Escalating drug crisis in NW Ga. increases need for foster parents
There isn’t a day that goes by without the escalating drug epidemic impacting a neighbor, family member, or friend here in Northwest Georgia. With meth, opioids, heroin, crack and other illegal drugs, substance abuse is stealing the lives of adults and teenagers.
Recently, my husband Tim and I came face to face with an innocent victim of widespread drug addiction. He was a neglected and abused child born into a dysfunctional home. His parents’ love for their drug of choice kept them from caring for their son.
Four years ago, I had a little boy in my kindergarten class who was being shuffled from one foster home to the next. Mitchell had witnessed incidents no young child should encounter. These experiences and lack of consistency were causing him to struggle in school. His mother was absent in his life, and he quickly bonded with me. With three children of our own, my husband and I prayed about adding to our family.
We made a connection with FaithBridge Foster Care, a child placement agency which works with local churches to recruit foster parents. Through FaithBridge, we received training and became certified foster parents. FaithBridge continued to offer us support through a variety of resources. These included respite care, babysitting, tutoring and additional services.
Mitchell first moved into our home in March 2014. He lived with us for 10 months, and then returned to his birth mother the following January. His mother was unable to overcome her addiction, and by August of the same year, Mitchell was back in foster care. Due to the fact that we had other foster kids in our home at the time, it was October before he was able to return to us. In February of 2017, we adopted Mitchell, our fourth child and a happy member of our family.
This experience as foster parents — and now adoptive parents of a child in need — has opened our eyes as well as our hearts. The Division of Family and Children Services has far more foster children in Floyd County than families willing to sponsor a child. As a result, most of these children are sent to other counties, making the experience even more traumatizing for them.
We have learned so much about the tragic lives these children lead in unstable homes surrounded by addiction. Due to his parents’ involvement in drugs, Mitchell was subject to multiple traumatic experiences. This trauma impacted his behavior, learning and social skills.
According to Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services, there are 12,872 children in foster homes in our state, and about 40 percent were removed from families due to substance abuse. Children are taken from their parents for a variety of reasons that also include neglect, abuse and abandonment.
FaithBridge Foster Care, a Christian foster care agency, works with churches to ensure there are enough loving foster homes for all children throughout metro Atlanta and other parts of the state. It helped us see the importance of what we could do to impact one little boy’s life.
FaithBridge says that if just one family from every church in our state would step forth to foster a child, the shortage of foster families would disappear overnight.
It breaks our hearts to know there are thousands more children like Mitchell in need in Northwest Georgia and throughout the state. Our community has an obligation to step forth and give these orphans a chance at a decent life. You realize you never have a shortage of love when you meet these children in your own hometown.
Throughout this experience we have received support from extended family, FaithBridge consultants, teachers, therapists and our church family. Mitchell is now doing well at home and at school. He is extremely talented and very creative. He loves to draw, sculpt and create. Dinosaurs are his specialty, and he wants to be a paleontologist when he grows up.
Before meeting Mitchell, we had never dreamed of fostering or adopting a child. However, we wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. Mitchell’s presence in our home has changed all of us. We are blessed to have him as a member of our family. It has not been an easy road, but it was definitely one worth traveling. Jim Powell of Young Harris