Tuesday, June 01, 1999
Children's home offers temporary foster families
Program helps older kids with specialized needs
BY CINDY SCHROEDER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FORT MITCHELL — More than two years after the last foster child left their Crestview Hills home, Mike and Marianne Barker have continued regular visits with 5-year-old Bobby.
“We've stayed in touch with his family, and we still see him on a weekly basis,” Mrs. Barker said.
For the Barkers, the eight foster children who passed through their home in a four-year span provided solace after they lost a daughter in a car accident.
“We felt that we needed to look forward, rather than backward,” Mrs. Barker said. “We needed a little more noise in the house.”
Mrs. Barker said her family also is pleased with the changes in Bobby. Just under a year old when he entered the Barkers' home, Bobby could barely sit, and he couldn't walk. However, the Barkers returned a happy, healthy child to his father.
“We've grown to love him just like he was our child,” Mrs. Barker said.
Stories such as the Barkers' are among the reasons the Diocesan Catholic Children's Home in Fort Mitchell is starting a therapeutic foster care program.
The new program provides children with temporary family care while their own families are unable to care for them. However, it differs from traditional foster care, in that the children tend to be older, and their behaviors and needs may be more challenging, said Ron Bertsch, director of the new therapeutic foster care program.
A former employee with the Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children, Mr. Bertsch has 13 years' experience working in the field of foster care, and he and his wife, Julie, recently adopted four young siblings.
“The state said, "We don't have enough families' (for therapeutic foster care), so the children's home said, "Why don't we create a program to meet the need?'” Mr. Bertsch said.
Children in therapeutic foster care range from age 4 to 14. They also may be a minority, part of a sibling group, and most have suffered from some type of abuse or neglect.
Once families are recruited for the therapeutic foster care program, the children's home will provide 42 hours of free training, and it will offer supportive services, such as respite care, Mr. Bertsch said.
“By limiting our ages to 4 to 14, it fits better into our other programs here at the Diocesan Catholic Children's Home,” Mr.
Bertsch said. “If a problem arises, we will be able to use the resources here at the home.”
Potential foster families will be asked to decide what age, race and sex would best fit into their family, Mr. Bertsch said.
For example, Debbie Jones, who had been in the traditional foster care program for 10 years, asked for children no older than her birth children.
“I had three younger children at the time, and people used to ask me, "Did I really want to expose them to those things?'” Ms. Jones recalled. “I always felt that if my children were going to be exposed to something, what better place than my home, so that we could deal with it as a family.”
Ms. Jones, who now counts two adopted 12-year-olds — Dave and Holly — among her five children, said foster care heightened her older children's awareness of the struggles that birth families often go through.
Besides making them more sensitive to others' needs, Ms. Jones said her older children learned to grieve when foster children left their care.
“Letting them go was never easy, but people come and go in our lives all the time,” Ms. Jones said. “That's a reality.
Those children added something to our family, and we know we gave them something at the same time,” Ms. Jones said. “Hopefully, they got a different perspective on family, and how to love and receive love.”
For information on the therapeutic foster care program offered by the Diocesan Catholic Children's Home, call Ron Bertsch at 331-2040, ext. 241.
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