County looking for a few good foster parents

County looking for a few good foster parents
By Cliff Hamilton
Odessa American

In her childproofed living room with the plush, silver carpet, Diane
Dalton is the center of activity for four children.
There are her adopted sons, Dyllan, 5, and Brandon, 4, and two foster
children whose names Dalton can’t give for privacy reasons. One is 3
and the other, barely walking, is 15 months old.
Dalton, a single parent, is a physical education teacher at Zavala
Elementary and has fostered 41 children in the last 10 years.
Both of her sons were once her foster children.
Dalton said she’s fostered children as old as 16 and as young as a day
old, the age Dyllan was when she took him in.
“Some have been here overnight. Some have been here for a year. Two of
them never left,” she said.
Dalton said one of the children she’s fostered went on to play
football at Texas A&M University, and she received an invitation from
another who is graduating high school.
“Hopefully, I had something to do with it,” she said.
Dalton’s is one of 21 homes in the county that house 84 children who,
for various reasons, have been separated from their families.
Jan Wiese, the foster home developer for Child Protective Services,
said that amount is about half what the county could use.
“If we could have at least 50 active families, it would be much
better,” she said.
Wiese said, however, that the nature of foster parenting makes it hard
to talk potential foster parents into taking in “children who are
grieving and who are abused and acting out.”
She said the fostered children have been sexually or physically
abused, neglected or abandoned. Some, she said, are “drug babies” who
have to go through withdrawal in their new homes.
For Dalton, the costs and irritations and stress are just part of the
role of foster parent.
Dalton said she first became interested in being a foster parent when
she decided to adopt a child of her own.
“I just kept going I guess,” she said.
Lavonne Vossler, who chairs the Ector County Child Welfare Board, said
fostering children can be a very difficult choice for some would-be
parents.
That choice can also be complicated by stringent state laws that
determine fostered children’s environments.
Wiese said the state allows no more than six children in a household
and requires 40 square feet per child. And different-sexed children
are not allowed to share bedrooms.
“One problem is sometimes foster parents are limited,” she said.
Vossler said while parents receive some reimbursement for clothes,
food and daycare for the children, foster parents never come out ahead
financially.
“They spend way more than they get. They’re not paid; it’s
reimbursed,” she said. “There’s not a lot of fun in foster parenting.
It’s really a thankless job.”
Dalton said when she’s faced with the enormity of the job, it forces
her to consider why she serves as a foster parent.
“I guess I just love kids for starters. I love the fact that I can
give them a good start,” she said.
Dalton said the daily strain of taking care of extra children is
almost as hard as when the children are returned to their families.
“I cry whenever one of them leaves,” she said.
Dalton said she thinks the emotional factor is the biggest deterrent
to potential foster parents.
“It’s hard,” she said. “It’s not something easy to deal with, and I
think that’s what keeps people from fostering.”
Dalton said her mother never understood why she would willingly go
through the pains of foster parenting until she was at Dalton’s house
when a child arrived who was being separated from her sisters.
“She said ‘I think I’ll never forget the look in those little girls’
faces and how scared they look,’” Dalton said.
Dalton said splitting up a family is another emotional toll.
“So many times there’s two, three or more in a family and you just
can’t keep them together,” she said.
But Dalton said she hopes she’s having some sort of impact on the
children she fosters.
“You just hope that they take something with them,” she said.
Dalton said she takes a break for a few months after a foster child
leaves to spend time with just her sons.
But after a while, she said, the house starts to seem to quiet — even
to Dyllan and Brandon.
“They get to the point when we haven’t had any for a while when they
say, ‘When are more kids coming to play with us?’ ”
Dalton said between her and the children she fosters, she feels that
she gets the better end of the deal — even if she “sometimes” feels
overwhelmed.
“But you get a lot out of it, too. I mean, just look at this little
one,” she said as she picked up the 15-month-old to sit on her lap.
“They show me things, too. We give to each other.”
http://www.oaoa.com/news/nw052504d.htm
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