Wearing Your Heart Outside Your Body: Foster Care in Vermont

By Cindy Ellen Hill

Kim Coe, a 15-year foster parent and president of the Vermont Foster and Adoptive Families Association, knows something of the challenges of being a foster parent.

“On the one hand, you love this child and are working to have them be a part of your family. But on the other hand, you are also working with the birth parents to help reunite their family,” explains Coe, who is also the Residential Director at Lund Family Center in Burlington.

Additionally, she says, “The children who come through the foster care system have already suffered trauma, so you’re dealing with the after-effects of trauma. Then there are all the expectations of the court and the system. And you’re doing it as a volunteer; there is a reimbursement, but it doesn’t begin to cover the expenses involved.

“It restores my faith in humanity each year that people hear all this [at training sessions] and still want to do it,” Coe declares. “Foster care is an agreement to wear your heart on the outside of your body.”

As a state, Vermont remains dedicated to providing a safe environment for children going through tough circumstances. “We’ve been very fortunate,” says Cindy Walcott, Deputy Commissioner of the Family Services Division at the Vermont Department for Children and Families (DCF). Although Governor Jim Douglas had recommended a three percent reduction in funding for foster-parent reimbursement last year, she says, “The Legislature said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’ I think that’s part of the wonderful commitment we have of Vermonters caring for Vermonters.”

The Foster Care Process

At any given time in Vermont, there are about 1400 children in DCF custody, about half of whom are in foster care placement.

“Kids come into the system [due to] abuse and neglect, or for delinquency or being unmanageable,” explains Coe.

Potential foster parents must undergo a process that includes an application, pre-service training, and a licensing process similar to that required of adoptive parents. “People come out to your home and ask a lot of questions and inspect the house for safety, looking for things like fire extinguishers and general safety conditions. And you do have to have a bedroom for the child,” Coe says.

The licensing process for respite, rather than long-term, foster parenting is less restrictive. But respite care may involve more emergency calls, and parents must be able to handle a revolving door of infants, school children, and teens in varying states of crisis.

Once licensed, foster parents wait for the call that says there’s a child at the courthouse or the DCF office in need of immediate placement. According to Coe, “They explain the situation and a little something about the child and ask, ‘Is this something you can do?’”

These placements are inherently hurried. Unfortunately, this means a foster family may find itself mismatched: The parents might be unprepared for a longer-than-expected placement, for instance, or unable to accommodate a child with special needs.

“Moving  is very stressful,” admits 18-year-old Karyn Gassett, a first-year student at the College of St. Joseph in Rutland. Gassett lived in four different foster homes in under three years. She stayed at the fifth home from age 13 and a half until she turned 18. (The only constant was school: Foster children in Vermont can stay in the same school no matter where they live.) As for the earlier placements, she says, “they were all pretty great, but they didn’t work out.”

“The system works hard to prevent the phenomenon of kids being moved around from house to house, and we are doing much better at that,” Coe reports. “There is data that’s collected and demonstrates that it has become much better than it was. But every time a kid moves it’s another trauma, another severed attachment, so it’s important to try to make a good match from the start.  But frequently it’s under emergency circumstances and there may not be the time to make the best match possible.”

Alternatives to DCF Custody

Two years ago, Vermont’s Juvenile Proceedings Act was changed to mandate priority placement with kin. Since then, the number of children going into DCF custody and being placed in foster care has been declining. Direct placement with relatives theoretically helps stabilize children’s lives by letting them live with people they already know who are familiar with their circumstances. But it’s difficult to track the results and consequences of such placements.

“Judges can place children directly with a relative without that child coming into our custody,” explains Walcott. “DCF does a background check on the potential caregivers before these placements, mainly reporting to the court whether that person is on the child protective registry or has a criminal history.”

In a family placement, relatives do not receive state foster care reimbursement funds. And they do not have legal custody of the child, which can create obstacles regarding health care and education decisions.

The Lund Family Center in Burlington provides another alternative to placing children in DCF custody. Founded as a “home for friendless women” 120 years ago, the center allows women to stay under the same roof as their children while receiving services for mental health or substance abuse issues. Lund also runs an alternative high school for pregnant and parenting teens.

Lund’s Annual Giving Coordinator, Kitty Bartlett, notes that entry is voluntary but for troubled mothers, “the motivation is high. Often it’s the only way they can maintain or regain custody of their child.” She says that Lund and DCF are currently partnering under a federal grant to help moms who are working to resolve substance abuse issues stay with their children.

“In looking at how substance abuse and child abuse or neglect intersect, the legal handling of these two issues is often on two different timelines,” Bartlett notes. “We have two substance abuse assessment beds in our facility, where mom can stay with her child while receiving 24-hour supervision. There is always the concern about the child’s safety remaining in a situation with substance abuse, but then also research shows children’s outcome is better when the family remains intact. But it’s a bit of a juggling issue, as the child can’t wait. Our staff do it very well, offering a nurturing place.”

Some Difficulties for Foster Parents – and the System

For foster children and their foster families, the biological family will always be present – and both families have to decide how everyone fits into the picture.

“The relationship between foster parents and biological parents varies family to family,” explains Coe, who has served as a respite foster parent as well as adopted two young children from long-term foster care placements. “Sometimes there’s no contact, and sometimes you are working together as a team. There is a strong emphasis [in training sessions] on having some contact with the biological parents unless there is a safety issue.”

Maintaining that contact is only one of many special requirements that foster parents will likely face above and beyond the calls of ordinary parenthood. Families with two working parents – now the majority – may find those requirements particularly difficult to meet. Cindy Walcott cites the “two-income household” as the factor that, in her 30 years’ experience, has made the “biggest impact” on foster-care dynamics.

“I was just talking to a woman regarding a child who has some special medical needs that require certain skills and attention, and then the court just ordered daily visitation with the birth parent,” Walcott recalls. “Daily visitation is a good thing, but how as a foster parent are you going to work and facilitate daily visitation? Years ago it was more the norm that one foster parent was home and could deal with the visitations and the school things, or whatever it may be, and now there isn’t.”

Employment conflicts or unemployment also mean a shrinking pool of potential foster parents. “The parents who can’t find work or are out of work often simply can’t stay in as foster parents. It’s very difficult. It’s difficult on all families,” Coe says.

Life Beyond Childhood

Like all children, foster kids have an uncanny knack for growing up and moving on. But for former foster children, the transition to adult independence can have special hurdles.

Gassett graduated from high school with no car, money, or college savings account. She found a helping hand at St. Joseph’s STEPS program – Students Taking an Effective Path to Success. The program specifically provides academic and economic assistance to young people in Vermont transitioning from foster care to independent adulthood.

Gassett is pleased with her most recent move to St. Joe’s dorms. “I have a lot of friends here, mostly in the STEPS program. My roommate I’ve known since middle school so we tend to cling together,” she says.

Gassett says she was “one of the lucky ones” who received a full scholarship for her first year at St. Joseph’s. The downside is that it disqualifies her from participating in work study, so she’s seeking employment. “College is a lot of hard work,” she admits.

Gassett is studying business and dreams of opening her own daycare for dogs. “I found a job as a dog trainer in high school and I loved it, working with everything from Chihuahuas to mastiffs,” she says. “It was my first job, and I didn’t have a car or a license but I’d get rides there, and I loved it.”

She also dreams of the day of becoming a foster parent herself. “My foster parents were all pretty great. Some of them even took me on vacations with them and made me feel like I was part of the family. But others didn’t [do] stuff like that. I’d love to be a foster parent and maybe adopt some kids. I really love kids. I worked at the library over the summer with a lot of little kids and it was awesome.”

Meanwhile, Gassett is already helping other foster children by serving on the DCF Youth Development Committee. She is working on writing a new handbook for Vermont foster children. “The last handbook I got at 12 when I came into foster care made no sense,” she recalls.

Her updated advice for foster kids: “Keep strong. Don’t give up. Keep a journal. See a counselor. Just because your social worker or counselor doesn’t seem like they know what they are doing, they really do. They know from experience, so listen to them. My counselor advised me to write down what I’m doing or thinking. Mine is a blog. I don’t use real names but people know what’s going on.”

Gassett has some advice for potential Vermont foster parents, too: “Invite any one of any age in. Let them come to you; don’t try to pester them. Some people need to have their own time to come to you. Keep plenty of snacks around, especially for teenage boys. Treat them as an equal, and don’t feel bad for them: They are a normal person. And don’t take away their visiting privileges with their family.”

Gassett chose not to be adopted to ensure that she maintained good contact with her birth parents, something her foster families encouraged. “My mom’s about five miles away and my dad about 10 miles away. I always saw them over the weekends and now we stay in touch.”

Her last bit of advice to parents: Always focus on education. “Just make sure kids study and get a good education and get into college.”

“Keep strong” is the quintessential attitude of Vermont foster kids, Coe says. “I learn every day about resiliency and faith and hope from these kids, more than I’d ever learn in school or from a book. These kids are living it. For people looking to make a difference that is tangible and real, this is as tangible and real as it gets.

“By far it’s the hardest job you can do, harder even than parenting,” she adds. “You are held to a higher level of accountability – and well we should be, as we are taking care of other people’s children. But it’s also the most rewarding thing you can do, knowing you’ve made a difference in a child’s life.”

Cindy Ellen Hill is a writer and attorney in Middlebury.