Fostering hope

Terry McCune took the meth-addicted infant into her home when he was 2 days old.

Seven months later he’s still there. His mother continues to struggle with her addiction to methamphetamine.

McCune typically takes one infant at a time, but now the North Idaho foster mom has a second – a weeks-old baby whose mother drank alcohol throughout her pregnancy. Social workers told her there was nowhere else for the baby to go.

Hundreds of foster parents like McCune have played the role of hero in the lives of children rescued from abuse and neglect. Without foster families taking in severely abused and drug-affected children, their chances of survival, and potential to become productive human beings, would be severely diminished.

“There are so many kids thriving because they were taken in by foster families,” said Linda Rogers, a Spokane foster parent who has also adopted and recruits foster parents for a 13-county region, including Spokane County.

Foster care gives abused children a chance to know something different, said Lisa Johnson, supervisor of placement coordination in the Spokane office of the state’s Children’s Administration.

“When people reach out to support a child that way, it leaves a little seed of something that helps the child a little bit,” Johnson said. “Just six months can be extremely impactful to a child’s life.”

The region’s meth scourge, however, has brought a crisis upon the local foster-care system. A growing number of children are entering foster care in Washington and Idaho, and both states are short on foster homes.

Children enter foster care for a variety of reasons, but substance abuse – especially meth – is at the root of many cases of physical abuse and neglect.

In Idaho, for example, more than 3,000 children each year enter the foster care system, and most are children of meth-addicted single mothers, said Karen Cotton, regional director for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

Tom Shanahan, a spokesman for the department, said on any given day there are about 1,800 children in foster care in Idaho, about a 40 percent increase since 2003. The increase is due primarily to drugs, he said.

Idaho Youth Ranch oversees 300 licensed foster homes in North Idaho, and each has one or more children, said Maggie Morrison, a social worker with the organization.

“We desperately need more homes in all counties,” Morrison said.

In Washington, there are 5,841 licensed foster homes, according to the Children’s Administration. It would take 30 to 40 new families each month to fill the need for foster care in Eastern Washington, Rogers said.

About 80 children a month are placed in foster care in Spokane County alone. Two years ago, that figure was 30 kids a month, according to Rogers.

“As a recruiter, I’m not asking people to take in 10 children,” Rogers said. “But if everyone would make a difference in one child’s life, that would be huge. This community really needs to step up for the children.”

Born addicted

Lance came into the world 12 weeks early, born in a downtown Spokane motel room and delivered by his mother’s pimp.

“He had so much cocaine in his system it stimulated him to breathe, and that’s how he lived,” said Rogers, who was told the boy’s chances of survival were slim when state social workers called to ask if she would take him in.

“They said, ‘We don’t think he will live, but see what you can do,’ ” Rogers recalled. “He came home on oxygen, (weighed) three pounds. In the first month he had two eye surgeries.”

He went to an adoptive home at 6 months old, but his potential adoptive parents returned him to Rogers after two weeks, saying they couldn’t handle his behavioral problems and the care he required.

Lance couldn’t hold a bottle. He had a feeding tube surgically inserted into his belly until he was 2, then had to be spoon-fed. He screamed 24 hours a day.

Finding enough homes for the area’s foster children is just one challenge. Another is finding foster parents equipped to deal with the medical issues and other side effects of drug use on children.

The meth epidemic is still too new for statistics to show the exact impact of the highly addictive drug on the foster care system, said Cotton, of Idaho’s Health and Welfare Department.

But the anecdotal evidence is abundant.

“A couple months ago, a baby was born at Kootenai Medical Center,” Cotton said. “The baby was tested for drug use, and the baby had five different drugs in its system.”

Drug-addicted babies aren’t easy babies, said Ruth Willford, perinatal clinical coordinator for KMC in Coeur d’Alene. They’re often born premature and weigh too little.

The babies may sleep a lot the first couple of days as they come off a high, Willford said. Generally, they are highly irritable and need to be held constantly. They can’t tolerate stimulation, like bright lights or the sounds of a TV. The babies have difficulty eating, can’t keep feedings down and have explosive bowel movements.

“It takes really calm, mature, wonderful people to parent these kids,” Willford said.

Typically, their birth mothers aren’t up to the job.

“Not only do you have a mom who’s not in a place to be a good mom,” Willford said, “but you’re giving her a real difficult child to parent.”

The challenges continue even after the child has left the hospital. Some are readmitted with seizures and other problems, Willford said.

In Lance’s case, doctors weren’t optimistic. When he was a year old, his doctor told Rogers the boy would never walk or talk.

She adopted Lance when he was 4. Now 6, the boy is learning to read Braille and walks and talks as well as other children his age.

Sharing the love

Sixteen years ago, Terry Beuhl, of Spokane, was asked to commit to just one year of care to a severely abused baby girl.

“We took one look at this little girl and fell in love with her,” Beuhl said. “She was beautiful. She needed a home and a lot of love. The minute we saw her we knew we wanted to take her.”

Beuhl, known fondly as “Mama Terry,” has been a foster parent for 16 years. She can’t recall how many children she and her husband, “Papa Jerry,” have taken in over the years, but in one of the baby’s rooms, 55 picture frames filled with the faces of foster children line the walls.

“But that’s not even near the number of kids we’ve had,” Beuhl said. “We’ve taken in a lot of children, some up to two years.”

The Beuhls primarily take in foster children for three to six months. Many of them are drug-affected or medically fragile infants.

Terry Beuhl, a former beautician and Gonzaga University custodian, said being a foster parent of special-needs children is challenging, but she also considers it a blessing.

“What keeps you coming back is the love of the children,” Beuhl said. “It’s not about me. It’s not about the parents I have to deal with. It’s about the child. No matter how delayed anyone is, they can be loved.”

For McCune, providing foster care is a way for her to “give back.” People often ask her how she can take the children into her home, love them and care for them, and then let them go back to their families.

“You have to go into it with the right frame of mind, knowing they’re not permanent and knowing the home they’re going home to might not be your perception of an ideal home,” she said. “You have to put your own judgment values aside and do the best you can while you have them.”

Like Rogers, McCune adopted one of the children she took in. Shealyn, now 7, has been with McCune since birth. The bubbly girl fetches diapers and burp rags and reads books to the babies her mother cares for. She cries when the babies go home.

“She says, ‘Mom, do you think we can keep this one?’ ” McCune said. “I love them while I have them. When they’re gone, there’s another for me to love.”

Foster parents wanted

McCune, a single mother, may not have been approved to be a foster parent in the past. Today’s foster parents are as diverse as the children needing homes.

The 300 licensed foster homes in North Idaho include working moms, stay-at-home moms, single dads, grandparents and even retirees.

Morrison, of Idaho Youth Ranch, recently licensed an 82-year-old great-grandmother to provide foster care.

Washington and Idaho have similar requirements for foster parents: A person has to be 21, self-supporting, have a reasonably sized home for children and pass a criminal background check.

Foster parents must complete 30 hours of training in Washington and 27 hours in Idaho. The training includes teaching development, because many foster children are delayed; bonding or attachment; coping skills for grief and loss, and discipline – no spanking or slapping is allowed, and foster parents can’t do anything degrading like making a child sit with their nose in the corner, said Renee Siers, a foster parent trainer with Families for Kids.

Social workers do home studies, taking time to observe foster parents and how they interact with children and to make sure the home meets minimum safety standards. Each child must have his or her own space, a bed and a dresser, Morrison said.

“We joke that we do more than just test the smoke detectors,” she said.

Though the licensing and home study process may seem invasive, Morrison said social workers try to make the families feel comfortable.

“We just talk to them,” she said. “We get to know each other.”

Foster parents can provide short-term or emergency care; give respite care, where a person takes a child for a few days to give foster parents a break; or take in a child until a longer-term home is found.

In each case, the state provides monthly reimbursements for the children’s care, a clothing allowance and access to counseling and social services. In Idaho, the state will pay day-care costs and provide medical coverage.

Siers said being a foster parent is not about money.

“You can’t give a paycheck for the rewards of these kids doing the little things which are really major,” she said.

Though there hasn’t been a case where social workers have been unable to find a home for a child, Johnson, of Washington’s Children’s Administration, said she’s concerned that some foster homes are being overfilled.

Also, there’s a shortage of homes for siblings, Johnson said, which means siblings are being split up.

Increasing the number of foster families would help provide the right type of home for each child.

“The more resources you have, the better able it becomes to make a good match,” Johnson said. “We do need more foster parents, and especially those who can take on special-needs children.”