The CALL raises awareness of need for more foster families
May is National Foster Care Awareness Month, and The CALL, Children of Arkansas Loved for a Lifetime, is focused on recruiting and training foster families from the Christian community.
“We talk to churches, raising the awareness and letting people know what we need essentially because what we need is more homes for the kids,” said Dennis Berry, chairman of the board for The CALL statewide.
There are around 60 foster homes in both counties, and more than three times as many children in foster care, Berry said on Monday.
“Unfortunately, we have about 215 kids in foster care right now and that number doesn’t add up to be a good situation for children in foster care,” he said.
There are around 4,700 children in foster care in Arkansas, but only 1,300 foster homes, he said.
The usual goal for at least the first year a child is entered into foster care is reunification with the birth family.
When there are not enough available homes for the children and youths, they are sometimes sent to other counties in the state. This can make the goal of reunification more difficult, Tonya Ross, the county coordinator for The Call in Garland and Hot Spring counties.
“That causes disruption for the children.
Coming into foster care, being separated from your birth family is traumatic in and of itself. Of course, there’s usually some sort of trauma that has taken place to cause them to need to come into foster care, some sort of neglect or trauma that’s initiated the safety concerns,” Ross said.
“But then, when children have to be moved out of the county where they have no familiar surroundings, they have to change schools, possibly change doctors, that is even more trauma that child is experiencing.”
Both Berry and Ross are foster parents themselves. Berry and his wife started fostering in 2008. After a five-year break and moving to Hot Springs in 2016, he and his wife have had more than 100 children in their home.
“One of the difficult aspects of being a foster parent is having empathy for the biological families. It’s hard because these bio parents are really good people, they just made a series of bad decisions that has led them to the situation where they’re in right now in most cases,” he said.
“We’re not law enforcement, we’re not the judge, we’re the foster parents and we need to focus on taking care of the kids.”
Berry gets calls often about finding a home for children from other counties, he said.
“I got calls to take in 20 kids in one day. All across the state they were calling homes, looking for placements for 20 kids. Unfortunately, 12 of those kids had to stay in one of the offices in the state that night,” he said.
“My wife and I are very fortunate that we have a couple of extra bedrooms,” he said. “So many times when Garland County calls in the middle of the night, we’ll take those kids in overnight just for one night until they can find another foster home the next day, or over the weekend until the case workers can find family members that they can place the kids with.”
The CALL provides training for potential new foster families, which includes learning about trauma and the situations many of the children have been through. The “bridge organization” between Arkansas and churches, Berry said, offers 30 hours of training classes, which take up two full weekends.
“You have to learn about the situation that the kids are coming from,” Berry said. “They don’t always come from our backgrounds and our environments. We have to be open to understanding and accepting where they’ve come from and supporting their culture and beliefs while they’re in foster care, as well.”
The difference foster parents make in a child’s life when they open their homes to fostering is “indescribable,” Ross said.
“Knowing that you’re able to provide a safe and loving home for a child makes an internal impact on that child, teaching them what it’s like to be part of a family and to be loved and accepted unconditionally,” she said. “Helping them to heal is a blessing beyond words.”
“It’s amazing that many of the kids, when they come in the door, within minutes, when they feel safe, they will call us ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ because they have been lacking in that parental connection that most of us need,” Berry said.