Need For More Foster Homes ‘Desperate’ Social Workers Make It Clear Role Is Both Difficult, Rewarding

When social workers rescue toddlers from abusive Spokane homes, it’s now often hard to find a safe place to put them.

Some children spend hours in waiting rooms, or on social workers’ laps. One toddler recently was checked into a psychiatric ward because there was nowhere else to go.

“We have a desperate need for foster homes,” said Roy Harrington, regional administrator of the state’s children and family services.

State social workers say they need 35 new foster homes in the Spokane area to keep pace with the increasing number of children living in danger.

An apparent drug wave has tightened the foster home bind this spring, as more parents are high on crack and crank, an amphetamine, social workers say.

“Their parenting just goes to pieces. It disintegrates before your very eyes,” said Dee Wilson, who oversees the child welfare workers for the state Department of Social and Health Services.

Wilson said it’s always hard to find homes for teenagers, but this latest foster home crisis forces the agency to keep infants and toddlers in unsafe homes longer than it wants.

The Spokane area has about 300 foster homes housing about 500 children.

To become a foster parent, people must attend an orientation class, undergo a background check and go to six night classes.

In exchange, the state gives parents $291 a month for children up to age 5; $359 for kids aged 6 to 11, and $425 for children aged 12 to 18.

Foster parents also get start-up costs of $17 a day per child for the first month.

Fewer than half of the Spokane adults who attend orientation classes try to get licensed as foster parents, social workers say.

Some realize it’s not profitable. Others decide they won’t qualify. Still more are scared off by sobering facts about the children who would enter their homes.

About 80 percent of foster kids suffered some damage from their mother’s drug or alcohol habits during pregnancy. As many as two-thirds have been sexually abused.

Raising abused children is often more taxing than parents suspect, social workers say. For example, a 3-year-old girl awaiting placement recently cussed and urinated on a couch when she didn’t get her way.

But foster parents also can reap emotional rewards when their affection and guidance thaws cold, angry children, social workers say.

“Children come in with black circles around their eyes and they won’t talk at all…and then you see them three months later and you hardly recognize them,” said Myrah Swim, social worker.

Foster parents also often become role models for natural parents, helping reunite families, said Dan Wolfley, who places children in homes.

Wolfley is alarmed by the growing backlog of homeless toddlers. It took him eight telephone calls recently to find a home for an abused 2-year-old.

Call 458-2043 for information about foster parenting.

, DataTimes