At 56, She Started Fostering Dreams In Others’ Children

Joanne Nielson climbed on her Harley last fall, headed for a California vacation. The time seemed right; social workers hadn’t placed a foster child with her for months.

She was 60, single and in great shape. Her five children were grown, her finances healthy. Her neighbors obligingly watched her Hayden Lake home.

She never goes anywhere without regularly checking her messages. In California, Joanne called home and heard the magic words. A baby needed her.

“I flew right home,” she says, as if she had no other choice. “I finally had my bike shipped home a few weeks ago.”

Children are that important to Joanne, especially the babies. She needs them nearly as much as they need her. The walls of her lake home are covered with dozens of photo collages of children - her five, all adults now, and the 16 foster children she’s sheltered since 1993.

“I really believed everyone loves to raise children,” she says, amused now at her naivete. “It’s always been such a joy for me.”

Such a joy that Joanne talked for years about adding more children to her life. Her four sons and one daughter told her five years ago to quit talking and do something about it.

At 56, Joanne became a licensed foster parent. Her friends were speechless. They were retiring and playing more golf while Joanne was starting another round of the baby game. It seemed reasonable to her.

“People my age want something constructive to do with their time,” she says. “We can take children, give them skills to cope.”

She waited a month for her first child, excitedly calling child welfare agencies every few days.

Placements are unpredictable because they’re usually emergency-driven. Joanne was finally called when a distraught mother begged social workers for help with her four children, ages 2 to 7.

“I certainly learned a lot,” Joanne says.

One boy stood on her pool table and threw balls at her television. The children snatched food from each other across the table. They terrorized the supermarket - all on the first day.

Joanne set rules and told the kids what she expected from them. She learned to appreciate even glacial progress. She impressed on them the importance of family. She had fun.

They blamed the government for their mother’s small house. Joanne told them the government gives people the minimum amount to live, but people work if they want more. She told them education helps people find better work.

“By the time they left (after six months), one girl wanted to be a nurse, the other a teacher,” she says.

That’s all Joanne wants - for children to understand that they can do anything despite their rough beginnings.

Her photo albums and essays help get across her message. Joanne takes abundant photos of every child she takes in. She writes pages on their activities and their development while they’re with her.

Then she creates a personal album for each child. When the children leave her, they take their albums along.

“What a joy for me it is to bring a new little life into my home,” Joanne wrote in one foster baby’s album. “You are a beautiful little boy, with a ton of black hair and long fingers. Perhaps you will someday be a concert pianist.”

She was reluctant at first to send the albums on with the children, but an adult friend who had lived in foster homes assured her that children need to know their histories.

Joanne’s opened her arms to all ages and embraced some troubled children. She knows they come with pasts that imperil their futures. One of her teenage foster daughters ended up in the state penitentiary for theft.

“That was very difficult, probably the only disappointment I’ve had,” Joanne says. She liked the girl and had high hopes for her. “I think I made a little headway with her.”

None has diluted her passion for mothering.

“When they leave, I think they’re stronger children and they can make it,” she says.

Joanne drops everything for babies.

“They always bring happy endings,” she says. “People want them.”

She mothers babies while they await adoption and chronicles everything they do. She considers 3 a.m. feedings a perk, not a chore.

“The transition from the foster care setting to the adoptive setting is easier because of what Joanne does,” says Donna Euler, an adoption coordinator with Lutheran Social Services. “She has such a heart for foster care.”

For children period, as the sign on her front door proves: “No solicitors except for children.”

“I’m not here to show them I can give them a better life,” Joanne says. “I’m here to give them a sense of hope.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: For more information The Panhandle needs more foster parents, especially for older children. For information, call Lutheran Social Services, 667-1898.