This edition of Valley Parents focuses on a special kind of parent — one who takes in children whose birth parents have proven unable or unwilling to provide a safe, nurturing home.
Foster parenting is not easy: It requires a huge emotional and time commitment. And, considering that the compensation rates paid in New Hampshire and Vermont are regarded by many as well below the actual cost of caring for a child, it also involves a financial commitment.
Nor is it for the faint of heart. Some children have been abused and neglected. All are dealing with disruption. And those foster parents who still have biological children at home must make sure the needs of all the children under their care are being met.
Overwhelmed yet? So are we. But as the saying goes: It takes a village to raise a child. Finding good homes for all children is a challenge that can be met only by a caring community.
Of course, there has always been a need for parents who will share their homes — and their hearts — with children who cannot stay with their biological families. As this issue of Valley Parents makes clear, that need has been greatly exacerbated by the opioid epidemic.
That crisis has created a great need, not just for education, prevention, treatment and law enforcement, but also for good homes for the epidemic’s collateral victims — the children who, through no fault of their own, have had their lives upended as their caregivers struggle with addiction.
“I feel like it’s like an octopus,” Maryann Babic-Keith, supervisor for the Claremont office of the Department of Children Youth and Families Child Protective Services, told Valley Parents correspondent Jaimie Seaton about the effects of the drug crisis on families. “The tentacles are just spreading, and I don’t think people realize how many areas it hits.”
“I have never dealt with any issue before that affects every economic and social class in this way,” Keith Kuenning, director of advocacy for the nonprofit organization Child and Family Services of New Hampshire, told Seaton.
Why should we care? Because this problem affects children in every community. Our community.
Becoming a foster parent isn’t the only way people can help. There is a need for people to provide respite care for foster families or to take in children on an emergency basis. People also can call on their elected representatives to provide more funding for child and family services.
In addition to her reporting, Seaton contributed a personal essay to this issue based on her experience growing up in a home that took in a number of foster children.
“Fostering children is not simply opening your home; it’s opening your heart,” she writes.
That sentiment echoed by Craig King, of Quechee, who, along with his wife, Wanda, has been a foster parent for nine years.
“I would encourage anyone who’s ever had an inkling or thought of fostering to take it a step further and do it,” he said, “because I don’t think there’s any greater feeling than helping a child.”
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
