PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JUNE 29, 2018
FOSTER,
continued from Page A1
it,” said Slippy. “It’s a lot for
them to manage and they’re
carrying a really heavy burden.”
The system has not always
lacked so many foster homes. In
the early 2000s, when Oregon
was suffering from a metham-
phetamine epidemic, thousands
of foster children entered the
system all at once. For several
years, over 1,100 children were
in care on a monthly basis in
Marion County. DHS orches-
trated a huge push for foster
families, and the community
came through. But after that
push, many of those foster par-
ents adopted their foster chil-
dren, and subsequently stopped
opening up their homes to new
kids.
The number of children in
care has lowered considerably
since then; yearly averages show
around 650 children in care.
But the system is struggling to
keep up. As Erma Brundidge,
a Child Welfare foster parent
certifi er said, “Our number of
foster kids isn’t as high, but we
do have fewer foster homes and
those fewer children in care are
tougher.”
Brundidge has held differ-
ent roles within DHS Child
Welfare for almost 20 years, and
she’s seen a shift in the kids ar-
riving in care. Behavioral prob-
lems among children in foster
care have intensifi ed in recent
years. While Brundidge isn’t
sure of the cause, they know
that the kids who come into
care “require more time and
energy and skill level” from fos-
ter families, Brundidge said.
Foster families can rise to
the occasion of dealing with
diffi cult behavioral problems,
but they must have the “desire
to learn those skills and can
invest some time upfront,” she
said.
This is why all foster parents,
regardless of whether they’re
related to the child, must com-
plete foster parent certifi cation
training. For initial certifi cation,
foster parents must attend a set
of eight, three-hour sessions,
which cover everything from
working with a child’s biologi-
cal family to child development
to sexual abuse and trauma and
how those circumstances im-
pact a child’s behavior. On top
of these classes, DHS requires
an additional six hours of train-
ings to become certifi ed.
These additional trainings
can take the form of DHS-
offered classes in topics like
extreme behavioral issues and
how to deal with the grief
of saying goodbye to a child
who’s been in the home for a
long time, but training hours
can also come from attending
counseling sessions with a fos-
ter child or reading books spe-
cifi c to the child’s case; these
details can be worked out with
one’s certifi ers. After initial
certifi cation, foster parents are
asked to complete 30 hours of
training every two years for re-
certifi cation.
Aside from formal trainings,
Slippy and Brundidge are ded-
icated to receiving foster par-
ents in their offi ce and work-
ing through issues together.
This is part of DHS’s effort to
change the culture within the
agency after the recent state
audit of the foster care system.
“Our new DHS director
and Child Welfare director
are helping the culture of our
agency to shift, in that this is a
service agency and when you
serve people you serve each
other and serve in a bigger pic-
ture,” Slippy said. For more on
DHS’s response to the recent
audit, see side bar.
What’s most important for
foster parents, Brundidge and
Slippy emphasized, is to under-
stand the limits of their knowl-
edge: fostering a child who’s
been abused and traumatized
won’t be the same as raising
one’s own biological child. The
ideal foster parent, Brundidge
said, is “someone who doesn’t
think they have all the answers
and would approach it just like
a brand-new parent approach-
es parenting.”
Just like a new parent, fos-
ter parents need support from
those around them. Slippy and
Brundidge emphasize the role
of the community in creat-
ing successful foster homes.
There aren’t enough foster
parents but there also isn’t
enough support for current
foster parents. There’s a role
for those in the community to
play, whether that’s in babysit-
ting or transportation of the
child when the foster parents
to attend an appointment or
in moral support when a fos-
ter parent is struggling to cope
with a new child.
“If [community members]
can’t have the child in their
home, they could help sup-
port a family by bringing in a
dinner or any of those simple
things,” Brundidge said.
In addition, recasting the
role of the foster parent as a
Senior community
hosts country cousins
A
DHS changing in response to state audit
At a recent Foster Care
Advisory Board meeting
in Salem, Brooke Hall, a
project manager in Child
Welfare Field Services,
shared some of the goals
of the Oregon Department
of Human Services in re-
sponding to the recent au-
dit of the foster care system
by the Secretary of State’s
offi ce. While the audit rec-
ommendations were exten-
sive and far reaching, DHS
chose 10 recommendations
to prioritize and launch
immediate projects on.
Some of these projects
include engaging the com-
munity more, which has
resulted in a series of listen-
ing tours around the state,
where key players in DHS
Child Welfare organize
time to speak with groups
of foster parents, foster kids,
and community stakehold-
ers and accept feedback
about what’s working and
what’s not. Other projects
include creating a central-
ized statewide system for
calls about child welfare
and foster care, recruiting
new caseworkers and creat-
ing surveys to understand
when and why caseworkers
burn out, and dealing with
backlogged foster home ap-
plications by sending spe-
cialized staff to help process
applications in areas where
applications are particularly
bottlenecked.
A new program called
Positive Human Develop-
ment is being implement-
ed to improve the culture
within DHS. The Positive
Human Development proj-
ect takes the form of train-
ings for DHS workers in
leadership roles and seeks to
create better relationships
between DHS employees.
All these projects are in
progress and are in various
states of implementation.
The next Foster Care
Advisory Board meeting is
September 20 and is run by
the Foster Care Ombuds-
man Darin Mancuso. For
more information, email
Mancuso at fco.info@state.
or.us
B
Willamette Lutheran Re-
tirement Community brought
in farm animals, fair games
and even a calliope player for
a country fair Friday, June 22.
A: Raeann McDonald fullfi lls
a longtime dream of Richard
Thomas by giving him an eye
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C
in the back of his head.
B: Emelia Lane feeds a goat.
C: Mary Ann Cotton tries her
hand at a ring toss.
TRACKS: ‘We need to
hammer out specifi cs’
(Continued from Page A1)
We are
Everything
Except
Overpriced
community service is impor-
tant. Community members
should acknowledge how
much dedication it takes to be
a good foster parent.
“I honestly believe if we can
have a mentality of thankful-
ness and acknowledgement, we
could go far beyond reaching
out and getting foster parents,”
Brundidge said.
Willamette Valley Council of
Governments, the committee
settled on one project with a
smaller price tag and one that
will require a more substantial
investment.
Sidewalk
improvements
to Delight Street Northeast
around Cummings Elementary
School was deemed to be the
most pressing concern with
sidewalk access enhancements
to the area around Kennedy
Elementary School taking the
No. 2 spot with a higher price
tag.
“We need to hammer out
specifi c streets and whether we
want sidewalks on one side or
both,” said David Dempster, a
committee member.
Subgroups of the committee
planned walkthroughs of each
area last week to discuss specif-
ics.
The decision appeared to
put to rest a months-long con-
versation regarding which of
the two projects would get the
full support of the committee.
However, it was made easier this
time around with input from
Jaffe, who had the latest draft
rules for the competitive fund-
ing process on-hand. The rule-
making committee is favoring
projects within a mile of Title
1, K-8 schools. Cummings and
Kennedy are both designated as
Title 1, which denotes schools
with high percentages of chil-
dren from low-income families.
Jaffe also encouraged mem-
bers of the committee and
someone from city staff to at-
tend a transportation workshop
in Salem as part of their prepa-
ration for submitting projects.
One question still outstand-
ing where money to match the
state grants will come from.
Depending on the fi nal rules,
Keizer might be able to cite an
upcoming investment from the
Salem-Keizer School District
into the Cummings area as
matching money.
The
recently-approved
school bond measure includes a
sidewalk build-out to the edges
of the Cummings’ campus and
may qualify as a matching in-
vestment without the city dip-
ping into its own reserves.
After determining the spe-
cifi cs for each project, the com-
mittee will need approval from
the city council to move for-
ward.
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