About this episode
In this episode of The Bad Roman, we look at foster care and adoption. This topic comes by request from listener Darren Freidinger, who is a foster parent himself. Since Darren asked us to do an episode on this often discussed topic, we invited him to be the guest! Beyond being a father, Darren is passionate about the church stepping in and fulfilling its role to care for orphans. He shares his experience with foster to adopt, the foster care system, and alternatives to the state-run system.
Joining Craig and Darren in this episode, is a long-time friend of the show and Bad Roman contributor, andIan Minielly. Outside of writing articles on The Bad Roman Blog, Ian is also a foster parent and has experienced the great loss of having his first foster daughter taken from him and his wife. You can read his story in his short book, Emily's Tears, and hear a synopsis on the show.
Darren and Ian share their mutual and different experiences and struggles with the system, and what they see as ways to fix it and best work with it — and Craig compares his cats to children (as normal). This episode touches on every emotion and gives a glimpse into the system that holds the fate of thousands of children who become wards of the state, through no fault of their own.
Christians are called to care for orphans and widows – those who are helpless. We can do that even without fostering any children ourselves. More than anything, these kids need something positive in their lives. They need support. And it’s our job to provide for them. The question is, how?
Episode Timestamps:
5:15 Why Darren’s a foster parent
His wife was passionate about it
Unable to have kids
Got licensed through Catholic Charities
Can sign up to do temporary foster care or to adopt
Can stipulate at-risk kids or not
Got 4 and a 6-year-old girls
Had them for 9 months before adopting
There’s a LOT of paperwork
Probes into the intimate details of every aspect of your life
They want to ensure that parents are adopting for right reasons and will provide kids stability
But it’s invasive
Getting kids older than infants is like being thrown on a treadmill that’s already on full speed
It’s your job to keep yourself and those kids upright and healthy
“It’s a whirlwind… waiting so long to be parents, you get the kid placed with you and you're waiting, and you're just chomping at the bit, but all of a sudden it happens. And you're like, ‘Oh, hey, wait a minute, time out. I wasn't ready for this kind of thing.'” - Darren
9:52 Is there a better way to do this without the state?
“There's always a better way than going through the state, in my opinion.” - Craig
10:38 Ian’s Story
His wife was involved in jail ministry
One of the pregnant women asked her to take power of attorney over her baby
So, they picked her up at the hospital
Had no formula or anything
Felt like kidnapping
His wife had wanted to do foster care for 20 years, and he was finally coming around
Suddenly, this opportunity fell in their lap
DHS called them on their long drive home
Nurses had called CPS because baby had been taken
Power of attorney gave them rights
But DHS recommended they register as foster parents for more rights
The government wanted her in the system so she would keep the industry running
Had to go through all the classes and invasive interviews
“We can’t do better as long as the government controls it from top to bottom.” -Ian
There’s billboards everywhere begging for foster parents
Because they abuse the good ones
They find they are not helping kids and get discouraged
17:09 Does the state want kids to get adopted?
Once parental rights are terminated, a case worker spends 30 days looking for/evaluating adoptive parents
But they fight not to terminate rights
The goal is always to send kids home to their bio parents
Sometimes, this is the best idea; sometimes, it’s the worst
The problem is the one-size-fits-all mentality
The system runs on there being kids in the system
Parents have classes
Kids have classes
Entire industry run off foster kids
Ian didn’t get licensed when they moved states
“I said, ‘I'm not ready to deal with the state again’… You opened up your entire life to the last people in the world that should have access to it so that you can get a child and help. And it’s painful.” - Ian
20:36 Emotions and Turmoil
Instant Family movie
Eventually, the government takes the kids back
Hard on the kids, the foster parents, the bio parents
Gotta really screw kids up
“The state coming in and taking kids from families is abhorrent to me. It just sets my teeth on edge to think about it.” - Darren
But this is the norm
23:23 How can we fix this? It is not working
The state pulls kids after abuse happens
How could we prevent the abuse?
Has to be a community-based intervention
Cannot push blanket solutions
Individualized help
If a kid’s being adopted, the state is always involved
It’s a legal matter
Nonprofits cannot handle it on their own
BUT
Organizations like Safe Families exist
Provide temporary support to families in crisis
Families take in kids for a time
The state is not involved
The only issue is that it’s church-based, and many people will not set foot in a church, so they’ll avoid reaching out for help
Kids don’t wind up in foster care overnight
It’s years of bad decisions and struggles
That build-up and explode
We have to catch them further upstream
Even before the child is born or even conceived
Generational abuse further complicates things
Kids have seen some stuff
Move from one type of dysfunction to another
“Some of us are a slightly better dysfunction, but we're all dysfunctional.” - Ian
In Michigan, almost all foster kids who graduated high school ended up in prison within 3 years
“It's not because those kids are failures. They've experienced trauma that they can't recover from in a simple manner.” -Ian
29:28 The Church is not being the Church
Love widows and orphans (James 1:27)
Generally, as a whole, we are ignoring them
Some specific congregations are doing great work
Adoption/foster care ministry
Give information to parents and help them with paperwork
Support groups
Network
30:52 What it takes to become a foster parent [in Illinois]
9-week course plus online training
Gives you things to think about
Prepares you for trauma responses from your kids
Even if the kid was not yet born when the trauma occurred, it affected their development
Support and supplies
When Ian picked up the baby, a church filled a room with diapers, formula, and other supplies
They didn’t have to buy a diaper for 6 months
And that was not even in the town where they lived! It was where the baby was from, several hours away
“If you're not capable- if you're not able to adopt or foster- you can help in other ways.” -Craig
It seems daunting, but a pack of diapers really makes a difference
More people might adopt if they knew the church would support them
Babysit for a couple of hours
“Even if the state's going to be involved with it, these kids need homes.” - Craig
The government vets respite providers (in some states)
You can’t just let someone babysit your foster kids
DHS must do a background check
Makes people not want to be involved
There are so many hurdles!
Urchins bleeding the system for money
Monthly court dates
Focused on budget, not the child’s needs
Once there was an opportunity to send Ian’s child to a different state so Michigan didn't have to pay any more, she was gone
“They're more worried about what it looks like on the books than about doing what's right for the kids.” - Darren
If you don’t have a respite provider approved and get caught letting them stay there, you would likely lose your kid(s)
So many horror stories with the same plot
Given a child
Told they could adopt
Had them taken away
40:00 Ian’s story continued
Had a baby from birth to 17 months
Jumped through all the hoops
One night, they told Ian and his wife that the baby was going to Oregon the next day
They appealed the decision to take her
Took out a loan and sold a bunch of stuff to afford the lawyer
Turns out, that someone wrote a bunch of lies in their file to get the girl sent away, like
They weren’t socializing her
They were withholding food
So, the person who made the decision to remove her could not be blamed
Even though they had the same judge they’d had for 17 months who knew them, he would not overturn the decision because he had never done that, and he was about to retire
He acknowledged that the decision was wrong
And their baby is still in Oregon
They lived down the street from more than one person involved, so they moved to Kentucky
49:12 Older kids
“The bottom line for me is there are kids that need help. If it means some discomfort for me to help kids that need help, that's okay.” - Darren
If you can’t take an infant, take a 10-year-old
Bring in 16 or 17 year-olds and just give them the normalcy of having Thanksgiving
Let them come back for holidays when they’ve aged out
Older kids are rarely adopted
Most foster kids get kicked out at 18 and become homeless
Some places have a transition program
Job training, rent money, other support…
Some states continue paying foster parents to support their kids as adults
51:54 Doing it just for the paycheck
People take in kids because the state gives them money to care for them
Right now, the state can’t even find people to take in babies
“If you don't have enough families to be in foster care, you're willing to take anybody. And so that's a system that's ripe for abuse.” - Darren
Farming foster children for money
Disabilities bring more cash
You might only get $300/month for a kid
But if you label them with a bunch of conditions, you get an added $75 for each problem
Of course, foster kids legitimately do have a lot of issues, but people take advantage of this for the money even when kids don’t need the extra support
Labeling them falsely
Changes their social status
Holds them back from taking more advanced classes
Labeling an infant
Brings them services
But many services are not useful until they’re older
Therapists and parents waste their time
Sticks them with the label forever
Before they’ve even shown what they’re capable of
Even when they show what they can do, the label stays
57:36 Final thoughts
Help with fostering in any way you can
If you don’t know anyone who’s doing it, maybe it’s you who should
Let’s work on helping people not get to the point of having their kids taken
“As much as I am down on fostering because of having to be involved with the state, that's the system we have. … They need whatever kind of stability they can get, whatever positive experiences they can get… Get involved.” - Ian
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