Foster parents needed across region

Aug. 26—ELKHART — More foster parents are needed — a lot more.

Last year, the Villages of Indiana received over 5,000 requests for foster care and was able to find only 312 homes for the youth in need.

"It's not our responsibility to say yes or no if that child is being abused or neglected — that's DCS's job," said Cheri Lintz, former clinical director for The Villages' South Bend-Mishawaka Region covering St. Joseph, Marshall, Elkhart, Kosciusko and LaGrange counties. "It's our responsibility as adults to keep children safe. If you have any suspicions, contact DCS and let them make that call."

DCS may also provide case management and resources in order to help keep children in the home with their biological parents, but it's not always an option.

The Elkhart-based Villages supported 47 foster children through 29 foster families in 2021. This year, they currently serving 21 foster children through 14 foster families.

It's not enough, Lintz said.

"We understand that not everybody is called to be a foster parent," she said. "You personally may not be called to be a foster parent, but talking about it and raising that discussion may trigger somebody else to be a part of it."

The Villages will also speak on their programs for businesses and churches who request it. The Villages covers the counties of Elkhart, St. Joseph, Kosciusko, LaGrange, and Marshall in Indiana.

"We get inquiries every day," she said. "I will get five or six emails a day. ... DCS is constantly looking for foster parents. ... There have been stories of children having to stay at the DCS office because there's no homes for them to go to. It's really sad. We've had foster parents who have gone and sat in the ER waiting for kids to be checked out to come home with them, sat in the ER for hours waiting for them to be ready to be released."

The preferred option is always family, but sometimes family can only keep a child for a certain length of time. This does buy groups like the Villages time in order to find a foster family for the child, but that's not always the case.

Lintz said the goal is for children to remain in the area down to school and activities if possible and to do that, they need foster families locally.

"We could have a child placed in one of our homes and their family is three or four hours away," she said. "That's even harder for the child. They may have to travel that whole distance or half the distance or parents have to come here. It's more of a strain on everybody and if we had more foster parents in our area then we could keep more kids here."

While other entities exist, the Villages has only about 30 foster families in the region and the need has increased following the pandemic.

"Kids were in the homes," Linz said. "They weren't at school or in the community for people to identify abuse or neglect and so numbers were down. As kids came back out, calls and reports increased."

If foster parents were needed before, they're needed even more now.

"We try to get as much information as possible about the trauma and the reasons the child has been removed from the home but sometimes we don't get the entire story and so sometimes children are placed in the home and we identify that there's been sexual abuse or verbal abuse and the child is acting out because of what they've experienced," Linz said.

As a result, it takes a special kind of person to be a foster parent.

"Foster parents have to be patient," she said. "They have to be willing to be consistent. A lot of times foster parents may want to not have those boundaries with a child that we would normally have with our children because they feel like they've come out of a difficult situation so they want to be more lenient, and that's good in some aspects, but in other aspects, that child still needs rules, but you can't be so strict with that child that you don't let them bend a little bit.

"That sometimes causes conflict. ... It takes patience. It takes love. It takes determination to stick with the child, and being willing to be open to people helping, and giving suggestions. It's not a one-way-fits-all kind of program. We have to try lots of different things to see what works for each child."

Not everyone is called to be a foster parent, but there are still ways to help.

Donations, including diapers, formula, overnight supplies and school supplies, are beneficial options for people who want to be involved but can't foster for any reason.

"We have a bank who put together bags so that when a child does go into foster care, they're receiving a bag with a teddy bear and a blanket and a coloring book, some comforting items so that when they get placed, they have something," Linz said. "If you were told at 3 in the morning you were leaving your home, what are you going to grab?

"You don't know when you're going to be able to go back, and you're scared and terrified and it's unknown and you're going with a stranger, and thinking about all of that in a child's mind, we try to provide some of those comforting things for them. ... We had one little girl — I think it was her ninth birthday. She asked all of her family to give her books for her birthday and she donated all the books to us. She came in and had, I don't know, 10 boxes of books that we were able to give out to kids during difficult times."

Becoming a foster parent through the Villages requires that prospective parents come to an info class, pass background checks, go through training, submit to a home study, and get a fostering license.

"We want to make sure the foster family and the foster child are a good match," Lintz explained. "We don't want a child to go from being pulled from their home to this foster, to this foster home, to this foster home. We want to see them stable in one foster home until DCS decides they're ready to go back home or they're ready to be adopted."

The Villages also provides ongoing training and 24/7 support to foster parents through case managers.

"We never want our foster parents to feel like they are out there alone dealing with whatever is happening," she said.

Community support is also important for the Villages. They offer group sessions where foster parents can meet with other foster parents to discuss solutions and resources.

"We really want our foster parents to work with the kids on whatever skills they might need, getting them involved in community activities," she said. "We also have foster parents who have worked alongside biological families to help get the child back into the home because ultimately that is what is best for a child, sometimes, is to be placed back with their biological family."

For more information about the Villages, visit www.villageskids.org. For more state information on foster care, visit www.in.gov/dcs.

Dani Messick is the education and entertainment reporter for The Goshen News. She can be reached at dani.messick@goshennews.com or at 574-538-2065.