Answering the call
Oklahoma continues effort to recruit foster parents
Ashley Kehl kept a watchful eye on her foster daughter as the little girl bounded back and forth from her bedroom to the living room, carrying book after book, her small feet pattering against the hardwood floor.
As the 2-year-old girl flipped through the pages of a “Wizard of Oz” book, she paused at a picture of the Cowardly Lion. “Rawr!” she growled. Soon, she bounced back to her room and on to the next book.
Seated on the living room couch in her Oklahoma City home, Kehl, 31,
smiled and laughed as she helped the girl identify pictures in the books shetoted back and forth.
These days, Kehl’s home is a little livelier, her mornings a little busier and her heart a little fuller.
“Being in charge of another human now that I have to get out the door every morning, that’s been an adjustment,” Kehl said. “But it’s one I welcome. It’s one that I enjoy.I enjoy taking care of her, and I enjoy being able to have her make memories that she might not otherwise get to make.”
Recruiting more families
In November 2015, Gov. Mary Fallin and state Department of Human Services officials launched a statewide initiative called Oklahoma Fosters, which seeks to unite state, tribal and local governments, as well as businesses, nonprofit organizations and the faith-based community, to recruit more foster families.
They wound up recruiting 1,080 traditional foster families by July 1, surpassing their initial goal of 1,054.
During the first few months of the initiative, it was as if people came out of the woodwork, said Ashley Hahn, executive director of the Oklahoma Fosters initiative.
“It’s amazing to see the hearts of Oklahomans,” she said.
Now in the second year of the initiative, officials set a goal of recruiting 1,080 more traditional foster families and 176 more therapeutic foster families during the 2016-17 fiscal year, Hahn said. The number of foster homes in Oklahoma fluctuates.
At the start of the 2014 fiscal year, the state had 1,520 traditional foster homes and supported homes. By the beginning of the 2017 fiscal year, the number of traditional foster homes and supported homes had grown to 2,372. That number does not include therapeutic foster homes for children who have a higher level of behavioral health needs or kinship homes, where children are placed with a relative or someone else with whom they have an established relationship.
Officials are targeting their recruitment efforts to try to better meet the needs of the children who are coming into care. They need the foster parent pool to reflect the needs of those children, said Child Welfare Services Director Jami Ledoux. They want children to be able to stay in their own communities, connected to their kin and culture, whenever possible, she said.
“We’re not where we want to be in terms of matching kids,” Ledoux said. “We want to get to a point where we have enough foster families available to where we can really look to find the right family for each kid and not just look at what homes do we have available?”
Nearly 25 percent of the children in state care who are in an out-of-home placement are placed both outside their home county and outside a contiguous county, according to information from DHS.
The state has been working to make improvements in targeted areas within the foster care system since the adoption of the Pinnacle Plan in 2012, the result of a class-action lawsuit filed against DHS and the foster care system.
In October 2014, there were more than 11,300 children in state care. By Nov. 30, 2016, that number had been cut to about 9,600, according to information from DHS.
Ledoux said there is a tremendous need for foster parents who are willing to care for teenagers or to take in sibling groups.
Officials also are trying to recruit more foster parents who can care for children with special needs. All of the children who are in state custody have experienced some sort of trauma, she said, but some of the children who come into care have special medical needs or developmental disabilities.
When children have to be separated from their biological family, most of the time the ultimate goal is to reunify the children with their biological families. DHS staff would like foster parents to be a source of support to the children’s biological families and to help mentor them.
Ledoux said she has seen many cases where foster parents become a part of the child’s extended family, even after the child goes home and is reunified with his or her biological parents.
“They’ve helped that biological family build an extended support system through fostering,” Ledoux said. “So when that works, that works beautifully because then those children don’t have to experience another loss. They get to keep those foster parents and maintain them as part of their lives.”
Answering the call
On a recent Friday morning, Kehl sat crosslegged on her foster daughter’s bedroom floor. She pushed a button on a toy dollhouse that caused it to play music, flipping through songs until she arrived at a particular tune. As soon as it played, her foster daughter jumped up and down and twirled to the rhythm.
Kehl, who works as chief of staff at the Oklahoma State Senate, made the decision to become a foster parent in spring 2016. She said she has always had a heart for children, and becoming a foster parent was something she felt called to do.
Kehl gained a first-hand introduction to fostering through her parents, who served as foster parents for a couple of years after Kehl and her sister were grown. Seeingsome of the children her parents cared for experience simple childhood pleasures like cotton candy or a Popsicle for the first time touched Kehl.
“I remember sitting there watching that first happen and thinking I want to be a part of that,” Kehl said. “That’s something I want to do for other children.”
Kehl has been called upon to help several children so far.
The first call she got came on a Friday night when she was out to dinner with friends. DHS workers had to remove a2-year-old girl from her home, and the girlneeded a place to spend the night until she could be placed with other relatives the next day.
Kehl rushed home to get ready.
A DHS worker informed her that the girl only spoke Spanish, so Kehl used Google to search words like “doll” and “bear” in Spanish. When the little girl arrived, she was in tears because she had just been removed from her family.
Kehl noticed she was wearing a shirt with the character Elsa from Disney’s “Frozen.” Kehl had a copy of the movie, which had a Spanish language option, so she turned that on in an effort to comfort the girl with something familiar. The next day, they visited a pumpkin patch before the girl’s case worker came to pick her up.
The young girl now living with Kehl came in late October. Someone at DHS called asking Kehl if she could take the girl and her older sister. Kehl had them both for a weekend, but the sister wound up needing to be moved to a therapeutic foster home. The girls still see each other every week.
Kehl said there was a transition period for both her and her foster daughter. Just getting out the door in the morning now requires more effort. A 2-year-old does not move as fast as a 31-year-old, Kehl joked, so she has learned to build more time into her schedule.
At such a young age, it is impossible for the girl to fully understand why she was removed from her family. Sometimes that is a struggle, and the only way she knows how to express her confusion or sadness is through tears or anger. But she has also had plenty of joy-filled moments and sweet encounters during her time living with Kehl.
“You build a relationship with them,” Kehl said. “They just crawl in your heart. They become part of your family.”
Kehl knows the girl might not remember her when she is older. Saying goodbye won’t be easy, but Kehl takes solace in knowing that she was able to be there for the girl at a time in the girl’s life when she needed stability and love.
“I will know that in that season that I had her, she was able to be a child,” Kehl said. “She was able to make very special memories. She was able to … develop mentally and emotionally and do all the things a normal little girl would do.”
As she spoke, she was interrupted by her foster daughter, who let out another “Rawr!”
“And be a lion at the same time,” Kehl added, laughing.
Finding a forever home
Another goal of the Oklahoma Fosters initiative isto helpseek adoptive families for approximately 550 legally free children in state care who are in need of a permanent home and don’t have an adoptive family identified.
Patrick and Barbara Yeary, of Edmond, doubled the size of their family by adopting two teenage boys.
When they met Will, he teased the couple, avid Thunder lovers, by asking whether they could handle him being a Miami Heat fan.
“I said we’d work through it,” Barbara Yeary recalled, laughing.
Later came JJ, another boy the couple would eventually adopt. During one early visit, JJ, knowing the family’s tight Thunder ties, showed up wearing a Miami Heat jersey.
Fortunately for Patrick and Barbara, both boys were just kidding about their allegiance. They all attend Thunder games together cheering from their seats in “Loud City,” and the parents now have their sons’ school schedules to consider before heading to the airport for their ritual of greeting Thunder players returning home during the playoffs.
Barbara and Patrick first saw JJ on a KFOR television segment called “A Place to Call Home” in September 2015. The Yearys had been considering adoption, but seeing JJ opened their hearts to the idea of adopting a teenager rather than a young child.
Barbara was at home recovering from surgery when the segment aired. When Patrick got home that night, she told him: “I just saw our son.” The Yearys called DHS in hopes of bringing JJ into their family, but he was no longer available by the time the couple was approved.
Instead, the Yearys were introduced to Will, who moved in with them in February.
Later on, DHS called to inform the Yearys that JJ was available for adoption. He moved in over the summer, and the Yearys officially adopted him on Oct. 5. JJ chose a new first name, Jermaine, when he was adopted.
On Tuesday, the first official business day after Will’s 16th birthday, the Yearys gathered inside a courtroom at the Oklahoma County Juvenile Justice Center in north Oklahoma City to finalize hisadoption.
They wore T-shirts with Thunder colors that said “Happy New Yeary” and the date, which they distributed to more than two dozen family members and other supporters. They even brought one for the judge.
When Special District Court Judge Cassandra Williams asked members of the group if they would pledge to always be there in support of Will and the rest of the Yeary family, the crew answered with a resounding chorus of “yes” and “absolutely.”
After his adoption was finalized, Will wrapped his parents in a hug, then reached behind his back to grab his brother’s arm and pull him into the family embrace.
After Will and JJ met Barbara and Patrick, it was ultimately up to the boys whether they wanted to proceed and move in with the couple and eventually be adopted, said Patrick Yeary, 47.
“Fortunately they both chose us,” he said.
Barbara Yeary, 43, who wiped away tears Tuesday, said she hopes other families will consider fostering or adoption. Adopting Will and JJ is the best thing she and Patrick have ever done, she said.
“We want people to see how awesome it is,” she said. “We share our story as much as we can because it’s amazing. … We had a really fun life before, but it was incomplete.”