founder and executive director of All Our Kids Inc.
