By Ashley Jones
My wife and I began our journey to become foster parents in September 2015 with the intent of helping families and providing love and safety to children in our community. We have a biological daughter named Josie who is currently attending college to become a nurse and lives at home. Below, I will explain how by being traditional foster parents, and then becoming kinship caregivers, we learned the differences between foster care and kinship care, and the impact they had on our family and community.
We began our foster care journey after I completed a course in Human Services, had several failed attempts to grow our family, and a desire to help others. We completed a TIPS-MAPP class in Buncombe County and planned to build a new home to accommodate more children. This started the chain of the universe laughing at “our plan” when two days after being officially licensed in March of 2016 we agreed to a weekend respite for a very premature baby. The next day there was a call for a longer-term placement of an 11-month-old who would spend the next 20 months filling our home and hearts. Several months after this child reunified with their family, and after a period of needed grieving, we agreed to the placement of a newborn baby that we would adopt 19 months later.
The process of fostering was the most amazing and most difficult thing we had ever done, and we had not lived easy lives. We used our resources and compassion to encourage the biological parents in an effort for them to learn how to love and care for themselves so they could love and care for their children. That process was very draining, and we spent a lot of time worrying about what would happen with the family. After we adopted, our agency social worker recommended we take a break to focus on our newly adopted child. We gladly accepted the suggestion and terminated our foster care license. Four years on the roller coaster ride of foster care had changed us as human beings and parents.
Life was looking up, and we were enjoying seeing a birth certificate with our names as parents, even as we navigated parenting during a national pandemic. Our little boy was filling our days as we helped him grow as a person and we continued to grow as adoptive parents. That’s when life threw a curveball at us.
I learned in November 2020 that a family member had moved back to town from Ohio, pregnant, homeless, and with lots of medical and mental health concerns. On December 30, 2020, a baby was born in need, and we contacted our local DSS agency to see if we could provide care while his parents healed. On January 19, 2021, we brought home what would become our third child. A sad reality about foster and kinship care is that if biological parents cannot get the help they need this process repeats itself. This led to us welcoming baby 4 and baby 5.
We decided to renew our foster license and that allowed us to apply for more benefits as all three of the younger children showed signs of disability from an early age including autism, fetal fentanyl syndrome, developmental delays, speech, vision and hearing problems, and cerebral palsy.
There were many similarities between providing traditional foster care and kinship care including working towards reunification, monthly home visits, therapy appointments, the need for family self-care, court dates, support groups, extra-curricular activities, doctor appointments, dentist appointments, and of course, making time to have fun. We did notice some differences as kinship caregivers though. We had less assistance until we were licensed, more family drama, and more stigma. Kinship also provides the ability for children to hear about and know their family of origin, which in my experience can be a struggle for children adopted by non-family members.
Our family is very eclectic. We have been foster and kinship caregivers, we are same sex parents, finalized a biracial adoption, have youth with special needs and disabilities, and have experienced physical, sexual, and substance misuse in our own personal lives. We want others to know that it is possible and there is a village out there willing to help, and because of our life experiences we are less judgmental but also know that if you don’t put your recovery as a priority and have encouragement in the process, you can’t climb up from rock bottom. We feel blessed even though we hear “you are a blessing, I don’t know how you do it.” It is really us blessed by humility, education, and the love of the children who don’t know how to do this either and we all learn every day, and our love grows.
Some common myths that this experience has debunked for us is that most foster parents do this for the monthly stipend, which by the way is not enough to cover all the child’s needs. If you do this correctly you will spend your own money on each child’s daily needs, vacations, extra-curricular activities, cars, phones, game systems, insurance, and more. Another myth is that social workers just want to take children or are only doing the job for the money. Trust me, the amount of sleep lost worrying about these children can’t be bought or paid for. I hear a lot about the system being “broken” and my heart breaks every time a child is hurt. I think the reality is that nothing is ever perfect, and I truly believe most of the foster/kinship parents and social workers I know and work with want the very best for each child and family making difficult decisions every day.
Ashley Jones is a foster, adoptive, and kinship caregiver in Buncombe County, NC
