Serving These Communities
Covering the Heart of Hamilton County Since 1983
Foster Parents
The recent news item about the terrible mistreatment of little Marcus Feisel really got me sickened. I am sure that most of you also felt a sense of rage about what happened. It is not my intent here to chastise the child services but this seems to be a continuing problem.
During the three years we lived in Florida, there were several cases of mishandling
by county child agencies. In one case, a child disappeared and was never located.
Fed-
Back in the late 1950s, my first wife and I were now living in our new home and the Franklin County Child Services was needing Foster Parents to take care of newborns. Back then, any single woman who was pregnant was generally "pressured" into giving up the child for adoption. These newborns, therefore, needed a temporary home until satisfactory adoptive parents could be found. So we applied, and were accepted. I know we were thoroughly checked and investigated.
We had two children of our own, around ages 8 and 6, but we wanted to "add" to our family, even on a temporary basis. So we soon had our first foster child, a girl. She was actually about three months old when she was turned over to us. She had been with another family but they wanted to take an extensive trip out of state and the child could not go along as it was not permissible to take the child out of state. So, we got her and she was a real jewel. We had her for about six months when the agency finally found a suitable couple to adopt this child. So, one day she was picked up by the agency worker and delivered to the new parents. We never met either the birth mother or the adoptive parents.
Then we were given a little boy to take care of. He was, I think, around five months old. The family where he had been had a serious health emergency so the agency had to place the boy elsewhere. Now this one was more of a problem. It seems that there was always someone holding this kid to where he didn't want to be put down and allowed to just play alone. So, along with taking care of him, we worked on getting him used to playing with toys and learning to crawl. Eventually, he quit whining for someone to pick him up all the time, so that when he was finally adopted, he was a more normal kid.
Then we soon had our third foster child This one was only five days old when we got her. A real problem developed shortly after we started taking care of her. She developed a severe case of colic. She cried and cried from the pain. We would put a hot water bottle on her belly, or a hot towel and hold her against our chest and massage her back to try to ease the pain. This was especially trying when one of us had to be up during the night. Nevertheless, we tried to make this poor child comfortable. The agency soon realized that this child needed serious medical attention, so they took her and placed her in a nursery where she could get that. After that, we were making other plans and decided, reluctantly, to drop out of the system. Many friends kept asking us how we could give up these children so easily. Our answer was that we had mentally prepared ourselves for just that situation..
Being a Foster Parent is a big responsibility. No one should go into it just for the little amount of money that is paid. Obviously, more needs to be done to screen those who want to be Foster Parents.