Importance of being a foster parent

Junie Johnson really sums up her feelings about being a foster mother with just one sentence. “I really love helping them because I know they have the need,” Johnson says about the children she brings into her home when the youngsters’ families can no lon

Johnson has helped more than 10 foster children of different ages, with some coming to her with different problems that have included trauma, abuse, or mental illness. She acknowledges that sometimes this caretaking is a challenge.

But Johnson is a licensed therapeutic foster parent through the Children’s Community Program and that means she is trained to handle many of the issues children can have when they have faced neglect or abuse.

As Connecticut Department of Children and Families Commissioner Joette Katz noted in an email, “Children’s Community Program is a valuable partner especially because the foster parents it licenses receive special training to care for children with more complex needs.”

Yet, even as DCF works to put children into homes rather than institutional settings, the state has approximately 4,400 children in the foster care system, according to DCF. And that means, while the state says it has since 2011 doubled the percentage of children in DCF care who are placed with relative, many children still need temporary homes.

These children need these homes at a time when the number of willing volunteers to take in foster children is dwindling, according to Brian Lynch, chief executive officer of CCP. It’s a problem nationwide, Lynch notes.

Let’s face it, caring for children, including those with very serious problems, is hard work, and the $1,500 a month that foster parents receive for a child really does make them volunteers in many ways when the cost of raising a child is factored in.

But that is where the love comes in.

“You have to love unconditionally,” said Kim Boyd-Hunter, who also is a therapeutic foster parent and takes joy when the children she cares for can be reunited with their families.

While not every foster parent is necessarily commendable, it’s clear that many are. The care that they offer the children entrusted to them is invaluable now for those in DCF care and as the children grow to productive and responsible adulthood.

And across the state, there are foster parents who nurture foster children in the same way they would if they were their own biological children.

As Boyd-Hunter put it, “You don’t have to be blood to be related here. We take you in.”

This can-do attitude of families who are willing to care for children — so often temporarily — is what makes this system work. Although when DCF places a child, the agency takes great pains to find a suitable relative, that outcome is not always possible.

Absent a capable parent or another family member, the next best thing is a loving foster parent or foster family to nurture children in a way that keeps them safe and, when they need it, helps them to heal.

We offer praise to folks such as Ty Thompson, who with his wife, Niekka, have provided foster care for children for eight years in their Connecticut home.

“It’s not about the money, it’s about the passion,” Thompson said.

We hope more people who feel such a drive to help children will consider this important work.

PETER HVIZDAK — NEW HAVEN REGISTER Junie Johnson of New Haven, a foster parent who has been trained and certified by the Children’s Community Programs of CT, has taken in foster children who have a history of behavioral issues or have been diagnosed with mental disorders.