Foster care crisis

Despite Social Services efforts, there are only two foster homes in the County.

My parents were licensed foster parents for five years while I was growing up in Orange County. During that time period they only received two calls from the county social services department asking to place a child in our home. My mom declined the first call because my younger brother had the chicken pox and she didn’t want to expose the foster child. The second time, the county asked if we were willing to take a baby boy born that day, we said yes. A year later our entire family went to court and officially adopted that foster child.

I can’t imagine life without my youngest brother and am proud of my parents’ choice to foster and adopt him. So when I heard that Mono County only has two licensed foster homes in the entire county, I decided to look into it. I wasn’t even sure there was a need for foster care in our area until I talked to the people at Mono County Department of Social Services (DSS), which oversees child welfare services in the County.

“I know I wanted to think that [there wasn’t a need for foster care] when I moved here,” Alex Ellis, DSS Supervisor, said. “It’s not that there are a lot of kids or it happens everyday. But there really is a need.”

There are currently four Mono County children in long-term foster care and twelve in Inyo County. There are approximately 59,000 in the State of California and 400,000 in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Foster Care Statistics report of 2012.

Ellis said there are several different scenarios that happen in Mono County which result in foster care. There are temporary situations— like when vacationing parents drink too much, Child Protective Services (CPS) gets involved, and aren’t allowed to leave children with inebriated parents. “We get those on a regular basis, but it is short term,” Ellis said. Other situations include neglect and abuse of a child, which often involves law enforcement and the court system.

Mono County has also seen a few cases of safe surrender babies at Mammoth Hospital. The Safely Surrendered Baby Law was signed into effect in 2006 and allows parents to surrender a baby within 72 hours of birth without any question. The law aims to prevent infant death due to abandonment in unsafe locations. Babies surrendered under the law are handed over to local child welfare services and initially enter the foster care system until an adoptive home can be found.

Hailey Thomas, Licensing Program Assistant for Inyo County Foster Care, also said there is a huge need for foster care in the region and there are only five licensed foster houses in Inyo County. “We can never guarantee how many kids we will have in placement but if we don’t have licensed homes we have to send them out of the area,” Thomas said.

Children from the Eastern Sierra are mostly sent to Bakersfield, Sacramento or Stockton, although the foster system is statewide and children can be placed anywhere. “The child has to leave their home, their school, their friends,” Ellis said. “There is a lot of pain and suffering.”

Carolyn Balliet is the only licensed foster parent in Mammoth. (The other foster home is in northern Mono County.) Bailliet, 73, is a retired public health nurse for Mono County and has lived in Mammoth for 20 years. She has been a foster parent since her retirement in 2006 and takes in children on an emergency and short-term basis due to her availability. “[Social Services] will notify me if someone is going to court,” Baillet said. “I usually have children for a few days when they need to go through the court system until they find proper placement.”

Baillet encourages other families in Mammoth to become foster parents so that children don’t have to leave the area. “To me, a thought of a child being taken out of the home is traumatic enough. Then for them to have to sit in a five hour car ride with some stranger is ludicrous,” she said.

Plus, “The ultimate goal of child welfare services is reunification,” Kathryn Peterson, Director of Mono County Social Services said. This goal becomes increasingly difficult to reach if the child is sent to a different county due to the lack of foster care in Mono or Inyo County. If DSS is working towards reunification but the child is in a different county “the kid or parent will do car time,” Ellis said. “It’s hard on everyone. It’s really painful for us, it’s painful for the parent, and it’s painful for the child.”

Holly Blacketer entered the foster system in Mono County when she was eleven years old. From 2003 to 2010 Blacketer estimates she stayed in more than ten different foster homes: “I worked my way all the way up from Bakersfield to Sacramento,” she said. “I don’t think there have ever been many foster homes in Mono County. The two that I actually stayed with in Mono County weren’t permanent settings. It’s more like I stayed there while going to court.”

“My stepmom was very abusive and my dad was a firefighter and wasn’t around much,” Blacketer said. “He was kind of oblivious to the whole thing. But the school saw the bruises.” CPS removed Blacketer from her home and Ellis became her social worker. “I absolutely did not want to go back to [my stepmom] so I asked [Ellis] if she could give me a way out.”

“I couldn’t say [enough about] how amazing [Ellis] was to me. She cares about those kids so much. She’d answer the phone at 2 o’clock in the morning for me,” Blacketer said. “The foster system isn’t so great sometimes, sometimes the foster parents are awful and they aren’t doing it for the right reasons. But [Ellis] really tried to find homes that were doing it for the right reasons.”

“A foster home isn’t a quick fix,” Ellis said. “The best place for a kid is in their home.” She also admitted “it can be hard for foster parents. There is what the court thinks should happen with the child. And what Social Services thinks. And what the family thinks. But the foster families don’t often have a say.”

The requirements to become a licensed foster home are broad, although the process does take time. “There is a lot of paper work,” Marlo Preis, Staff Service Analyst at Mono County DDS said. “It’s a little challenging. But we’ve tried to make it easier for [potential foster parents] to go through the process.”

Licensing standards are statewide and foster parents must be at least 18 years old, have a health screening, a home inspection, and be CPR/First Aid certified. Parents can rent their own home and there are no limitation based on marital status, gender or sexual orientation. There is also daily compensation for each child to help the foster parents with expenses. “It’s not enough, but it’s not criminally low either,” Ellis said. There is also a special care increase in the case of mental or physical disabilities.  The fee is based on expenses in the County and is determined by the state of California.

Mono County licenses foster homes through Fresno Community Care, which conducts quarterly orientation meetings in Mammoth. The next scheduled meeting is in the beginning of July and attendance at the meeting is a requirement for the licensing process. “We hold the meetings for any number of people, some RSVP and some just show up,” Preis said. “We’re just happy to have them come and get the information on foster parenting.”

About becoming a foster parent, Baillet said, “It’s a process but I would not say it’s difficult.” It took Baillet about six months to complete the process and “Social Services was more than cooperative with whatever had to be done. They were very helpful.”

Peterson said it can be difficult to recruit foster parents because of the perception of long-term commitment: “You can be very prescriptive about what you feel is a fit for you,” she said. “It can be on a temporary or even just an emergency basis.”

“There is a myth that CPS is going to show up on your doorstep at 2 am with a kid under each arm and say ‘here take them,’” said Susi Baines, Director of Programs at Wild Iris Family Counseling and Crisis Center. “You can actually identify where your interest is in helping. It’s a mistake to think that you have to be a foster parent for years on end. That’s not the case.”

Baines and Wild Iris are not directly involved in the foster system but do promote it as part of their program. Wild Iris also runs the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) volunteer program in which individuals are assigned to children in the foster care system or who are involved in the child welfare in some way. CASA volunteers “are the child’s voice in court,” Lisa Reel, Executive Director at Wild Iris said. “They spend time with the child find out what their needs are and report that to the court.”

“For some, the process of becoming a licensed foster home is overwhelming. A lot of times, people will agree to be CASA if they want to do something for the children but not the long-term commitment of foster care,” Baines said. Wild Iris plans to hold a training class for CASA volunteers on June 28.

“In a court system of adults and legalities, the children sometimes get lost,” Reel said. “This is a way that people could be involved without having to be a foster parent and that they could make a difference.”

Blacketer, now 21, is married and lives in Texas close to her husband’s family with a child of her own. “I’m much stronger now, I can tell you that,” she said of her experience in the foster system.  “It’s definitely something that needs to be improved but if there’s enough foster parents that go out and do it with good hearts than the system will only get better.”

“What I would say to anyone who is even thinking about becoming a foster home—These children have been through a lot,” Baillet said. “Some have been through minimal trauma. Some of had major issues because of their family of origin. The possibility to help a foster child get some kind of stability in their lives is very important.”

For more information about becoming a foster parent contact Marlo Preis.