Encouraging New Foster Parents
Jessica Howell recently joined our Board of Ambassadors. She and her wife decided to share their fostering story with us.
My wife and I were like many new foster parents, we wanted to start with emergency placements, decided our preferred age range was 0-4 years old, and eagerly took our Foundations Classes at Boys and Girls Aid, envisioning the little kiddos who would enter our home.
However, as in many foster care journeys, our expectations of what was going to happen couldn’t have been further from reality. We intended to “dip our toes in” with short term placements and respite care, but here’s the thing about foster care: there isn’t really such a thing as dipping your toes in. These are kids who are in crisis and saying yes to being a foster parent is saying yes to welcoming that crisis into your home and building a safe space for them amidst the upheaval.
At our Foundations Class, we learned about attachment theory, trauma-informed parenting, and how important it is to build stability in the lives of the kids we would be caring for. We met other families interested in adoption and fostering, and learned so much from the experts at Boys and Girls Aid.
We got to live out the lessons we learned after saying yes to a 3-day respite placement of an 11-year-old girl. We were asked if we could take her for a long-term placement. Her age and the placement time frame were both outside what we originally thought would work well for us.
“We hope that by sharing our story we can encourage more people to become foster parents and push new foster families to broaden their yeses. ”
We said yes. It wasn’t easy. Right away, we second-guessed the decision we had made and doubted our ability to give her what she needed. We had to adjust our expectations quickly. We turned what was planned to be a nursery into a room for a middle schooler. We are still trying to figure out how they’re teaching 6th grade math these days.
But here’s the thing: welcoming L into our home was exactly what originally pushed us to become foster parents. We knew there was a huge need for additional foster families in Oregon. We knew we would be welcoming the unknown into our lives. We strongly believe our community has a responsibility to kids who enter foster care. And our community stepped up.
We sent out an SOS email to our friends and family explaining the change in our situation and asking them for specific and tangible help. We had over 20 people show up to our house to move out all the baby stuff, move in stuff for a middle schooler, make donation runs, and store all the baby items we had gathered. People who couldn’t make it bought us things off an Amazon wishlist to make L’s transition easier, or sent her a letter welcoming her to our family and community.
It was one of the most humbling and overwhelming experiences we’ve had since becoming foster parents. We said yes to L, but our community said yes too.
Thanks to their support we have been able to focus less of the logistics of welcoming a kid into our home and more on building a relationship with the smart, kind, hilarious, thoughtful girl whose life was turned upside down by yet another move. We could not be more proud to be on her team and to have the opportunity not only to care for her, but also to advocate for her and her wellbeing.
We hope that by sharing our story we can encourage more people to become foster parents and push new foster families to broaden their yeses. We are not special for becoming foster parents. We saw a need, took classes, leaned into our community, and started couples’ therapy so we could say yes. We’re not perfect. We make mistakes and are always learning. But we have loved how this journey has pushed us and encouraged us to slow down and focus on the need in front of us: providing one child the safe harbor they need in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty of foster care.
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