Woman runs online support group for foster parents
Shares experience, advice with nearly 4,000 people
By Carole Sharwarko
When people suggest foster parents do it for the money, Tina Peterson lets out a little chuckle.
Those who open their homes to children in need do get a monthly government stipend, though Peterson said it only covers a child’s basic needs. Instead, she said, the real rewards for her and other foster parents extend far beyond the monetary.
A resident of Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, Peterson runs a Facebook group for current and prospective foster parents. Started in 2012, Illinois Foster Parents Support Group provides a platform for its 3,700 members to exchange information, advice and support.
Peterson and her husband, Richard, decided to become licensed foster parents after attempts to conceive naturally failed and adoption proved complex and costly.
The couple fostered their son Lucian, 9, from infancy, and adopted him about two years later. They also have another foster son, now 4, who came into their care when he was 7 weeks old.
Getting feedback from group members with experience is valuable to foster parents, who often face unknown circumstances when they take a placement, Peterson said.
When a foster parent accepts a child or children into their home, the child might be newly entering the foster system or may come from another foster home.
“Being a foster parent is really hard because you’re getting kids of all different ages, and they’re kids that sometimes come from very traumatic backgrounds,” she said.
When a child enters the foster care system, caseworkers often still are investigating what trauma they suffered, Peterson said. It isn’t the foster parent’s job to uncover these issues, but to be sensitive to them and report any information that surfaces.
Becoming a certified foster parent
While the Facebook group includes currently licensed foster parents, it also helps prospective foster families understand what they’re facing. To start with, gaining a foster care license requires submitting to a meticulous process, Peterson said.
“As a foster parent you take PRIDE classes, where you get a general overview of what kids come into care for, and the things you can do as a foster parent to help,” Peterson said. “Then to maintain your license, you have to take continuing education classes every four years.”
These state facilitated courses are called Parent Resources for Information, Development, and Education. They teach foster parents-in-training about their rights and responsibilities, and legal topics related to foster care. Classes discuss healthy discipline techniques, and how foster parents can provide a “healing home” by responding to their child’s emotional needs.
PRIDE classes also expose hopeful foster parents to information about traumas children may have suffered, with topics such as sexual abuse, attachment disorders and behavioral crises. One class shares resources available to children and helps foster parents understand how to access them.
The process of getting licensed for foster care often takes months, and Peterson said PRIDE classes are only the beginning. After that, staff members from the Department of Children and Family Services evaluate prospective families and their homes.
“Taking the classes is the easy part,” she said. “It’s when DCFS comes out to your house that things get more intense. They interview you and your spouse together and separately to find out more about your family environment growing up, how you approach discipline.”
Foster parents submit to reviews of their background, physical health, and finances. Caseworkers check for home safety concerns, ensuring parents follow DCFS guidelines. For example, Peterson said, medications and cleaning products must be kept in locked cabinets.
“They check to make sure the home has hot water, cooking gas, carbon monoxide detectors, lots of things,” Peterson said. “It’s a long process to become a foster parent, not something that happens overnight.”
People decide to foster children for a variety of reasons. They might be like the Petersons, who were led to fostering after they couldn’t have biological children. Others might see it as a way to contribute to the greater good of society.
Some people become foster parents through a kind of reverse process, Peterson said. In this case, a child with whom an adult already has a relationship requires care after being removed from their home. Likewise, an adult who has been informally caring for a child on a long-term basis may apply to become the child’s legal foster parent.
What it’s like to be a foster parent
As most children in the foster system experienced traumatic home lives, Peterson said the best thing foster parents can provide is a caring, stable environment.
“Your job is just to make them feel loved, and give them a sense of normalcy, of a safe place,” she said.
While foster parents offer love and care to children, they also manage the reality of being limited by their lack of biological ties. For example, foster parents cannot make medical decisions for foster children. Instead, the issue is referred to a caseworker for approval.
Until enactment of Illinois’ Reasonable and Prudent Parenting Standard in 2017, a foster parent’s decisions were even more restricted, not allowing them to sign up foster children for extracurricular activities or have them engage in social activities without approval.
The law made it OK for foster parents to use their best judgment in these circumstances.
“Now we can sign our kids up for baseball and we don’t have to ask for permission,” Peterson said. “We used to not be able to take our kids to get a haircut. We would have to ask for permission, and sometimes that can take weeks.”
Though foster families can grow close, Peterson said, parents must be ready to relinquish children if their caseworker decides it’s appropriate for them to return home to their biological parents. Illinois DCFS sees reunification as its central goal, Peterson said.
“You have to be willing to foster knowing that the child may not be with you forever,” Peterson said. “When we first became foster parents, that was the hardest thing because I wanted to be a mom so bad.”
Now that she has one adopted son and longtime experience in the foster system, Peterson happily offers advice. Most importantly, she said, make a list of deal-breakers before taking in a foster child. If you don’t think you can handle a child with behavioral issues or one who is medically fragile, don’t take those children.
“Don’t feel like you’re letting down that child when you have to say no,” Peterson said. “There’s going to be another foster parent out there who says, ‘That’s my specialty.’ ”