Shoshone County Needs Additional Foster Homes

Shoshone County needs more foster homes.

Twenty-nine children were placed in Shoshone County foster care during 1994, said Dennis Coe, Health and Welfare human services supervisor.

Only about seven homes were available to take them.

That’s a ratio of four children per foster home. It doesn’t include the number of children who remained in foster care from prior years.

In Kootenai County about 60 homes were available for the 45 children who were placed in foster care during 1994.

That’s a ratio of less than one child per home.

“It’s more and more difficult to find foster parents these days,” said James Miller Jr., a Shoshone County social worker for 19 years.

Families are having a harder time feeding their own children. Both parents work, leaving them with no energy or desire for more kids.

“You don’t get many rewards, certainly not monetarily,” Miller said. “You put yourself and your family at risk at times.”

Foster parents receive some money for their efforts, but the amount is designed only to reimburse them, Coe said.

For the first 30 days a foster parent gets $20 per day per child. After that it can range from about $200 to $350 a month, Coe said.

“I think the kids we’re placing are coming from more difficult situations,” Miller said. The baggage they come with is heavy - bed-wetting, foul language, aggression, sleeping disorders and depression.

“Yet somebody has to care for them whether they are good little boys and girls or not,” Coe said.

Diane Bowcutt, Shoshone foster mother for seven years, knows the job isn’t easy.

She has had to deal with anger, resentment and sadness. One girl took a knife and sliced up a mattress in Bowcutt’s home.

Others are just emotionally starved. “They will just sit there and hug me and hug me.”

, DataTimes