Cindy Hamilton Asks, “Who Wouldn’t Want a Family?”

It’s clear where Cindy Hamilton stands when it comes to permanency for young people in foster care.

“Being raised in a family is not a privilege,” Hamilton says. “It’s an absolute human right.”

“I am a strong believer that every child deserves a permanent family through safe family reunification, adoption, or guardianship. I also strongly advocate that children have the right to be raised by their family if it is safe.”

Hamilton’s beliefs are based on experience. She has been a social worker serving youth and families involved in the criminal justice and foster care system for more than 30 years. She is also a licensed clinical therapist, trainer, and foster and adoptive parent.

Thanks to these credentials, Hamilton is often invited to help set the stage when North Carolina counties join our state’s Permanency Roundtable Program. Sponsored by the NC Division of Social Services, this program seeks to achieve permanency for youth in foster care by convening stakeholders to address a youth’s immediate, critical need for permanency as they approach the age of 18.

Hamilton helps counties kick off their round- table programs with a presentation on what she calls “permanency values.”

Members of the NC Division of Social Services’ Permanency Design Team found Hamilton’s message so profound they asked to have it shared with Fostering Perspectives readers. What follows was drawn from one of Hamilton’s recent permanency values presentations.

Permanence Is Not a Place

What is permanence? It’s not a place. Permanency is a state of mind, not a placement. Permanence is having the feeling that you are connected. It’s knowing there is someone who will answer your collect phone call in the middle of the night or miss you when you don’t show up to a family gathering.

The feeling of connectedness and the feeling of being part of a family is not a part of policy. There are so many kids who have been in a foster home for five years and every time a worker asks how their placement is going, they say, “It’s fine, I’m good staying here.” But what those young people don’t say is, every day they live on eggshells. Every day they wonder, “Is today the day I won’t be perfect enough and they’ll decide it’s time for me to go?”

It’s about Relationships

Human relationships are what our young people need. So when you’re thinking about the young people that you’re caring for, just remember that if everybody that is loving and caring for them is paid, that’s not the best way. Because the money goes away sometimes. And I’m not saying we’re in it for the money. I hope you understand that. But imagine feeling like you had not one person that was choosing to be a part of your life.

We Must Believe Permanence Is Possible

The number one difference between children in foster care who find a permanent family and those who don’t is the worker’s attitude about permanency. The worker needs to believe that the child deserves a family, and that permanency is possible for them.

It doesn’t make any difference who the governor is. It doesn’t make any difference who the president is. It doesn’t make any difference where your office is. What matters is the worker has to believe and be willing to do whatever it takes to find kids family.

I challenge us as foster parents to recognize that we can’t be THE person for every kid. We have to recognize that if we can’t be the person for a child, our job is to help them find that person.

Be Willing to Challenge Your Assumptions

If we know how to engage others and be empathetic and yet at the same time not judge, we stand a way better chance of this young person getting the family that they need.

I really encourage you to challenge the things that we believe about birth families. I think we tend to have a higher standard than we would for other people or even for ourselves. It’s like we feel we have to have them earn their kids back. When in reality, they’re going to love them long after we close our files.

Families aren’t going to be perfect. Yours isn’t and mine isn’t. And yet I think we oftentimes expect people—other people—to be perfect.

Birth parents often have had their own trauma. They’ve maybe been raised in foster care. They’ve maybe been physically, emotionally, sexually abused. And they’re coming with their trauma and now we’re adding on to it by their kids coming into care. People sometimes need a break. People sometimes need the opportunity to have things “good enough.”

You know, there are lots and lots of us that were raised maybe with a parent that drank too much, or there was domestic violence, or the house wasn’t always clean. There’s probably a lot of us raised where our moms didn’t work or our dads didn’t work. And nobody moved us to foster care because of it. But once you get caught in this system, your life is under a magnifying glass. And it’s really, really difficult to get everything right.

Kids Know What You Think

I think of foster parents as full-time caseworkers because you have these young people most of the time. So the way that you interact with them or the way that you interact with their parents or talk about their parents or their worker or their GAL or any of their people—it matters.

You might think you’re saying all the right things about the birth parent. But if you’re thinking something different your face will show it. And that’s what they’re going to remember. Way more is caught from parents, than is taught. I tell you this because I learned it the hard way.

This is Your Big Chance