Parents share rewards of fostering children

With about 100 children in Lorain County in foster care, foster parents through Lorain County Children Services, 226 Middle Ave. in Elyria, continue their efforts to provide children as stable an experience before adoption as possible.

There are about 70 foster families licensed through Children Services, but many foster parents are unable to take multiple children at a time.

Kristen Fox-Berki, deputy director of Children Services, said this makes finding homes for siblings difficult, since the goal is to keep them together.

“When we talk about what the need is, people think about their mental image of a foster child,” Fox-Berki said. “But they have brothers and sisters.

“When the court says they’re not safe at home, we certainly don’t want them leaving the community, let alone their siblings.”

In addition, Fox-Berki said the number of cases of relatives, whether grandparents, aunts, uncles or older siblings, taking care of children in their family have increased over the years.

Fox-Berki said although Children Services prefer to keep foster children in the same school district, community and county, foster care placement cannot always be found in their backyard.

“We try to reduce the trauma that children go through when they can’t remain in their own homes,” she said. “They’ve already been removed from their homes, they can at least be able to stay in their own community, in something that’s familiar.”

As well as maintaining familiarity for foster children, Fox-Berki said permanency is a key factor to a child’s well-being.

The agency prefers that children remain in one home and foster parents seek out adoption if the child can no longer be cared for by their biological parents.

For those seeking foster parent certification, FoxBerki said the process includes attending classes, home visits and a lot of paperwork.

“It may seem endless, but it’s very, very important that we get that right upfront,” she said. “In the end of the day, we’re putting two people together and making sure they’re prepared appropriately.”

However, the bureaucracy of the process makes way for the rewarding results, she said.

“When (foster parents) talk of rewards, it’s not the rewards that happen right away,” Fox-Berki said. “Parents find that reward when they bring a child back home or run into the family of their foster child.

“They see the longer term vision of what we do

together today is gonna make a permanent impact on a child’s future.”

Meet the parents

After several years of deliberation, Rick Knowlton and his wife, Jen, of Elyria finally decided about seven years ago that it was time to become certified foster parents.

“We have always been thinking about it, always talking about it,” Knowlton, 52, said. “We knew a couple case workers and were friends with some foster parents. We knew there was a need for it.”

The Knowltons have since fostered eight children and have adopted a daughter.

With five biological daughters, Knowlton said fostering children has had a positive impact on their family dynamic.

He said the careers his daughters are pursuing, including early childhood education, Americorps and social work, are all influenced by acts of service that they learned through the fostering process.

“They’ve seen this and been exposed to it and decided it’s kinda what they wanna do,” Knowlton said.

The most rewarding aspect of being a foster parent is knowing the impact Knowlton said he makes on children’s lives last a lifetime.

However, it doesn’t come without patience, he said.

“It takes patience sometimes,” Knowlton said. “They’re in a new environment where they don’t know anybody, where the routine is different than they’re used to.

“Everything down to the food is different, so there’s an adjustment period.”

Knowlton said now that his family has fostered

children for so long, he couldn’t imagine that he’d never done it before.

“People say when they find out we’re foster parents, ‘I couldn’t do that, I’d get too attached,’” he said. “What people don’t get is that you need to get attached to them.

“It’s in their best interest. When they’re in your home, they’re your child.”

Teen love

For 14 years, foster mother Tonja Miller of Lorain has made a commitment to help care for teenagers in the foster care system.

“I always wanted to give back to my community,” Miller said. “I wanted to help teenagers. They were always around me, but I wanted to make the next step.”

Miller said that although most of her foster children stay with her for about a year, she has maintained contact with all but two of them.

“I know I’m someone seeing them into the future,” she said.

Teenagers come with their own set of challenges, including issues of building trust, Miller said.

“Because I deal with teens, the difficulty is they don’t understand that (neglect) is the reason they were taken from their families,” she said. “... They struggle to understand and trust this is the best decision of them in this part of their life.”

Two years ago, Miller decided to expand her age range and began fostering a 5-year-old boy.

In November, she adopted him.

“It was really exciting, knowing I was able to give him a forever home,” Miller said. “I can’t save the world, but I can help one child at a time.”