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Troubled parents are getting a second chance: foster care for them, along
with their kids
Monday, February 11, 2003
Amanda Bower; With reporting by Caryn M. Gracey/Milwaukee and; Laura A.
Locke/Contra Costa County For much of her young daughters' lives, Tina Louise
Cruz says, she sold drugs or sex to keep a roof over their heads. Each
evening after the family had gulped down a meal of greasy fast-food, Cruz
would shut the door on her children and get high on methamphetamines. Then a
new baby tested positive for drugs, and the older Cruz girls soon joined
their infant sister in California's child protective services. But instead of
moving the children from one foster home to a another, authorities in Contra
Costa County gave Cruz a different option: move in with a family
herself.After completing a course of court-ordered drug treatment, Cruz, 37,
got her baby back and moved last September into the Antioch, Calif., home of
Barbara Funderburk, a mentor paid to teach Cruz the basics of good parenting.
Together Cruz and Funderburk, a mother of two, planned meals, made budgets
and discussed how to hold down a job and raise a family. "This is a new thing
for me, to not be high and have a baby," says Cruz, who graduated from the
program early and has spent the past three weeks setting up anew life in San
Jose, Calif. She has started work in a cafeteria, her first job in 15 years,
and her two other daughters have moved from their aunt's place to join their
mother and little sister. “I got another chance with my children," says Cruz.
"I feel complete."Keeping at-risk families together in a supervised
setting--and providing an around-the-clock role model for problem parents--is
a little-known alternative to traditional foster care. Called shared family
care, the program is available in scattered counties in 10 states, including
California, Wisconsin and Texas. It helps prevent families from being
separated, reunites them after a separation or serves as a way station while
parents decide whether they want to relinquish their parental rights. Ata
time when the failure of the classic child-welfare system is grabbing
headlines across the country (a little girl missing for15 months in Florida
before officials even noticed; a young boy dead and his brothers starving in
a New Jersey basement), some social workers are pushing shared family care as
a possible solution. Results from the small studies that have been done are
promising: children whose parents complete the program are only half as
likely to re-enter the child-welfare system as those whose families reunite
after foster care; the number of participant parents (mostly mothers) with a
job doubles after they have lived with a mentor; and living conditions for
these families once they're on their own are much improved.But while some
290,000 children were taken into foster care in 2000--the most recent year
for which the Federal Government has statistics--experts estimate that fewer
than 2,000 families have ever gone through shared family care. The main
reason is an all-too-common problem for social-service agencies: money.
Foster care for two kids alone is about $2,600 a month in Contra Costa
County, but it costs $3,000 to provide shared family care for a parent and
two children. The difference of $400 might not seem like much, but in these
cash-strapped times, it is. And the bulk of federal funds given to states for
out-of-home care for vulnerable children is available only when kids have
been removed from their parents. Shared family care, by definition, keeps
families together--so states have to come up with the money themselves.
Funding for Contra Costa's full-family program was cut in half last year.
With a $35 billion state-budget shortfall, says Sheila Self, an executive
director at Families First of California, "the future looks very tenuous.
These kinds of innovative, cutting-edge programs can fall by the wayside very
quickly."Advocates argue that raw costs don't include the intangible benefits
of keeping a family together. "Shared family care buys you support, guidance
and training for the entire family, not just care for children," says John
Cullen, director of Contra Costa County's employment and human services
department. "We think it's a much better bargain." On top of that, he
continues, shared-care programs tend to last less than one year, compared
with the average 12 to 18 months that kids in his county spend in foster
care.But are there really that many people who are willing to take in a whole
family? And are there that many troubled parents who want to be taken in?
Less than one-third of parents referred to shared family care are deemed
appropriate for it, according to one study, and only 70% actually complete
the program. Then there is the challenge of finding mentor families willing
to open their homes to people who have led less than exemplary lives.
Agencies like Families First have placed newspaper advertisements and relied
on word of mouth to find host families; mentors are then put through regular
foster-care training as well as specific programs dealing with substance
abuse and counseling adults.Still, people like Ayesha Mahmoud are rare.
Mahmoud, 58, quit being a foster mother 15 years ago because she was
disappointed by the lack of contact between children and birth mothers. Today
she hosts Nettie Carter, 28, and two of Carter's four children in her tidy,
modest home in Milwaukee, Wis. As with any family there are tensions, but
there is also a strong bond, particularly between Mahmoud and Charles, 11,
who loves to solve puzzles with her help. "I introduce him as my grandson,"
says Mahmoud, who has raised four kids of her own. "That's how it feels to
us."Karin Niemuth, a social worker who helps run the program in Milwaukee,
says mentors like Mahmoud are often the first real mother figures for program
participants. "[These mothers] never had the experience themselves of growing
up with a healthy parent-child relationship," she says.Anna Sangermano knows
from firsthand experience what such programs can do. Now 40, she says she
began drinking and doing drugs at 13, dropped out of her Marin County,
Calif., high school in the 11th grade and began living on the streets at 20.
She smoked so much methamphetamine that her teeth rotted. The county took
away two of her sons and placed them in foster care. Finally, in 1999
Sangermano entered drug treatment and then the home of Joyce and George
Parker. During her nine months with the Parkers, she got her driver's
license, her GED and dentures. She also enrolled her youngest son in
preschool and signed up for a welfare-to-work program. Today Sangermano lives
with her son in a two-bedroom apartment, works part-time and is taking
college classes. She hopes to bring the two older boys home from foster care
soon. "This program helped save my life," she says. "And helped me be a part
of my kids' life."--With reporting by Caryn M. Gracey/Milwaukee and Laura A.
Locke/Contra Costa CountyQuote: "Shared family care buys you support,
guidance and training for the entire family, not just care for children...
It's a much better bargain." --JOHN CULLEN, Contra Costa County employment
and human services department "[These mothers] never had the experience of
growing up with a healthy parent-child relationship." --KARIN NIEMUTH
Milwaukee social worker  Â
Copyright 2003 Time Magazine
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