Column: Reflections of a former foster parent

I recently wrote an article about child welfare needs in Carson City. This included the shortage of foster homes here in the Nevada state capital.

My wife, Lisa, and I were foster-to-adopt parents through the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) for a few years. I can tell you from first-hand experience that the need for people to step up and open their hearts and homes to foster children is critical.

But making a commitment as heavy as this requires preparation on multiple levels.

First, you should do sufficient research on your household. You need to determine if you can support your household the way it is now, but with additional dependents. There is little point in moving forward if taking on more dependents will put too much of a strain on your finances.

The monthly stipend that DCFS pays each child in care helps provide for their essential needs like food, clothing, hygiene and other care. But it is not meant to be supplemental income, either.

Second, I recommend researching childhood trauma if you are unfamiliar with it, so you can become educated about the ways children are affected by crises which result in their removal from the home.

It's crucial to be educated about mental, emotional and behavioral problems that typically result from abuse, neglect and home removal. This can help you be more prepared as a caregiver.

Third, start talking with current or former foster parents to get first-person insight about their experiences in the child welfare system and its processes. There is no better teacher than experience, so milk the knowledge from those who have lived it.

Fourth, ask questions. A lot of them. Contact Lori Nichols, the foster care recruiter over at the Nevada DCFS Rural District Office, and have a candid discussion with her about becoming a foster parent, its rigors and challenges.

And fifth, make sure you have an enduring motivation that stands the tests of time.

Fortitude may be one of the most important things to have in your arsenal before you begin taking foster children into your home.

It is the one critical element that my wife and I missed in our preparation; and it's the chief reason why we took a hiatus from it.

We wanted to make a positive difference in our community and have a positive impact on children in need. We also wanted our own children, so foster-to-adopt seemed to us to be the way to go at the time.

But after two failed adoption attempts in succession, and one successful adoption that took its emotional toll on us, we reached a point where we just had enough of the disappointments, the hardships, and the struggles that often come with trying to navigate through the politics of the child welfare system; not to mention the difficulties of trying to raise displaced, traumatized children.

I came to the conclusion, after four years of being licensed, that one needs very thick skin to survive in the brutal world of child welfare, where DCFS and its foster homes are often at a disadvantage, trying to rise above the unfair and unwarranted negative stigma attached to them from the start.

Understandably, custodial parents or guardians who have their children removed are very upset.

But instead of being upset with themselves for putting their children through the process, they project their anger onto DCFS and foster parents, labeling them as the bad guys in their own personal melodramas.

The truth is that the people who work in the system tend to naturally have a helping heart for people; especially little people.

But they are also there to help the legal parents or guardians regain custody of their children by encouraging them to improve their lives and the lives of their children.

In my experience, the folks at DCFS, CASA (court-appointed special advocates) and the foster parents wear white hats. They are the good guys. They look out for the best interests of children to ensure that they are safe and their needs are met during the process.

They are also on the same team when it comes to advocating that whatever brought a child into state care in the first place does not happen again.

It's about either breaking a current cycle of crises, or preventing a cycle from starting.

But it is very challenging to get legal parents or guardians to see that when a child has to be removed from the home. The relationship between the legal caregivers and the community entities involved is strained from the beginning.

Only through effective communication between DCFS, the foster homes, CASA, and the legal parents or guardians can this relationship improve.

Unfortunately, most often it means a lot of sacrifices, time, resources, balancing and commitment from foster parents to make things work, simply because the legal parents or guardians are not yet ready to be cooperative with the process.

And that is one dynamic in which foster parenting can really take its toll.

At the time we were fostering, DCFS was experiencing high turnover among its social work staff, so it became difficult for us to communicate with legal parents or guardians who were less than supportive of the process. We also had trouble maintaining consistent communication with the agency and ensuring we got the support we needed from it.

I don't know how things are now, but it used to be that DCFS had difficulty retaining social workers; many of whom went to work for the state right out of college. Then, after getting their feet wet for a year or two, they moved on to Washoe or Clark counties, where the pay was better.

This resulted in a revolving door, of sorts, at the Nevada DCFS. When a child goes through as many social workers as foster homes during their time spent in state custody, the changes can be intrusive to their healing.

Communication and personality styles are all different. Some social workers are better at communicating than others.

When we experienced a communication breakdown, the problem became harder to manage with new or changing staff.

Add to it that state social workers were overburdened with high caseloads at the time I was a foster parent. Time and the ability to communicate effectively with it became a precious commodity that no one seemed to have enough of.

My heart goes out to the DCFS staff who must work with what they've got, and then have to explain that to a frustrated foster parent who feels they are not being heard or listened to.

It's like being put between a rock and a hard place. Not only can you not please everyone, but it seems most of the time you can't please anyone.

But the dynamics of DCFS aside, the absolute hardest part of fostering is dealing with the families from whom children were removed.

My wife and I raised some children with developmental delays and grossly abusive histories. But dealing with resistant, even hostile legal parents or guardians and their families was far more difficult than caring for their traumatized children.

It is very hard to put a smile on your face and bite your tongue when another person points his or her finger at you and says you are the problem when you know in your heart that you are being part of the solution.

It is difficult to be labeled the antagonist in someone else's drama when all you are trying to do is help them repair relationship damage that their actions and decisions caused.

It is difficult to swallow your pride day after long day, to concede, compromise, cooperate, and to remain humble in the face of people who would just as soon spit at yours as look at it.

The hardest part of fostering for me was knowing that the child I had been caring for would end up going back into the custody of people who were content to just do the absolute minimum required by the state in order to reunify.

My wife and I seemed able to distinguish between those who were not vested in the process and those who sincerely were.

DCFS, by law, must try to reunify first above all else before going in another direction. This means that as long as a legal parent or guardian does just enough to satisfy the requirements of reunification, they get their children back.

And children remain at risk of recidivism back into the system at some point later on.

I've seen it happen.

The only thing worse than creating a child victim is making them a repeat victim.

Unfortunately, the state's hands are tied when it comes to things like this. As long as a legal parent or guardian fulfills the points of a reunification plan, regardless of whether or not their heart is in it, the child goes back into their care and custody.

Frankly, that is a scary thought to me; one that took its toll after just a few years.

But the human heart cannot be regulated, and the child welfare system is left to operate within the parameters of the law.

It was this realization and later acceptance that led my wife and I to conclude we needed to step away. Our skin was thicker than it was at the start, but it still needed to thicken more.

We were so emotionally spent that to go on would have been a disservice both to the system and the children in it.

Finally, despite all of the preparation we thought we had made prior to getting our first placement, we still went into the process wearing rose-colored lenses.

It's hard not to when it is your first time. But experience brought reality back into proper focus and color rather quickly.

I'd like to say that I'm not regretful of my experience as a foster-to-adopt parent. But the truth is, I am.

I regret having worn the rose-colored lenses in the first place, and then allowing myself to become disappointed when the lens broke and the real colors came into focus.

I regret not having the emotional fortitude or the thick skin required to be a successful and enduring foster parent.

And I regret feeling as though my own personal weakness let children down who otherwise could have used a home like mine to feel safe in.

The 27 hours of PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information, Development and Education) training required as part of the licensing process does not sufficiently prepare a person to foster children.

This may suffice on paper, but you need much more internal preparation for the rigors you will face as a foster caregiver.

Do as much soul-searching as you possibly can to feel both at peace and in charge of your decision.

Be sure you are ready on the inside before you are ready on the outside.

Looking back, I wish I had been.