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From Reporter to Mom: Foster Care From the Inside

By Kathryn Quigley

12.17.07

         When I decided to become a foster mother two years ago, I thought I was prepared. After all, I had covered numerous stories about the child welfare system as a reporter. I knew that caseworkers were overburdened and underpaid, the system was bogged down in bureaucracy and that many stories had sad endings.

         What I wasn’t prepared for is how all that knowledge – and my objectivity – would fly out the window as soon as my heart was involved. When a social worker showed up at my New Jersey apartment in May 2006 carrying a tiny 10-day-old baby boy, my heart literally shifted. I cried tears of joy and terror for days. My head knew that this little boy was “just” my foster child, but my heart didn’t.

         Luckily, those years of being a pesky reporter actually served me well throughout my 17 months as a foster mommy until I adopted my little boy in November. I took copious notes, figured out whom to call in the New Jersey child welfare system to get results, and e-mailed the heck out of case workers or supervisors when they dropped the ball. I am sure there are lots of people at the Division of Youth and Family Services who are glad to get rid of me now that my son is officially a Quigley.

         But who cares. I didn’t become a reporter to be liked by bureaucrats and I sure didn’t become a foster mom for that reason, either.

         In a way, my son and I got lucky to live in New Jersey. DYFS is in the midst of a huge reform because of a high-profile child abuse death in Newark several years ago and the case of four abused children who were adopted in Collingswood.

         Foster children, adoption and child welfare in general can bring a wealth of great stories – good and bad. But there can also be a lot of misperceptions and assumptions about adopting from child welfare.

         Since I went through the experience first-hand, here are some things that surprised me because they fly in the face of the usual doom-and-gloom child welfare stories.

• The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act – which celebrated its 10th anniversary last month – does work. The law sped up the time frame for children to be moved from foster homes to permanent situations. Court action is required to be taken within 15 months to either reunite the child or find a new home. It worked like clockwork in my son’s case.

• Foster parents often get a bad rap and most people probably think of foster care as a terrible option for a child. Not so. In my son’s case and in that of several other foster families with whom I’m close, foster care is the safe, loving alternative.

• Foster parents are not “in it for the money.” Yes, we get a few hundred bucks a month – depending on the state. It pays for some stuff, but trust me, I am not getting wealthy off the stipend. Any parent knows how expensive diapers, formula, carseats and clothes are. The stipend doesn’t nearly cover it all. Would I do it without the stipend and paid daycare, though? Nope. As a single, working woman those incentives helped hook me in. 

• Most child welfare workers have their heart in the right place. This surprised me. I was prepared to hate them, battle them or label them incompetent. But I was impressed. Don’t get me wrong, I did have two or three who were disorganized and I helped get them bumped from my son’s case. But most were skilled and professional.

• When a child dies while “in the system,” news investigations often find that there wasn’t enough oversight of the foster parents. But the deaths of children in the child welfare system are the exception, and so is poor oversight of foster parents. I felt so thoroughly investigated and checked out as a foster parent that I wondered if a colonoscopy was the next required step. Not only that, but caseworkers or inspectors were in my apartment every two weeks making sure my toilet flushed, peering in my fridge and looking over my son, top to bottom. 

• Closed juvenile courts stink. I was not allowed in the courtroom for any of the hearings in my son’s case because of N.J. law. My son’s birth parents were allowed in. But I  had to sit in the hallway until my son’s lawyer or caseworker told me what happened. Find out the policy of the juvenile courts in your state – if they are open, you have a wealth of stories. 

• Some “parenting classes” are a joke. This was the part of the foster parent process that almost made me quit – and it was right at the beginning. The caseworker leading my classes was a burned-out, negative nincompoop.The only good part was that I met other foster parents and we bonded together. A message board on Adoption.org was also truly helpful.

         Maybe you want to interview a foster parent in a particular case. Foster parents are generally prohibited by law from talking about their child to the media: no matter who is doing the parenting, the state agency is legally in loco parentis. As a reporter, this lack of access frustrated me and it is why I am writing about my son now. So if you make the obligatory call or visit to the foster family, know that you won’t get very far, even if that family desperately wants to talk to you.

         Here is a suggestion: Each state has a foster parents association of some kind; in New Jersey, each county has one. Talk to their members. They can give you some on-the-record insights and perhaps some off-the-record tips. Many stories have happy endings, like mine and my son's.

Kathryn Quigley was the Casey Journalism Fellow from 1999-2000 while she earned her Master’s degree in journalism at the University of Maryland. She teaches journalism at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J.