Even the best foster homes can’t replace family support

Consider joining us, and making a difference in 2012

Register@ http://www.afamilyforeverychild.org/Announce/OpenHouseForm.php

Published: (Wednesday, Dec 28, 2011 05:00AM) Midnight, Dec 28 

When you hear about child abuse or neglect, most people’s first reaction is “get that kid out of danger.” Once we know the child has been removed, we breathe a sigh of relief, assume that the child will be better off in foster care, and consider the problem fixed. If we think of the abuser, it is almost always to condemn and judge: “How could they do that?”

While our reactions make sense — child safety is imperative — is removing children from their homes and everything they know really the best for them and for our community? As 2012 nears, take time to reflect on this important question. And realize Lane County has a higher than average rate of children in foster care. More than 1,000 kids are in care on any given day.

Foster care is an essential element for keeping children safe, and most foster homes provide great places for children. But even the best foster homes are not meant to be permanent.

Children who grow up in foster care do not do as well as those raised in their own homes. They are more likely to do poorly in school, become teen parents and become involved in the criminal justice system.

Meet Dylan. He was separated from his siblings and placed in foster care at age 5, due to a history of abuse and neglect. Over the next seven years, Dylan was put in 18 different homes.

Predictably, he began showing serious behaviors including academic problems, self-harm and anger. Alone in the world, his options were quickly fading.

If we don’t put kids who are at risk into foster care, how do we keep them safe? And if we place them in care, how do we reduce the negative ramifications?

One answer may surprise you: Increase the child’s contact with safe family members and work toward family reunification.

“Whoa!” you say, “Those people have problems — don’t give their kids back.” It’s true: Reunification will not work for all families. However, children who have contact with their families while in care or who are fostered by extended family members tend to have better outcomes and overall higher resiliency.

Oregon’s child welfare system has assigned a high priority to reunification and relative foster care. Since 2009, Casey Family Programs has partnered with Oregon’s Department of Human Services, the Commission on Children and Families and the state Judicial Department to safely and equitably reduce the number of children in foster care. 

In the summer of 2011, Lane County was invited to join this effort, and local leaders said yes.

Now it’s time for everyone to get involved. Families who have children in the foster care system tend to have low incomes and are disproportionately Native American, Alaska native and African-American.

These families are members of your church. Their children go to school with your kids. You see them at the park. They are your co-workers; in many ways they are just like you and your family. It’s time to step forward and support birth families, extended families and foster and adoptive families.

Remember Dylan? His caseworker partnered with A Family for Every Child to comb his case files for safe family and positive support connections. Dylan ended up reconnecting with his siblings and their adoptive parents, several members of his extended family and his fourth-grade teacher.

These people who are so important to Dylan circled around him, giving him a sense of identity, security and family.

Make your 2012 new year’s resolution to be the difference for the children in our communities. Be there for Dylan:

Attend our open house on Jan. 10 to learn about volunteer opportunities at A Family for Every Child, Court Appointed Special Advocates and other local agencies. Discover how you can support, mentor, foster or advocate for a child in need. Call 541-343-2856 for more information.

Support children who are in foster care. Include them in activities; invite family members to participate as well.

Don’t paint families with one brush, assuming the entire family — aunts, uncles, grandparents — is guilty just because the parent abused a child.

Reach out to families who are struggling. Offer compassion, support and understanding. Find opportunities to help parents who are making positive changes in their lives. Recognize that most parents want what is best for their children; everyone makes mistakes.

Talk about how to support families in your school, workplace, faith organization and neighborhood. Support families as their children come back to them.

These are our neighbors, friends, acquaintances and kids. We all have a stake in this. And we all have the power to make a big difference right now. 

Raise your hand and say you’ll help. See you on Jan. 10!

Christy Barrett-Obie, executive director of A Family for Every Child, is a member of the Lane County Casey Initiative Steering Committee working to safely and equitably reduce the number of children in foster care.

Card-maker deals in personal touches

Finding a family isn't always about tracing a blood line - Tampa Bay Times

Finding a family isn't always about tracing a blood line - Tampa Bay Times

A Washington County family of eight celebrates a Christmas gift, an adopted baby girl with Down syndrome

Published: Saturday, December 24, 2011, 6:11 PM Updated: Sunday, December 25, 2011, 7:55 AM

By Tom Hallman Jr., The Oregonian The Oregonian

- December 17, 2011--Sandi Brannock with 2-year-old Amira and Elyana, now 5 1/2 months old. Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian Adoption of baby with Down Syndrome is a gift for family gallery (6 photos)

The Christmas gift arrived unexpectedly in the heat of summer when a woman in rural Washington County picked up the phone and was confronted with a choice that she knew would ultimately alter the course of a life.

What if she hadn't been home? Or had declined, saying the timing wasn't right? Both haunting questions that get to the core of love, sacrifice and family -- concepts people focus on so intently during this time of year.

With one little word -- "yes" -- a journey began.

Though it may have started out of desperation, it ended in joy Friday afternoon -- just two days before Christmas -- when a family gathered in a courtroom for a simple ceremony that couldn't begin to do justice to all that had taken transpired during the past five months.

The call came on July 13 when Sandi Brannock's husband was at work and the couple's six kids were busy playing in another part of the house. At her desk, she glanced at the caller identification and read Cincinnati. Brannock knew only one person there. And, sure enough, when she picked up it was Robin Steele, coordinator for the National Down Syndrome Adoption Network.

Five days earlier, a mother had given birth in Washington state to twin girls. One was healthy. The other had a heart defect and Down syndrome, both a complete surprise. The parents had decided they were going to take one twin home and leave the other behind. Called boarder babies, these children become wards of the state, which places them in foster care. Steele, who 35 years ago adopted such a child, had been searching her organization's database to find someone who might take this child.

The parents were checking out of the hospital in two days.

She needed to find a family who not only had an interest in adopting a special needs child, but who had also completed a detailed home study, the first step in the adoption process. The computer came up with Sandi and Kirk Brannock. Eighteen months earlier, the couple -- both 46 and married for 17 years -- had adopted Amira, a two-week-old Washington baby girl who had Down syndrome. Steele had an important question for Sandi: Were they interested in adopting again?

Brannock asked if any other families had expressed interest.

No.

• 
  

The circumstances touched a nerve with Brannock, a registered nurse who had worked in a hospital's postpartum and neonatal unit before quitting to raise her children. She knew of a single mother who planned to put her unborn child up for adoption, but the adoptive family backed out when the child was born with cerebral palsy. The birth mother also walked away, and the child was institutionalized. The story hit close to home because one of the Brannocks' sons, Cole, 12, has cerebral palsy.

Brannock told Steele she had to talk with her husband, who works in the high tech field. After a quick phone conversation, she got back to Steele and said yes.

That evening, the couple gathered their five sons, ages 6 to 16. Before they had adopted Amira -- who now walked around the living room during the discussion -- they talked with their boys about what it would mean for their lives. Once again, they wanted their boys to weigh in. One day, when their parents were gone, the responsibility of having sisters with special needs would fall to the boys, they told them. The answer was unanimous. They were gaining another sister, one they would love as much as they loved Amira.

• 
  

The next morning, the family climbed into their 10-seat bus and set out to bring another little girl home. On the way, the adoption caseworker called on a cellphone and told the Brannocks to go to the hospital where paperwork giving them legal permission to see the baby would be waiting.

They arrived at the hospital early in the evening. The boys and their sister stayed in the neonatal waiting room. Their parents were each given a wristband that read "Baby A." On the band was the date the unnamed girl was born. Brannock studied the band, trying to remember what she'd been doing the day the girl she now considered her daughter was born. A nurse led the way to a room with a sliding glass door. She passed a crib where a healthy baby girl slept and stopped in front of a crib near the back of the room. She picked up a bundle and placed it in Sandi Brannock's arms. Brannock scooted over so her husband could sit next to her. She pulled back the blanket to look at the little face.

The baby was small and pale, more fragile than Brannock had expected, and she said a silent prayer asking for strength.

Kirk Brannock took pictures of baby on his cellphone, then went to show the kids her image. Nurses told Sandi Brannock the baby had heart problems and had undergone blood transfusions, which was why she was so pale. Brannock handed the baby back to a nurse. She said she and her husband would return Friday, and the family checked in to a nearby motel.

Sandi Brannock didn't want this newborn girl to leave the hospital without a name. She researched names online, studying the meaning of each one. None felt right.

Then she found Elyana -- God has answers.

The next morning, the Brannocks drove to the adoption agency to complete the paperwork and to meet the parents who decided to give up one of their daughters.

At 11:30 a.m., the parents walked into the room with Elyana's sister in a baby carrier. Sandi Brannock expected a drug-addicted mother, or maybe a young girl. Instead, she found an attractive couple who appeared to be at least middle class. The parents were too nervous to sit, and they stood in the middle of the room. At one point, Brannock studied Elyana's sister. She saw the clear resemblance between the two girls, save for the distinctive facial features that indicated Down syndrome. The couple told the Brannocks they had a 3-year-old son who knew his mother had given birth to twins. The parents said they planned to tell him one of his sisters had gone to live with a family who would care for her.

As gently as possible, Kirk Brannock asked why they'd decided to give up one daughter. When the Brannocks had decided to adopt Amira, some people couldn't understand why. Even though it felt right to them, they approached it analytically, listing the pros and cons. The only "con" was fear. And that was not enough to stop them from going ahead.

Fighting tears, the woman said she and her husband were their parents' only children. They had no family in the area to help them raise a special-needs child. They both had demanding careers. They said they wanted the baby girl to live with a family who could do a better job than they could. The birth mother, clearly hurting, began crying. She said she loved the little girl.

The Brannocks would never judge this woman and her husband, a couple so full of fear and doubt. Better than anyone else, they knew what they were going through and would never want them to feel guilty. A little baby -- made the way Sandi believes God intended her -- would soon be joining a family eagerly awaitng her arrival. But it was impossible to say it just then. All the Brannocks could do was wrap their arms around this couple and hug them tightly.

When the meeting ended, the Brannocks returned to the hospital, where they filled out more paperwork and scheduled appointments in Portland with a pediatrician and a heart specialist.

Then they carried Elyana Brannock to meet her brothers and sister.

• 
  

Elyana was so small and fragile that doctors had to wait three months before she'd gained enough weight to fix the hole in her heart. She was eventually released from the hospital and sent home, but the recovery took more than a month. It wasn't until late November that their little girl was clearly healing.

A date -- what the family called "the day" -- was set to make the adoption official.

Two days before Christmas they all gathered in the Washington County Courthouse, waiting to be brought in to a courtroom where Circuit Court Judge Rita Batz Cobb would sign the adoption papers. All the Brannock kids, their parents, grandparents and family friends packed the hallway, waiting for the signal that it was time.

He reached for his cellphone, tapped the picture icon up popped a photo of Elyana.

"The rough patch in her life is over," Brannock said. "She smiled for the first time two days ago. We got it on film."

-- Tom Hallman Jr.