Connecting childhood hopes to homes: Lutheran Community Services recruiting families to help refugees

Across the world, millions of children have fled war.

“They lose their parents or they get separated and they have to go through this refugee process alone,” explains Lisa Johnson, the refugee foster parent recruiter at Inland Northwest Lutheran Community Services.

The United Nations estimates that of the approximately 21 million refugees worldwide, about half are children. Spokane will soon join a group of about 20 U.S. cities who are helping to resettle them.

Lutheran Community Services has been resettling young refugees in Seattle for decades, and the Spokane office just got approval to do the same. The process begins by recruiting foster parents, who are screened and licensed using the curriculum for domestic foster parents, with some additional training. Parents then work with Lutheran Community Services to find a matching child who’s in a refugee camp or detention center and waiting for placement.

A handful of children will be arriving in Spokane this summer, and Lutheran Community Services hopes to resettle as many as 30 by next fall.

“To do all the ground work and now being able to see all of the kids coming in is exciting,” Johnson said.

The children have to be at least 10 years old, Johnson said, to ensure they’re making an informed decision about coming to the United States. Those who decide to go abroad go through intensive immigration and security screening which can take several years, she said.

Once here, families will receive a stipend and support from a social worker, who helps make sure the children are adjusting.

Leo Ramos just joined the agency and hopes his experience as a child who grew up in both the United States and Mexico will help him relate to the arriving teens.

Ramos said he came to the United States when he was 12 from Mexico, where he received a better education. His family settled in Wenatchee, and he moved to Spokane after attending Eastern Washington University.

“The opportunities are limitless,” he said.

Lutheran Community Services hopes about half of the refugees it accepts will be children from Central America who are fleeing gang violence. A group of them will live together in a group home that’s been built.

Other children will be placed with families until they’re 18, though they will continue to receive services and support until age 23.

Two Spokane families have agreed to be foster parents and will be welcoming children this summer. A single mother will be taking in two sisters from the East African country of Eritrea, where, according to Amnesty International, an authoritarian government suppresses free speech and people routinely flee to avoid conscripted military service or forced labor.

Another Spokane couple will foster a boy who belongs to the Rohingya, an ethnic group that’s been denied citizenship and persecuted in their native country of Burma, causing many people to flee to neighboring Thailand.

Ramos said he’s found another Rohingya family in Spokane he hopes to connect with the foster parents so they can learn to cook traditional dishes and learn some of the Rohingya language.

Johnson hopes to recruit more such parents in the region.

“It’s heartbreaking to look at the list and you see child after child after child … who’s been sitting in a refugee camp” with nowhere to go, she said. “Let’s get them here.”