Hello, everyone, welcome to foster care one on one with Jason and Amanda. We are here today to talk about becoming foster parents. This is one of those topics that people have questions about, but there’s not a lot of, of information about that. And so I am going to click a couple buttons here real quick. You get to see a little bit of the backend maybe, and see what what we’re doing over here for a second. I’m having to click a couple buttons. And well, I was going to livestream this in the Facebook page. But but a Facebook doesn’t seem to want to let me do it. turn turn it off on me. I’m not gonna worry about it then.
Unknown Speaker 8:00
Alright, guys,
Jason Palmer 8:00
well, I appreciate you guys showing up here today for this. We are here to talk about becoming foster parents. And this is like I said, it’s a topic that has a lot of questions around it and not many answers. So we wanted to put some information out there help some people maybe if you’re interested in foster care, this is this is a good place to start. So Amanda, what what what do you remember us getting into foster care? What did that look like?
Unknown Speaker 8:31
Oh, goodness, that was a long time ago. It was scary.
Unknown Speaker 8:36
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 8:37
It was scary. There wasn’t a whole lot of information. And there was not a whole lot of people to really even talk to or connect with at that point.
Jason Palmer 8:46
Yeah, yeah. What do you remember? Um, who was it? We talked to first?
Unknown Speaker 8:51
Well, you went up to children’s division and got some information there. And they connected us with another foster family. And so we talked with Miss Cathy.
Jason Palmer 9:00
That’s it. It was Miss Cathy. Miss Cathy, if you’re out there listening. Thanks. You let us into an interesting place. So we’re just going to go ahead and jump in with, with what we have here for you guys today. who we are or who are we? If I can read my own writing. That’d be awesome. Amanda and I’ve been been a foster adoptive family for 12 years now. Yeah, that sounds about right, about 12 years. And we got into into foster care because after our after our now 20 year old son, Lord, we’re getting old after 20 year old son was born, we couldn’t have any more kids biologically speaking. And so we looked at adoption, and we just really felt kind of pulled in the direction of foster care. And that’s the way we went in a little over a year ago, we decided we wanted to start a podcast. And so that’s where the foster care and unparalleled journey podcast came from. So we jumped into that as well. Because, again, a lot of questions, not a lot of answers. And one of the things that we found is that people learn a lot through stories. So we started the podcast just allow people to start to get to know us and who we are. And then to hear some stories, some of the hard parts of it, some of the not so hard, the joyful parts, and, and all the different pieces and parts in between. Because, you know, it’s there’s a lot of people with a lot of stories and all I ever remember hearing growing up was the one story about the place, I think it was somewhere in rural Kentucky, where they found a woman who had kids in dog cages in a double wide somewhere. That’s the only thing I knew about foster care. Up to that point. Really, that was all I’d ever heard. We wanted to give people room to tell their stories. And my goodness, have they told us some stories?
Unknown Speaker 10:50
Oh, we’ve had a lot of stories, you know, good, bad and the ugly.
Jason Palmer 10:54
Yeah, for sure. For sure. So that’s what got us started in this. So when we first started, we were we were talking about this and I said what were we really afraid of, and everybody’s afraid of the home study. And this is an oddball slide to throw up here for you guys to look at. But there’s a reason I picked this picture.
Unknown Speaker 11:13
I know exactly what the reason is.
Jason Palmer 11:17
At the time, we had a dog named Mira. Mira was a border collie, really smart dog. And she trained me because when whenever she wanted to go outside, she’d walk up and pee on the floor in front of me, because if she peed on the floor, I’d take her outside, immediately trying to potty trainer and we had just gotten her and we were going through that whole thing. And as we had, who was it? It was
Unknown Speaker 11:39
Lindsay? Yes, Valerie.
Jason Palmer 11:42
Yep, then that the licensing worker, and the investigator for children’s division, which is children’s division is the agency in the state of Missouri, who takes care of foster care. And so as they’re standing in the house, doing their final visit, mira runs up in front of me, and decides to take a poop right there in the middle of the floor in front of the investigator. And in front of the licensing worker. And we were kind of horrified.
Unknown Speaker 12:10
I was horrified.
Jason Palmer 12:12
Because we thought, Oh, my goodness, this is gonna change everything. And that was a big fear was really just the are they going to find us good enough?
Unknown Speaker 12:20
Oh, yeah. And I mean, I’m a woman and, you know, want the house to be spotless, and we already had kids. And so spotless was not the house.
Unknown Speaker 12:33
Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 12:34
I felt this need that everything had to be perfect before every meeting, and I would run around and just drive myself crazy.
Jason Palmer 12:44
And that’s what what really had us terrified, we thought they’re not gonna let us do that. And so after we had that experience, we learned a whole lot. So we just wanted to start with just the steps of becoming a foster parent. And so there’s just a few pieces here. And I’m going to kind of just read these off a little bit for you guys. But, you know, most most states are going to tell you, you have to be licensed in order to provide care for children. There’s a lot of reasons for that. The licensing process is different in each step in each state. So we live in Missouri. And if you live in Colorado, or California, or Illinois, or Maine, or Florida, all those steps are going to be kind of the same. But it’s always going to be in a different in a different order. There’s going to be little things that are different depending on the state. So every agency and county and state has there variations in this process, but it’s usually the same stuff. It’s just in a different format. So if you’re thinking about becoming a foster parent, I, honestly, Google is your best friend. I remember when we were in school. And if you had a question, you had to go dig out the Encyclopedia Britannica out from underneath the bed and hope mom got that that episode that volume with the with the cereal box offer, or you didn’t get to look it up. But we have Google Now. So any questions you have about foster care, you just go go start googling some questions that you have. And that’s a great place just to get started. Find out who your local agencies are. There’s public agencies and private agencies, your public agencies, you’re going to be run by the state typically, Department of Human Services is usually the it’s a branch of that. And you’re going to find out that that’s what the state runs the state run foster care agencies. Now there are a lot of states there are private foster care agencies as well. The private agencies are going to usually be run by a nonprofit organization. And they’re going to offer different levels of care different different caseworkers. And so for some people, it makes more sense to go for public agency. In some cases, it makes more sense to go for private private agency. That’s your job to go figure that out what’s available in your area and what makes sense for you and your family. Get on Google find some phone numbers and email addresses. One of the things that we found was finding some other foster parents in our area who could answer some of our questions was just invaluable to be able to ask those questions. You know that one question that everybody asks, but but don’t you get sad when they leave?
Unknown Speaker 15:20
Oh, yeah.
Jason Palmer 15:22
Oh, yeah, yeah, there’s, I mean, I’m going to tell you, if anybody listens to the podcast, you’ll know that because I mentioned it a time or two. If I go to this side of my chest, I have, I have one little guy tattooed on my chest over here, right over my heart. And Carl will be with us forever. And quick side note, if you hear me mention names of kids in foster care, we’re, I’m everybody has a nickname in my world. That’s not their real names. We’re, you know, we’re protecting privacy here. This is not their real name. But I have a kid tattooed on me over my heart. On the left side, I have two other kids on the right side that that are not my kids, and probably looks weird to other people. But kids that really made that kind of a impact on us. And so this is something that you’re going to get into and when they leave, that’s hard.
Unknown Speaker 16:08
Oh, it’s definitely hard. But just backtracking just a little bit, find that foster family because that was the most help that we found was from Miss Cathy, because we could ask her anything and not feel like we are going to be judged by children’s division, we didn’t have to worry about am I going to ask the wrong question? Am I going to say the wrong thing? You know, you can just have an open and honest discussion with someone.
Jason Palmer 16:34
Absolutely. Finding that that resource is going to make your life that much easier and better. And once you’ve done that, you can kind of start to decide whether or not foster care. So the appropriate thing for you and your family. Because they’re going to be heartbreaks. I’m not gonna lie. That would be silly for me to lie to you about that. If you’re doing it right. They’re going to be some heartbreaks.
Unknown Speaker 16:56
But there’s also going to be times where there’s celebrations too.
Jason Palmer 17:00
Yeah, yeah, we’ve seen some kids go home to the family members that, that were heartbreaks and celebrations in the exact same moment. So that that’s one of those things, you have to decide if you and your family can step into those hard places, and take care of those kids when in time when they really need it. And that’s what you’re going to learn about you and your family and whether or not you can handle it. So next, you’re going to find out when you talk to these other people who’ve done foster care is that there’s a lot of things that that you don’t know, that you don’t even know you should know yet. So when you start googling around, you find these people ask the questions, like, hey, what should I be asking? What should I I know what do I need to learn about this? Because it’s not until you start to really dive in deep that you can get the information that’s going to change your life, and the life of a lot of kids. And if you decide that this is for you, it’s time to take the next step. Create yourself a list of questions, and then find these people who’ve already walked the path. Like Amanda and I, we have talked to quite a few people about it. Some people really benefit from some people just say, Hey, I’m just going to go do this. And that’s fine, too. Just know that you’re going to end up having some of these, some of these experiences that you did not expect. And you’ll probably be better served to, to find that information ahead of time. Hopefully the train trying to sound like it’s driving through our living room isn’t too loud for you guys. Good. He’s about a block away. And he likes to hit the horn when he goes by.
Unknown Speaker 18:37
And, and that’s the thing nowadays, there’s so many support groups on Facebook, everywhere. When we started. There wasn’t that much. Facebook was just starting. I mean, we’re world. But you know, there’s, there’s so many resources out there. So find them. It’s invaluable.
Jason Palmer 18:57
Yeah. And resources like that Facebook groups, Reddit, Cora, are great places to go look for questions. However, I’m going to warn you, not everyone is going to give you honest answers. Not everyone is going to give you accurate answers. And some people are going to be downright malicious about it. We I look around and a lot of Facebook groups and a couple of those groups are people who have had some really nasty experiences in foster care, who were in homes where they were abused in foster care by horrible human beings. And that kind of hateful and vitriolic about it and I don’t blame them. So you just have to be careful what you what you’re reading and how much credit you put behind it. So just remember, it’s the internet. And as the discussion I had with my son a couple years ago, I had to tell him when he he said, Dad, why do I have to go to school all the answers on Google? And I said you’re right, but they are all on Google. all the right answers are there. So are all the wrong answers. Just remember that when you’re on there, make sure you kind of check your sources and get a little bit more Little bit more depth to the answers. So when you start this process now, now we’re getting ready to start calling children’s division and learn from them. That phone call does not create any obligations, you can just grab some information, and then not do anything with it if you decide not to. But if you’ve gotten to this point, and you decide that, hey, this is something that I really feel pulled to, this is something I think we should do, it’s time to just do it. Let’s go ahead. And let’s make a call. Let’s schedule a meeting with a social worker, it’s a chance for you guys to get to know each other, they need to get to know you and know what you’re all about. And know it’s hard for you, and what’s easy, where your strengths and weaknesses lie. You need to ask a lot of questions, because everything I can tell you here may not be accurate with the social worker that you’re talking to, and the agency in the county in the state that you’re in. So ask as many questions as you can think of, you can never have too much information. This is the information gathering stage of this journey. So even if it seems like a stupid question, ask it. Because you’ll be surprised how many things you assumed that are wrong. Parents and workers really need to get to know each other. Learning your strengths and weaknesses is going to be a really valuable thing for the agency. They need to know your strengths and weaknesses around race, language, sexual orientation, these aren’t things you really think about all the time when you think about foster care. But race is a big deal for some people.
Unknown Speaker 21:32
Oh, absolutely. Whether it be your community, your family, you know, it affects a lot of things. And it definitely affects the children that come into your home.
Jason Palmer 21:44
And if you if you live in an area that has a high population of, of Asian kids, or Latinos or whatever, like language could be a barrier as well. And if you can’t speak Spanish and a kid primarily speak Spanish at home as a young kid, that might be something that that’s a problem with us with certain kids showing up for you. Or if you are a speaker of a particular language, that could be a strength that they can really target the right kids to come to your home that you can provide great care for sexual orientation is one that gets a little bit dicey for some people, especially when you get into teens. But suffice it to say that if you just realize that we’re helping kids, I don’t really care what someone’s sexual orientation is. That’s not why they’re coming to my house. I’m just trying to provide a safe place. But if it’s an issue with you, man, just go ahead and tell your workers that so that they don’t put a kid there who’s not going to be welcome and feel like it’s a safe and loving environment for them to be in?
Unknown Speaker 22:44
Well, and absolutely, because that’s, that’s their job, you know, it’s not something that they hold against you. It’s something that they need to know, for the safety of the children involved. And for you and your family. You know, this
Jason Palmer 22:57
whole process is where we’re just trying to find the best fit for you, your family and the kids and care that you will potentially be serving. Now the home study, or the family assessment, depending on where you’re at,
Unknown Speaker 23:12
dun, dun dun,
Jason Palmer 23:13
that’s what everybody thinks everybody’s scared to the home study. I don’t want the government coming into my house to judge me. And the way that I have my house set up and the way that I do things. I don’t want them to come here and judge me.
Unknown Speaker 23:25
Well, and what if my home isn’t good enough, and they take my children from me.
Jason Palmer 23:30
I mean, there’s a lot of fear there for a lot of people. And the truth is the home study is a way of gathering information about you and your family and assessing your ability to provide care for children. It’s really just a way to understand how you operate. And number one, that you’ll have a safe place for these kids that you meet minimum standards, which I’m just going to go ahead and say guys, it’s pretty minimum standards, your house does not have to be worth a certain dollar amount. It needs to be safe. It needs to meet. I think for most states probably have a similar requirements. I believe it has to have a door on each room and a window in each room.
Unknown Speaker 24:11
closet bed dresser.
Jason Palmer 24:13
That’s Yeah, it’s that kind of stuff. So what you’re gonna find is the biggest part of the home study is the questionnaires and paperwork good lower.
Unknown Speaker 24:24
Oh, yeah.
Jason Palmer 24:24
We did a lot of paperwork.
Unknown Speaker 24:27
Yes, we did.
Jason Palmer 24:28
And it’s not hard stuff. They’re not asking you to reinvent the wheel here. You’re not spending, you know, 20 hours pouring out your life on this paper. It’s a lot of paperwork, but most of it’s really easy to do. It’s just seems overwhelming, because it seems like there’s a lot of it. And unfortunately, if you work in the government, I’m sorry, but the government tends to like to generate paperwork. And I feel like that that’s just part of this process. They need to make sure that they can get as much paperwork in as possible.
Unknown Speaker 24:57
Now,
Jason Palmer 24:58
you’ll usually go to some classes, most likely right now, because COVID is a thing. The classes I would assume are probably moved online when we did it, they were in person classes, we sat in a class with what probably eight or 10 other couples Yeah, give or take. And they go through this process where they’re understanding your history, because that has a lot to do with things. They need to know something about your childhood, your family of origin, your relationships, your hobbies and interest, your motivation for becoming a foster parent. Because, honestly, if your motivation is just money, please turn around, find the door and go out.
Unknown Speaker 25:38
Yeah, go to McDonald’s, get a second job. Yeah, you’ll make this
Jason Palmer 25:42
isn’t it, you’ll make way more money and a second job at McDonald’s and have a lot less headache and heartache. And quite honestly, if you’re here for money, we don’t want you here for that. The only reason anybody should be interested in becoming a foster parent is because they want to help kids.
Unknown Speaker 25:57
Absolutely.
Jason Palmer 25:59
And they’re going to talk to you about things like the hobbies and interests. What is the stuff you do that that might be something kids could could do with you? How’s that going to leave you time to do your hobbies? And the things that you’re interested in? If you have extra kids here? How will this affect your relationships with your, you know, with going back to the race thing, we had some issues where well, we’re gonna have issues, but we were concerned we might have some issues dependent on on the race of the kids who came to our home, we had a couple family members who we were a little bit concerned might be a problem. And and we had we shared that with a worker, and they encouraged us to go talk to them and find out because in the state of Missouri, you can actually say, Hey, you know, I’ll take these kids and those kids, but not not I can’t take this group of kids for that reason. Because if we have an older family member who might have some issues with it, we don’t want to put that kid in a difficult spot.
Unknown Speaker 26:51
Oh, absolutely. We are not here to cause more trauma.
Jason Palmer 26:56
And there’s the T word, lots of trauma, that’s one of the things you’ll find. And that’s why the family of origins, stuff is so important in your childhood stuff is so important, because most of us have some level of trauma in our history. And we need to make sure that we have a firm grasp on that trauma in our life, because that’s going to allow us to really serve these kids better, and help them through their trauma, if we have dealt with our own traumas. So all of that is very important stuff that you will go over in this whole process of the home study, not the home study, that would be more of the classes here we do we do. What was it nine weeks of classes, 13 weeks of classes,
Unknown Speaker 27:36
something like that. Yeah,
Jason Palmer 27:37
it’s been a dozen years, I forgot Exactly. But you’ll you’ll do some classes, and there’s your education, and your process to learn and understand if again, if this is something for you still, because you can still back out at any time, then they’re gonna look for some references. And really, these references do not need to be the CEO of the local nonprofit who comes down and bestows knighthood on you because you’re the most saintly person they know. They just need to be people who know you well enough that they can help the agency that you’re working with understand your abilities, and who you really are. They’ll usually send them an email, regular snail mail, phone call, whatever, it’s usually something pretty simple. And they’re just looking for some people in your life to confirm Yeah, yeah, John’s a good dude. I’ll vouch for him. He’s a good guy. It’s it’s kind of like becoming a notary public, right, you need to have some people in your life who say you’re a decent human before, they really want to give you that option to go out and sign papers. This is the same thing only with kids. So it’s a little bit more important. Then we run through the background checks. The background checks are a process that’s designed to understand your history with the legal system. Mostly, they’re looking to see if you have any issues with with child protection problems, possibly elder abuse, any kind of child abuse, violent felonies, if you got caught with a dime bag 15 years ago, they’re probably not going to care a whole lot about that. If you have a pending case for having attempted to murder your wife, they will care about that a lot.
Unknown Speaker 29:10
I like how you looked at me, should I be worried?
Jason Palmer 29:14
Hey, stop it. This is live. We don’t need any evidence. But they’re interested in that side of the of the legal history to make certain that we’re not putting bad people in with kids who are already traumatized. You’re going to do some fingerprints. And they’ll run the legal background checks and look at your criminal history and then look in the the Oh, I can’t think of what that background check is called with the elder and Child Protection one.
Unknown Speaker 29:42
Oh, goodness.
Jason Palmer 29:44
Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t it doesn’t matter though. They know what it is. I’ll take care of it.
Unknown Speaker 29:48
Well, and they also take care of the charges for that too.
Jason Palmer 29:52
Yeah, yeah, you’re most Well, most agencies we’ve ever done in Missouri.
Unknown Speaker 29:55
They do I guess I should call
Jason Palmer 29:57
the cost of the of the background check. So it It’s not like it’s a big cost to you or anything, they’re just trying to make certain that kids aren’t putting the care of potential abusers. Because like I mentioned the story before, with the the gal putting kids in dog cages, we’re really trying to avoid that these days. So we want to make certain that if you’re interested in becoming a foster parent, you’re a decent foster parent, that’s what we’re looking for, then they’re going to do a safety check on your house, which might sound a little bit invasive or intrusive, but really, they just want to make sure everybody can be safe there. You know, they might check your water if you have a well to make sure you don’t have lead coming out of your water,
Unknown Speaker 30:35
water temperatures,
Jason Palmer 30:36
yep, fire safety, they want to make sure you don’t have a fire trap. We want to make certain that like there’s a front and back door that both open away to get out of the house. If there’s if there’s any, any fires, I think here in Missouri, we’re required to keep a fire extinguisher as well.
Unknown Speaker 30:51
Yeah, fire extinguisher escape routes,
Jason Palmer 30:56
you know, posted pretty simple stuff, you know, they’re gonna look at structural soundness of your home. We’ve got a guy who lives a little ways from us down here. And every time I drive past his house, I look I think, hmm, it’s still standing.
Unknown Speaker 31:08
It’s leaning a little bit harder, but it’s still sinking in.
Unknown Speaker 31:10
Yeah, like, house
Jason Palmer 31:12
looks like it’s about to fall over. You don’t want to put kids in a house like that. So that it’s simple stuff like get your pets back vaccinations, we want to make sure that kids are safe from any kind of craziness that might come out of that you don’t want to give a kid rabies because you didn’t give your dog a shot. Most of the things that they’re gonna identify in the step, though, are entirely fixable. But they’re just checking to make sure that the child will be in a generally safe environment. And that’s what what we need is that general safety
Unknown Speaker 31:41
well, and that’s the thing, if something does need to be changed, it doesn’t disqualify you, they will speak to you, you know, and give you the opportunity to say, Okay, yeah, I can take care of this, or, I don’t want to do this.
Jason Palmer 31:52
Absolutely. So most states are going to have a set number of training hours required to do to go through to be licensed, which is a good thing, it’s an opportunity for you to learn, so that you can learn about kids, you can learn about trauma, you can learn about kids who have different needs different levels of foster care, because some, some kids come with some really intense medical needs. And if you’re not ready to put a G tube in and do
Unknown Speaker 32:18
well, you’re not gonna put the G tube in, but you will help maintain it
Jason Palmer 32:21
there you as you can tell, I don’t do that. We’re not a medically licensed home for that reason. I don’t have that training. And I don’t have that time to do that. So you can set what type of what type of foster home you want to be, but you just have to have the training involved there, you’ll usually need to take a course in CPR. Not a tough one. Annie, Annie, are you okay?
Unknown Speaker 32:44
If
Jason Palmer 32:46
from an old school CPR people
Unknown Speaker 32:50
stand,
Jason Palmer 32:50
that’s the one. Yeah, I did that class a few times. And you’re gonna learn how to work with your state or agency, and learn the best practices of working with the special needs of different kids with different needs. And they’ll have just a ton of more helpful information. This is a place where you should be really Leaning, leaning in and gaining all the information that you don’t already have. And if you do have it, sit down and be and be serious and learn every part of it. Because this stuff changes actually, the last time it took the CPR class, some things had changed in the way that they do it since the last class I’d had a couple of years before. So there there’s a lot of stuff here to learn. And sometimes you’ll even have have foster parents who will come in and and give part of the training, because these are the people who are on the front lines.
Unknown Speaker 33:38
Oh, yeah. You know, and we have to keep our training current CPR expired. She has to do that every so often. And so you want to learn from the people that are there, too.
Jason Palmer 33:48
Yeah. Well, Amanda and I have actually been to been to a couple trainings where they’ve asked us to come and speak and just give some information to people who who are getting ready to step out into their journey. And it’s it’s been, you know, it’s been an honor to be able to kind of help people along that road and give some of our experience to others. So take that training serious and know that you have a lot you can learn here, I don’t care how much you already know, the you know, less than what you can learn. As you get to the to the end of this process, your licensing worker is going to write a report with their recommendations. Most of those recommendations will talk about what kind of family will what kind of kids will best fit in your family, your areas of strength and weaknesses, that in places where you might benefit from some additional training. Don’t get offended. You need training. I do too. And we can all learn and do better jobs on what we have done. They’ll send the appropriate forms off to the right people who will eventually show up with a license at your house. And that’s what you have to have to start this whole process. And then suddenly, congratulations. you’ve survived the process. And now You’re ready to help kids. And that’s what we’re all here for in the first place. It’s not that complicated, takes a little bit of time. Dealing with the the grief and loss of kids is hard. That’s one of the biggest questions we get. But one of the things that we’ve learned in our journey is that it’s worth it. hard, but it’s worth it. So that’s the basic process of how to become a foster parent. And it’s pretty simple. So this is time for you guys to send us some questions. If you have questions, you can put them into the, into the q&a section down there. And we can we can start to answer any questions that you guys might have. So one of the bigger questions that we get asked a lot is, like, does what do you do when when you don’t agree with what the court decides to do in a case?
Unknown Speaker 36:01
Well, and and that’s the thing. It’s not just you, there’s a team. It’s the foster parents. It’s the licensing workers. It’s the caseworkers there’s a guardian ad litem for the children. You know, you’re, you’re a part of a team. And being a part of that team is being able to share your opinions, but also learning from the other people that are there, you know, people that have had more experience, then you you’re not always going to agree.
Jason Palmer 36:37
Absolutely. That’s, that’s a big thing. That’s you’re not gonna agree with the whole team. The the team is going to have different opinions that come from different places, we had a we had a sibling set of two, who were placed with us. And while we were, while we were actually not take us back, they had gone to a placement after that they were supposed to go to a foster or adoptive home. And the adoption did not work out. Something happened with the parent that was going to adopt them. Something happened in her life, and she was unable to do it to go through with it. And they were having a hard time placing these kids. And we live in a small town one day I happen to be, I think over getting license plates renewed or something. And the lawyer who is a guardian ad litem that’s a guard, that’s a lawyer whose job is to look out for the kids and look out for their best interests in the case. He happened to have an office next door and Brian saw me and said, Hey, hey, man, I have a question. What do you think about this? You remember these kids? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember. Well, he says, What do you think about splitting them up? Because they’re tired? They’re thinking about splitting these these brothers up? It was two young brothers. Probably what three and four ish?
Unknown Speaker 37:47
Yes.
Jason Palmer 37:48
And he said, they’re thinking about splitting them up. Because the one kid was, he was just a cute little guy, super happy, easy to get along with his brother. He was never diagnosed. But if I had to guess I would say oppositional defiance disorder was not outside of the question for these guys. And, or for this particular kid, and they were having a hard time getting him placed. And we were talking about whether or not we thought he should be, he should be split up so they can get one brother and care. And I gave him my opinion, which was basically these kids have never had any kind of any kind of hardcore stability in their life ever. Except for the fact that those two boys had been together their whole life. That was the only stability they had. And I thought it’d be a horrible idea to split them up.
Unknown Speaker 38:32
Yeah, they had already lost mom and dad, they only had each other’s hands to hold, and then you’re gonna take them apart from each other.
Jason Palmer 38:40
Absolutely. And so that’s why we decided we weren’t going to, you know, we didn’t want to suggest that to him. We told him no, we think that the best thing for him is to be together. You guys just need to find a home that can handle them.
Unknown Speaker 38:51
Well. And we actually, you know, after thinking about it, we knew of a home that was looking for a couple of little boys. And we suggested that and those two little boys went to that home and they’ve been there ever since they’re, they’re adopted. They’re loved. They have a wonderful family. They’re still together. And they are thriving. And that’s been well, several years, probably 910 years ago.
Jason Palmer 39:20
You know, every time we start to
Unknown Speaker 39:22
feel older.
Unknown Speaker 39:24
But we do have a question here. Yeah. From Amber.
Jason Palmer 39:29
Yes. Amber says what does the process of pairing foster parents and children look like? You know, for the most part, that’s why it’s so important to have good relationships with your workers. I just realized I still have the screen on here. I’m gonna turn the screen off so you can actually see us.
Unknown Speaker 39:49
Well, maybe.
Jason Palmer 39:52
There we go. There we go. We’re here. Well, I’m here. Amanda’s kind of hiding there.
Unknown Speaker 39:56
I’m here. All right.
Jason Palmer 39:58
The process of pairing foster parents Some children,
Unknown Speaker 40:01
I guess
Unknown Speaker 40:02
that’s part of what those home assessments do they find your strengths and your weaknesses. And I’d like to say that, you know, it always works out that, you know, they’re gonna call you with the perfect child that you said, Oh, I’m gonna take a two year old little girl, you know, and that’s all I want? Well, you know, they’re gonna call you for that four year old little boy, they’re gonna call you for that group of siblings. There’s not enough homes for these kids. But they do really try to pair strengths and weaknesses where they can. And the thing is, is you can always say, No, I don’t think this is a good fit for my family. This is the reason why, you know, there’s been several times that we’ve been called because, you know, educational needs, because we were a homeschool family for a while, you know, there’s all different kinds of things that come into play.
Jason Palmer 40:54
Yeah, there’s a lot of pieces and parts. And Amanda’s right? They are going to go, Oh, you want to take three year old boys. And we have a two year old girl or a 12 year old girl who really needs a home. And that’s one of the things that, that they’re pretty, pretty adamant about looking for homes for kids, regardless of whether or not it fits the need, you know, that fits your request or not. Because the truth is, is in the United States, there’s roughly a half a million kids in foster care, and they’re trying to find homes. And they will try to respect your desire, your what you want to deal with as much as possible. But they’re not always going to do it. They’re going to try and find homes for kids. And if you guys are podcast listeners, I’m just side note, you’ll notice occasionally Amanda gets up and leaves, she has to go duct tape a kid back to the wall or something. I don’t know. My little guy just came in looking sad like something was going on. So you will get up and disappear from time to time because I have a wall here and there. I can’t get up. So she’ll go deal with them. So for the moment, you just have me. Alright, Sally, I see you asked a question here. No, any support groups in the St. Louis, Missouri area that we could recommend? Yes. foster and adoptive Care Coalition. And you’re dealing with St. Louis County children’s division now. Okay. Yes, there are a lot of support groups, usually, you know, we have one here in our county, it’s a smaller County, we’re always outside of St. Louis. And it’s not a terribly active group. Because we were a smaller group, it’s small town. But you will find a lot of them online, especially right now, with COVID going the way that it is, you can find a lot of support online, if you get on Facebook and just make a couple a couple searches, you will suddenly find that there are an abundance of groups on there. Again, I will warn you that if you are going to going to look for some of those groups online, just make sure you kind of check out the group and see what’s there before you commit to becoming a part of that group and really share a lot because you will find some groups that have good people that are really willing to help. They’re just wanting to provide whatever they can for for anyone willing to join them. And you’ll find some some groups where they’re not so not so interested in helping, they might be a little bit upset about something.
Unknown Speaker 43:17
There’s always people that are willing to judge and give their opinions whether they’re
Jason Palmer 43:22
kind or not. Absolutely, and you got to remember like this, this is the internet.
Unknown Speaker 43:28
Some you got the trolls.
Jason Palmer 43:30
There’s some good people there. And there’s some some not so awesome people. So, so yeah, there’s a couple different groups. And I know that’s, you know, here in St. Louis. I don’t know of any other groups that meet in person here in the St. Louis area off the top of my head. But I’m certainly, you know, a couple searches, you could see if you can find something, and the workers in St. Louis County will probably know more about what you have in your in your area, then I would ever have a clue because St. Louis County is it’s it’s only an hour or so away from us. But it’s a world away in the when you look at foster care, it’s several counties away so. So alright. Do we have any more questions coming in here? Let’s see. I’m gonna go check this over here. Because in case you guys didn’t know, this is the first webinar we’ve done. So I’m learning the backend, the tech side of it too. So if I look a little bit crazy, staring it over here trying to figure it out. That’s all it is.
Unknown Speaker 44:31
Yeah, school districts. So they do try to keep children in their district, you know, the kids are losing their homes, they’re losing their families. You know, the last thing that they really want to do is to take them out of their school out of their support group away from their friends, but it doesn’t always work. You know, there’s there’s times where kids do have to change schools go to different districts. Some foster parents are willing to transport to keep that child in the district that they were in. But it doesn’t always work that way. And that’s, that’s part of the problem of not having enough foster families in every county.
Jason Palmer 45:16
Absolutely. The and I assume that’s what you mean. Not as to whether or not kids can. Kids can come in, depending on on the area you live in? Because they’ll move kids wherever they have to, if they have to.
Unknown Speaker 45:33
Oh, absolutely.
Jason Palmer 45:34
Yeah, these, these areas do not have a whole lot of not a lot of resources a lot of times and I mean, we
Unknown Speaker 45:41
we’ve had to transfer kid from school to school.
Jason Palmer 45:44
Yeah. If you live in KC, though, I will go ahead and say from what I understand, you’re in a pretty good school district. I know my brother used to do some work with with their school district, I believe, and he just gave rave reviews of it. And so they were just amazing out there. So hopefully, if you live out there, you’re, you’re having the same experience. So Alright, do we have any more questions to throw in here? If not, I’m certain we can pull one up here. Because we have been asked, but about a million questions over the years,
Unknown Speaker 46:20
probably. So I mean, there’s people always have questions. Um, you know, a lot of times people are afraid to ask their questions.
Jason Palmer 46:28
Yeah, I know, we just recently released a podcast episode with a big question that we really didn’t know the answer to at first. And that was with Sarah Salazar. Because when I set up the interview with her doctor, she seemed like a really nice lady. She seemed really intelligent. She seemed like she had a lot to offer. And she had a really interesting story. And within the first 30 seconds of the interview, she said something about her and her wife and I went, huh, I didn’t even know that about her. And so, you know, we have a short discussion there about about how that works, how how somebody’s sexual orientation works inside of the foster care system. And in today’s world, you know, we have we have enough discrimination laws to keep people from being treated differently, because of a lot of different reasons, and whether or not somebody agrees with it or not based on their personal or religious beliefs. You know, honestly, I’m just thinking to myself that, I don’t think that I really care that much about someone as long as they’re a good human. Because there are plenty of people who from all sexual orientations are good humans, and this also help trying to help take care of kids. That’s one of the things that I think we should care most about.
Unknown Speaker 47:44
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and in the state of Missouri, that’s not an issue. You don’t even have to be married to be a foster parent, you don’t even have to have a significant other, you can be a single mother or a single father, you know, all those are very much acceptable. You know, and you don’t even have to own your home, you can rent your home, you can be in an apartment, you can be in a mobile home, you know, but it’s all about providing a safe environment.
Jason Palmer 48:22
Well, and I think the the the add on to that is, it’s about providing that safe environment, until and if they’re ready to go home until their home becomes a safe place again. And that’s something that a lot of people have a hard time with.
Unknown Speaker 48:37
Oh, yeah, the R word. unification. Yeah,
Jason Palmer 48:40
yeah, you’ll, that’s one of the things you will learn in the process of, of your home study is that reunification is a word you will hear about 642,000 times, because that’s the primary goal of foster care. These kids are coming out of hard places out of hard situations. And if we can at all set this up to where their family can get back together and get their life into a place where they can take care of their kid again, that’s like, that’s the biggest one that the division of Family Services can come up with.
Unknown Speaker 49:10
Absolutely. And, and as a foster parent, that’s part of your job is to support that when ever possible. Because that’s, that’s the best thing for that child when it’s appropriate. And it’s not always appropriate. But a lot of times it is. And those bio parents, they need support and they need support from us. You know, and it’s our job to try to help them any way that we can and to support that relationship with their child.
Jason Palmer 49:49
Absolutely, absolutely. That’s one of those hard things. You know, it’s hard for us when we began you know, I I came from a background where in my family we were pretty good at being judgmental
Unknown Speaker 50:02
And
Jason Palmer 50:04
family might just judge me for saying that I’m just saying, but it was true, it was really easy for us to be judgmental in the home that I grew up in. And so when I see a kid who gets pulled out of a home, I’m not going to even pretend like it’s not my knee jerk reaction to have that, that first thought of how can you do that to your kid. I mean, we’ve had kids come through with, with all kinds of different histories and stories and different types of abuse, and drug exposure and, and all kinds of just horrific things. And it’s really easy to be judgmental about a person, but our job is not to judge him
Unknown Speaker 50:39
until you’ve been there until you’ve walked a mile in those shoes. You have no idea.
Jason Palmer 50:44
Yeah, they actually hired a guy, his name is, um, Judge so and so. And his job is to judge him. Our job is to support the kids. And that’s, that’s a difficult part of it. And for anybody who has ever, ever been around the foster system, you’ll know for sure that that’s one of the hardest part is being willing to be be kind to the people who you think and have done something wrong, and learning that your job is to, if at all possible help to reunify these kids with their their biological family?
Unknown Speaker 51:15
Absolutely. And I mean, that’s the thing. You know, there are evil people out there, I’m not going to tell you there’s not, I’m not going to tell you, we haven’t met several of them. But at the same time, there are people and they need help to even if it’s not appropriate for those children to go back. It might be appropriate for us to help facilitate some counseling, different services. We’re all people and just need a little help.
Jason Palmer 51:45
Yeah, if we can help find a little bit of healing for somebody, then we’ve done our job. We’ve helped helped make it as possible as we can for these kids to be able to go back home with their biological family members and live a healthy life. That is for sure. The best outcome? So we just had a question come in percentage of kids, what percentage of kids are you able to stay in touch with after reunification? I don’t like this question.
Unknown Speaker 52:12
No, because I mean, this question is, it’s a hard question, because you’re not going to be able to stay in contact with some of these children. Parents don’t want to be reminded of their failures. Yeah, you know, we’ve had a lot of a lot of little ones, a lot of a lot of babies. And, you know, quite frankly, if, if they can get away with never telling their children that they were in the system that they didn’t screw up. Why would they? Yeah, on the other hand, there’s several kids that we do still keep in touch with, we’ve got their families on our Facebook, like, get pictures regularly text messages, you know, a visit here or there, you know, and then there’s the other ones that I would give anything to just hear a laugh, or see a smile. Yeah, but that’s, that’s all up to the biological family. And a lot of that is
Jason Palmer 53:13
going family as well,
Unknown Speaker 53:14
or the adoptive family. I was gonna go there too. But it also comes down to a lot of what you put into that relationship with that biological family. You know, if you can forge a good relationship. I know a families that still get to see their foster kids, like every other weekend, like there’s, like there’s a step family. You know, it’s all about the connections, and if you can make that connection.
Jason Palmer 53:45
Yeah. Yeah. JOHN, john, put a question in the chat here. Is it difficult for a single male to become a foster parent? And
Unknown Speaker 53:54
I would say there was a time where it was, yeah, but I don’t think we’re in that day and age anymore.
Jason Palmer 54:00
Well, and if you think a little bit, we have an episode about I hate to sound like I’m just trying to trying to Hawk the podcast constantly here. But if you go back and listen to the episode with berry farmer, what’s his name? Yep. Barry is a very was a single guy. You know, Barry was was a black guy. I mean, he’s like a big dude. big, long dreads, you know, he does not look like the guy you would think would walk into a place and go, Hey, I want to I want to be a foster parent. But he’d worked with foster kids. He worked with kids a lot of his life. And he adopted 333 young boys who I made the assumption when I saw the pictures that they were brothers, because, man, they all look like you know, those three look like brothers, you know, white kids, long blonde hair, and every picture I’ve ever seen of him and his boys. They look so happy. And I had to ask him like, dude, a single guy going into, like, do foster care and bring three young Boys into your home like, What? What struggles? Did you have getting that done? And honestly, he just, he just went and did it.
Unknown Speaker 55:07
Yeah, he was like this, this is what I’m gonna do. And you know, he did it. And so, you know, single or not, you know, as as long as you go in and you’re committed. That’s all you really need to do is show your commitment.
Jason Palmer 55:25
Yeah, yeah. And to finish answering Amber’s question, because I don’t think we actually answered it, the percent of kids are able to stay in touch with it’s a pretty low percent, I’d have to think real hard to get an exact number, but probably less than 20%. probably less than 20. It’s a fairly low number. You know, one of the other questions that, that we get asked a lot is, you know why some kids are reunited with their biological families when they’ve done certain things that we just everybody deemed as horrible. And, you know, that’s a hard one to always answer, because it’s case by case really. But when a kid comes into care, and one of those things you’ll learn as you go through this process, is when a kid comes into care, they come in for a reason, obviously. So your judge your workers, they’re going to embrace him and work together, they’re going to work a case plan. And these parents are going to have certain things that they need to get done in their life in order to change their life, to get to a place where they’re, they’re doing awesome, again, right to where they’re, they’re ready to take care of these kids again. And so as they work, that case plan, they’re going to become either closer to reunification or further away.
Unknown Speaker 56:38
Absolutely. And there’s all sorts of things that go into that case plan. You know, just like Jason was saying, it could be mandated drug court, anger management classes, parenting classes, counseling, you know, all all sorts of different things, each, each case is different. Yeah, because we’ve
Jason Palmer 56:59
seen everything from from people who are addicted to drugs to people who, who aren’t staying on their medication, and it’s causing problems and
Unknown Speaker 57:06
not, you know, not mad compliance, you know, have have some mental issues. You know, there’s, there’s all different reasons why kids come into care.
Jason Palmer 57:15
So they create this plan for the parents to work. And if they work the plan, and they do what they need to do, then they have the opportunity to get the kids back. And that’s the way it should work. So it’s, it’s one of those tricky questions to answer just because there’s, there’s not a standard answer. Because every kid comes in with a different problem. Every parent comes in with a different problem. And it really just depends on where they’re at in their life and whether or not they’re able to, they’re able to overcome their obstacles in their life and get and get their life in order. So Veronica says, What are you what if you’re interested in adoption? Well, if you’re interested in just going straight to adoption, if that’s the case, adopt us kids adoptuskids.org.
Unknown Speaker 58:03
There there is that, and there are there are cases where kids come in, you know, and, and they know, you know, they, this is where the case is heading. And so you can you can talk with your licensing workers and say, you know, we only want to take kids that, you know, are heading towards this path, doesn’t mean that it’s always going to end up there. But there’s different risk categories. You know, we have adopted for children, you know, we we started off fostering, but we, we always wanted to adopt, um, we’re done with adopting right now, what I’ve been told anyway, we’re not
Jason Palmer 58:48
done. Right now. We’re done. I’m too old to bring in more babies.
Unknown Speaker 58:53
We’ll see. That’s always up for debate. But yeah, lots of people do get into foster care, because they want to adopt. But I will say that the majority of your foster care cases are reunification. That is the number one goal. The number one goal is not for adoption.
Jason Palmer 59:19
Yeah, I mean, as an example, we’ve had what roughly 20 kids come through, and four of them were kids, we ended up adopting, so you can do the math there.
Unknown Speaker 59:29
Well, four of them. We ended up adopting and out of the 20 kids. There were four other ones that did become available for adoption, that were better suited for other homes. Yeah, and that’s a choice that you have, it’s a hard choice. But you really have to look at your family and your dynamics and your kids. And you got to decide what’s best for for everybody, especially the kids involved.
Jason Palmer 1:00:00
Yeah, yeah, you have to get out your crystal ball and figure out what’s going to go on in the future and do your best guesswork. And really dig deep and try and understand what’s going to work best for your family.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:10
Well, yeah, and you got to get over yourself and figure out what’s best for these kids to
Jason Palmer 1:00:16
see, Sally says, St. Louis, city and county make you choose one. I also want to do both happy to foster if it’s if it is not possible for the kid to go home, then I would be open to adoption as well. And sadly, that’s that’s where we were as well. We were open to adoption. But we were more. At that point. I think we just felt led more towards foster care.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:39
We did. You know, we, we wanted to help. We wanted to make a difference in our area. foster parents were few and far between. There were a lot of kids that needed a safe place to land. You know, unfortunately, there’s a lot of a lot of kids that don’t get that safe place to land, and they end up in residential care. Or juvie girls town Boys Town because there’s not enough homes. And so when we started, yeah, we were just, we wanted to help. We wanted to be a safe place for kids to land. And, you know, we had wanted to adopt to but our primary goal was Foster. And then, you know, if, if it happened to be hit, it happened to be
Jason Palmer 1:01:26
in the very first two kids who showed up to be fostered in a home ended up staying for good. Yeah. And so
Unknown Speaker 1:01:34
yeah, so we also have from Sally, what were a few of the longest time periods you had kiddos for? So yeah, that that’s a really great question. First of all, we’ll start with the shortest because that one’s the easiest. We had kiddos for the shortest amount of time was about 16 hours, we gave a couple kiddos a place to stay for the night while family was located as far as longest placement. So that was a sibling group.
Jason Palmer 1:02:07
That’s true that are tattooed over here on my chest.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:09
And that was about two years. Right about right about two years.
Jason Palmer 1:02:14
That’s right, right there about between a year and a half and two years. Yeah, that was a long time. And those
Unknown Speaker 1:02:18
those long placements are hard. You know, not because the kids are hard. But it’s hard when they go home. It’s hard to let go. It’s hard to say goodbye. Yeah,
Jason Palmer 1:02:31
they live in another small town now. About an hour or so away from us now. And I know that town is and for work, I drive to that town and I’m not gonna lie. When I drive down that road. I slow down a little bit. I looked down the road where they lived at the time when they went back home. And I
Unknown Speaker 1:02:47
look a little extra as you drive by the park.
Jason Palmer 1:02:50
Yeah, looking to see if I see a blond headed little boy, because and a blonde had a little girl with him. Because Yeah, there’s there’s a lot of hard stuff there. So they were with us for almost two years. Carl was with us. We got him. He was only a few days old.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:07
Yeah. Carl was four days old. And he was with us for almost a year.
Jason Palmer 1:03:12
Yeah, he left almost on his first birthday, wasn’t it just a few days before.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:15
And when you have an infant that you’ve taken care of? The whole time it’s you bond. You know, and I don’t care what anybody says, Yeah, I didn’t birth that baby. But while he was here, he was my baby. You know, and my baby, he will always be. He’s just not here with me. But he’s always in my heart. And he’s tattooed over my husband’s heart. You know, these these children, they leave an impression on you. And it’s our job to leave a good impression on them to.
Jason Palmer 1:03:50
Absolutely. I mean, that’s, that’s what we’re here for. We’re trying to change the world one life at a time. Yeah. And, yeah, it’s that it will insell You’re right, that’s, that’s great for the kids, because they have that, that early attachment, and attach, I won’t dive off into attachment because, well, we’re going to, we don’t have to run out of time to talk about attachment. But, you know, for kids to have that opportunity to learn so much. In such a young age is really powerful for them to learn how to connect with other humans and, and then become good humans themselves. It’s it’s all part of the important psychological processes for a kid.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:34
And I say it all the time. You know, we have learned something from every child that has come to our home. You know, I’m, I always say that I’m pretty sure these kids have taught me more than I could ever get back to them.
Jason Palmer 1:04:50
I’m not gonna lie. I think they’ve taught me more than a PhD course. Good. Yeah. I mean, for real. That’s, it’s that much learn and of course, I don’t have a PhD. To compare it to so
Unknown Speaker 1:05:01
yeah, and the thing is, is not every placement is going to be peaches and creams. It’s just it’s not. It’s challenging. It’s hard. Some days are frustrating. Some days you cry. Some days, you go to the bathroom and you you scream, you know, it’s hard. But parenting is hard, whether they’re yours, or your nieces or Foster. You know, it’s just sometimes when you’re working with a system, you’re going to have more issues, you know, you have trauma, you have attachment issues. You know, kiddos, these kiddos come into care for a reason. And that’s our job to try to help them.
Jason Palmer 1:05:44
Yeah, and if you’d like to join us in that journey, we’d be more than than happy to have you. So if anyone has any more questions, we’d be happy to stay on here for just a little bit longer if, if you have a question you need to be answered or you’d like to be answered, if not, if you’d like to reach out to us. In all honesty, I just want you guys to know, it sounds like a little bit self serving here, I put my email address I use as Jason at foster care nation.com. Mostly because it took me forever to figure out how to get that all set up. And I just picked the first thing I can think of, and then I realized that Jason and Amanda might have been a better option,
Unknown Speaker 1:06:20
you know, so I won’t hold it against you?
Jason Palmer 1:06:24
Of course not. You just make me answer all the emails, you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:06:27
but that’s the other thing. If you have a question that you don’t feel comfortable asking and an open forum like this, email us, you know, send us send us a question, be more than happy to try to answer it. If we don’t know the answer. We’ll try to find it. You know, if we have experience, you know, more than willing to share that.
Jason Palmer 1:06:46
Yeah. Yeah, the only thing we really refuse to share is names, kids names. That’s privacy law. Other than that, I mean, these kids have given us an education that we’d be foolish not to share with other people. And I think once you’ve done this for a minute, and realistically, the first time, I think the first time my breath had been had been sucked out of my out of my chest, by a kid was really early on. In our journey, it was our very first placement.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:16
Well, and we can tell that story because she’s our daughter.
Jason Palmer 1:07:18
Yeah. But at three years old, we were sitting at the kid sitting down for dinner one night, and three. And she she said, you know, she said, Can I say blessing? I said, Sure. And she’s full of cute little hands. And she bows her little head and she says, Dear God, thank you that my mommy and my new mommy and daddy haven’t died yet. And I suddenly realized the experience that she had really had in life, because because she’d lost a parent to violence. And she’d experienced that and I went, holy cow. Yeah, we’ve got we’ve got some work to do. Here. We can. We need to?
Unknown Speaker 1:07:56
Yeah, I thought I had had a bad day.
Jason Palmer 1:07:58
Yeah. Yeah, she taught us a lot about bad days. And that’s, that’s the world you can have an effect in. So if you’re interested, reach out to us. If you have questions reach out. If not, we appreciate you guys coming in here. And we, once I get this, this all wrapped up and figured out because again, just being transparent here, I don’t know how to yet get this all pushed out to everybody. I’m starting to figure it out shortly. And we’ll get a copy of this either emailed to everybody who was here and everybody who was registered or put it somewhere and send you a link so that you can at least go back and review it. If you have anything else you’d like to ask us. shoot us an email again, Jason at foster care nation calm, or I still monitor the foster care uj@gmail.com as well. That’s foster care. You j has an unparalleled journey for the podcast stuff, but either one is a good way to get a hold of us. So we appreciate you guys coming in and listening and ask him some great questions. And we hope to be able to do this again and help some more people.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:00
Thanks, guys. Have a good night.
16 throughts on "Foster Care 101: How To Become A Foster Parent"