Each year, more than 4,500 families across Massachusetts open their homes and their lives to care for children in foster care. Much has been written about the children — their experiences and outcomes — but for the parents, it can be an intense series of ups and downs, much of it while navigating the bureaucracy of the state’s legal and foster care systems.
Since 1967, each state has been required by law to operate a foster care system. The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families’ stated the goal of the foster care system is to “work toward establishing the safety, permanency and well-being of the commonwealth’s children by stabilizing and preserving families, providing quality temporary alternative care when necessary, safely reunifying families, and, when necessary and appropriate, creating new families through kinship, guardianship, or adoption.”
According to the federal Department of Health and Human Services, 9,191 children in Massachusetts were in foster care as of Sept. 30, 2021.
Marianna Litovich has fostered about a dozen children over a 15-year-period, three of which have ended in her adoption of them. In February 2017, she founded All Our Kids, a nonprofit organization that is part support group, part resource center for foster and adoptive families.
“It is very much parents helping parents,” Litovich said. Before the All Our Kids Facebook group, there was no organized way for foster parents to meet and get to know each other, she said. In addition to socializing experiences for families, All Our Kids also acts as a single point of access to the dozens of organizations in the area that provide help with various needs. The organization also opened the All our Kids Closet two years ago. Families can shop for like-new clothing, backpacks, furnishings and other needs for free and with dignity.
“There’s a misconception that foster kids should be grateful for whatever they get,” Litovich said. “People assume children in foster care are broken and have a slew of needs.” While she acknowledged that many of them have high needs, “but these kids are just like any other kids” with the same “range of challenges and traumas as any family,” she said.
Caring for children is expensive. To help offset the cost, foster parents receive a stipend from the state. The daily amount calculated based on the age of the child and guidelines for from the U.S. Agricultural Department on how much it costs to raise a child. The daily stipends range from $32.10 to $38. A quarterly clothing stipend of up to $395.51 is also provided, as is an annual $50 toward birthdays and $100 for the holidays.
Children in foster care are also automatically eligible for MassHealth, free school meals and the state Women, Infants and Children food supplement program for pregnant women and their children from birth through age 5.
“Absolutely, it helps, but it doesn’t cover the cost,” Litovich said. She said some people would not be able to afford to foster a child without the state support. In some cases, caring for foster children with significant needs can sometimes make it impossible for parents to work full-time, making the stipend much-needed.
Navigation, agency and retaliation
The cost of caring for a child is not the only struggle that some foster parents experience.
“Getting a child placed is probably the easiest part of the system,” Litovich said. Navigating the foster care system can be challenging. “The challenge with DCF is their internal communication isn’t great,” she said. There are 29 offices throughout the state, which are run independently. While DCF is trying to move toward universal policies, Litovitch said that from the experiences of the foster parents she works with, the offices implement policies in different ways.
All Our Kids has developed a 90-page guide to help foster parents through DCF’s rules and red tape.
Litovich said foster parents have little agency in how they care for the child. She shared, “There are some [day-to-day] decisions you can make, but DCF can override them.” She provided an example in which one of the foster parents who has sought help from All Our Kids wanted to take her 4-year-old foster child to the pediatrician near her that she used for her other children. DCF forced her to bring the child, who had “only been to the doctor one time before” to a pediatrician over an hour away to avoid the “disruption” of changing doctors.
Stacey Goetz agrees that the power is in the hands of DCF and the children’s birth families. Goetz has been a foster parent for five years and said that many of the decisions she would make for her own children are either prohibited or require prior approval.
Goetz said foster parents are not allowed to pierce children’s ears or give them haircuts. She acknowledged that the latter reflects the importance of hair in some cultures. Foster parents cannot own certain dog breeds as pets. She noted these restrictions do not apply to birth parents. Goetz said out-of-state trips must be approved “way in advance” and birth can refuse to allow the travel.
“Sometimes when you do advocate, you can be seen as a troublemaker and someone who doesn’t know their place,” Litovitch said. “DCF can just come and pluck them up, and parents have no recourse. “It doesn’t make sense. It can make a sane person crazy and make them feel like they’ve done something wrong, and they haven’t.”
One foster parent changed their mind about being interviewed for this story and said she feared expressing something negative may endanger her foster child’s placement.
Some of the strict rules are changing, though. “A Foster Parents’ Bill of Rights” was adopted into law in 2022. It addresses “prudent parenting,” allowing foster parents to make decisions “about a child’s safety, daily activities and routine focused on enabling a child to participate in developmentally appropriate family, recreational and social events and experiences.”
When making prudent parenting decisions, foster parents must consider several factors, including the child’s age and maturity, mental and behavioral health, the potential risk factors and the appropriateness of the activity, the best interest of the child and the importance of encouraging the child’s emotional and developmental growth. According to the law, the goal is to “provide the child with the most family-like living experience possible.”
The bill of rights also includes the right to file a grievance or request a fair hearing to review a decision made by the DCF regarding a child in their foster home, receive adequate notice when a child is to be removed from the foster home and be free from any retaliation for asserting the rights outlined in this new law.
Emotional toll
The median length of stay for a youth in foster care is 19 months, but the impact on the people involved is permanent.
“People don’t realize that loving a child temporarily and having that child move on is incredibly difficult,” Litovich said. “It doesn’t mean we love them any less, but we’re willing to let them go if that’s what is best for them.”
Litovich said some foster care offices and social workers are hesitant to allow foster families and birth parents to meet and interact, particularly without supervision. Some families do not want to know the birth parents, but others want to support reunification efforts through contact, she shared.
Goetz explained that many times children go back and forth between the birth family and foster care. “The system is very frustrating. It’s very hard to see the revolving door of children going home and being retraumatized,” she said.
As a child, Goetz said she had a large family and knew children in foster care and thought she would like to be a foster parent. She became a case reviewer for DCF before fostering, so she said she thought she knew what the experience would be like.
“I don’t think you can be fully prepared until you become a foster parent. I didn’t realize how invested you become,” Goetz said, adding that her other children become attached as well. “All we can do is hope for the best when they leave. When they leave it’s like a death because you never see them again.”
Adoption
Like Litovich, Goetz adopted the first child who was placed with her family. Until recently, Goetz said her family was “on track” to adopt a 4-year-old child that she has been fostering since they were three days old. The process has been delayed multiple times due to COVID-19, a change in social workers and lawyers, according to Goetz. DCF recently told her the plan had been changed and the child was to be reunited with their birth family.
The state’s website, mass.gov, states, “Foster care provides a safe, loving home for children until they can be reunited with their families.” Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that 755 children, were adopted from the foster care system in 2021, roughly 8% of those in placement. However, it was estimated another 3,485 were considered “waiting for adoption.”
As of right now, the child has one hour per week of supervised visits with their birth family. Goetz said she would be interested in an open adoption, as she had done that with her 5-year-old. “They still get to see them, holidays. They send cards.”
For those who may feel a foster situation is not right for their family, Litovitch said, “Everyone has a role to play in caring for children. Foster care is not always the right decision. We have many ways you can make a difference.”
To learn more about foster care, visit mass.gov/foster-care.
