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FOSTER CARE: IN DEPTH ISRAEL VIEW
'I feel like this is my home'
Foster care can be a good solution for at-risk
children, of whom there are an estimated 10,000 in Israel. Yet such
arrangements are often complicated by their usually temporary nature, by
red-tape and by the requisite ties with biological parents. A family
sits around the table for lunch — a mother, a 15-year-old girl and two
eight-year-old boys. The father is at work. On the table is a pot of
stew. “No meat for me, no meat for me!” says one child. Outside, it's
pouring rain. “Did you take off your shoes? Were they muddy?” “Can I
have some raspberry juice?” “I want cola!” “Did you wash your hands?”
“Sit up straight, please.” An ordinary winter day, an ordinary meal, an
ordinary home. A warm home. A huge Great Dane and three small terriers
run about everywhere, and come to be petted and to get scraps from the
table. The dogs are not supposed to given food while family is eating.
The kids are laughing; their house, in a rural community, is spacious
and attractive, with a nice garden. A happy home. Only the “mother” here
isn't exactly a mother. And “her children” aren't exactly her children.
And not all the siblings are actually siblings. And the matter of
happiness could also use a little clarification.
“Nicole is our mother ... I mean ... I don't know -
another mother. How can I put it? She's the mother here,” the eldest,
Hila, tries to explain. She also has a biological mother with whom she
is in contact. And the two little boys are not Hila's biological
siblings: “They're like my brothers ... they're sort of, you know ... my
brothers here.” The three have all been defined as “at-risk children”
and therefore their names and those of their foster parents have been
changed for this article. Hila's parents could not take care of her. The
brothers, identical twins, were also born to parents who were incapable
of caring for them. Nicole, 55, and her husband Avraham, 56, who have
three grown children of their own, took in Hila and the two boys. Hila
has been with them for four and a half years. The boys only arrived a
few months ago. Until quite recently, the twins — who are dressed nicely
and clearly feel right at home in this house — were mostly wandering
about on the streets. “No one knew where they were going,” says Nicole.
“They ate or they didn't eat. They went to school or they didn't go to
school. They didn't know what it was to take a shower, to change
clothes, to brush teeth, to wear pajamas, to get into a clean bed. They
would get on bikes and ride to another town, and come back late, in the
dark, and no one even looked for them.” The boys' mother died of an
illness a few years ago. Their father, who used to beat them, was
declared an unfit parent. They were removed from his home, spent some
time in an emergency shelter and then were sent here.
In their first days in the house, they were hard to
approach. “They hunched over, they huddled in fear ... Whenever we tried
to touch them gently, to pat them on the hand or to hug them, they would
immediately try to avoid us and move to protect their stomach and their
chest. Look, it's no wonder: Their father used to kick them,” says
Nicole. This new type of contact, which sought to comfort and reassure,
was totally foreign to them.
Hila, who previously lived in an institution, lost her
father when she was very young. Her mother always had difficulty being a
parent: Indeed, for much of the time, Hila functioned as her own
mother's mother. They wandered from one place of residence to another,
and not infrequently, their residence was the car or the street. The
mother was unable to maintain any stability, or to care for her
daughter. Eventually, Hila was transferred to a residential facility.
Each child there is hosted by a family on weekends and holidays. Hila
went to Nicole and Avraham. After two years, when she was 12, she
surprised them by asking if they would agree to be her foster parents.
They said yes without thinking twice. When Hila turned 14, she surprised
them again. Then she asked her foster parents for “a sister, a friend.”
They decided to go along with her request. A girl her age in need of a
foster home was found. There was just one problem: The girl had twin
eight-year-old brothers and the policy was to make every effort not to
break up siblings. This time Nicole and Avraham thought long and hard
about it. It would be a radical deviation from their original plan, but
still, they decided to go ahead with it. “We have a big house, and my
husband has a big heart and he was the first one to come out and say
yes. And I was already thinking yes.”
Avraham: “We saw the three of them. How could you not
take them all together? The little ones looked to be in a terrible
state. We knew it wouldn't be easy, but we said okay.”
What motivates such decisions?
Nicole: “We both come from homes in which we experienced abuse, both
emotional and physical. For us, fostering is a kind of making of amends
— both for what we experienced in our childhoods and for what we passed
on to our biological children. I wasn't a good mother to my children. I
was too much of a child myself. I didn't understand their needs. I was
very damaged and completely closed emotionally. The result was that I
abused them emotionally and mentally. I know this now. I've changed.
Today I have a lot more patience and a genuine ability to give, and not
just material or technical things. Today I can see their emotional needs
and respond to them. We wanted another chance, a chance to be better
parents.”
And then the unexpected occurred: The two teenage
girls didn't get along. The new girl continued to feel out of place and
had a lot of difficulty accepting the house rules. After a few weeks,
she insisted on going back to the dormitory. The twins stayed. “I should
have kept my mouth shut,” says Hila. “I wanted a sister my age and I
ended up with two little pests. Why did I say anything? This place has
become a nuthouse. They drive me crazy.” This familiar, big-sister
monologue is delivered with no hesitation, in the presence of the twins,
who are busy amusing themselves by jumping on the large bed in Hila's
room.
Do you love them a little, too?
Hila, laughing: “Yeah, sure. What do you think?
They're pests, but they're cute, too, aren't they?”
Lesser-known phenomenon
Everyone knows what adoption is. Everyone has heard of “institutions.”
Foster care — involving the quasi-adoption of at-risk kids for a limited
period of time — is less well known. But despite this, the number of
children living in foster families has increased significantly in recent
years, following the privatization of foster parenting services in 2001.
The number of at-risk children in Israel is estimated to be about
10,000, and some 1,700 live in foster frameworks. Only 30-35 percent of
all foster children return to their biological parents, and even then,
they do not always remain with them. Foster children are children who
have been neglected, abandoned and abused. According to Tali Halaf, who
trains foster parents in the central part of the country: “The children
come from families where typically the parents are unable to function,
where there is neglect, violence, crime or substance abuse by the
parents. Sometimes, the biological parents are hampered by mental,
emotional or physical limitations.” Unlike adoption, in foster care, the
placement of the child and the identity of his foster parents are not
kept confidential — just the opposite. The bond with the biological
parents is maintained and ascribed great importance.
Says Halaf: “It's good for the child. He isn't totally
cut off from his origins, from his roots. He has a biological parent who
currently isn't capable of raising him, and that's why he is getting
help. Except for cases in which there is a professional assessment that
says unequivocally that a continuation of the relationship with the
biological parent will be harmful to the child, every effort is made to
preserve that relationship.” Anat Donovitz, director of an organization
called Omana Bamerkaz: “Foster parenting can be relatively brief, if the
problem is a passing crisis, or for several years, in more complicated
cases, or for good in cases where the child doesn't have any better
option.” The people interviewed for this article, especially the
professionals, are convinced that a foster family is the best solution
for an at-risk child. According to such an arrangement, in addition to
everything else he or she has gone through, the child doesn't have to be
cut off from the family model. The child stays within a family, gains
the warmth and intimacy of foster parents and siblings, and internalizes
normative patterns of behavior for family life.
According to this theory, the alternative solution —
dormitories and boarding school — is a choice of last resort. Shalva
Leibowitz, national supervisor of foster parenting services for the
Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs: “Without generalizing — in a
dormitory, the child finds himself in a room with two or three other
refugees like himself. He has no corner of his own. He's detached from
society and not connected to parental figures as he would be in a
family, and in the future he'll have a harder time functioning well in
his own family.”
Confusing situation
Foster care can be a confusing situation. In addition to the foster
parents, there is also a biological parent or parents whose guardianship
status is still valid. The biological parents must give their consent
for whatever happens (unless a court order declares otherwise) and have
regular visitation arrangements. They have the right to come to the
child's school, to be informed about what is going on with the child,
and to express an opinion even if they have demonstrated parental
incompetence and even if they were physically abusive to the child. The
rights of the biological parents are scrupulously preserved. Meanwhile,
the foster child yearns for warmth and affection, for security and
protection, but hears that he will not be in the foster home forever,
but just until his mother or father feel better or maybe are able to
take care of him or her again. Such a message would put anyone into a
state of some anxiety, especially a young child.
Donovitz: “It's true, there is a built-in problem and
we're conscious of it. It arouses a stressful feeling of temporariness
in the child. When children are old enough to understand what's
happening around them, they know that, in principle, it's a temporary
home. This is the weak link in foster parenting. But there are ways to
resolve it, too, and we're working in that direction.”
What direction?
Donovitz: “The American model. In the United States, when a child is
taken in by a foster family, the condition of the biological parents is
evaluated at the same time. They have a deadline: If, within two years,
they are not rehabilitated and do not return to a condition of fit
parenting, the foster family becomes a family in an open adoption
process. Open adoption has its problems, too, but at least this way the
child knows where he stands at any given moment and doesn't suffer from
endless uncertainty and a never-ending feeling of temporariness.”
So a person just wakes up one morning and decides
to become a foster parent?
Shalva Leibowitz: “No, there is careful selection to
ensure that the family is suited for such a special and complex task.
The law requires that a foster family be composed of a father and mother
who are married to each other, and it's desirable that it also include
biological children of the couple. A single-parent family may receive
foster children if it passes the test and is deemed suitable. The
maximum number of children in a foster family is five.”
Tali Halaf: “The standard criteria are up to age 55,
at least 10 years of education, a steady income from work, suitable
living conditions for the child, good health, readiness to forgo
confidentiality, no criminal record, a commitment to participate in a
training course for foster families, and more.”
Families with children of their own are considered
optimal. Why? “Because childless couples or single women who are
fantasizing about adoption — who really want a child of their own, in
other words — have a harder time grasping the whole issue of
temporariness that is a part of fostering.” Preference is also given to
relatives of the child. About a third of the foster families include
aunts and uncles or grandparents of the children who have been removed
from the homes of their biological parents. These foster parents must
also meet the established criteria. Of all those who apply, only 5
percent are accepted as foster families. Those who meet the basic
criteria come to a training course in which their abilities and
suitability for the task are tested further.
Halaf: “What we look at is their ability to work in
cooperation and their ability to understand the needs of the at-risk
child and to respond to those needs. We also want to see that the couple
has a good relationship, that there is good communication within the
family itself. We look for people to whom parental authority comes
naturally, who can set clear boundaries, who will be able to set limits
for the child and also give him or her a lot of warmth and affection.”
Do you know many biological parents who can meet
all these criteria?
Halaf: “No. If only all parents could meet the same
qualifications! But this is what we're aiming for, at least. Nobody's
perfect. The foster parents aren't perfect. They'll make mistakes like
us. We're all human.”
Good and bad families
Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, director of the National Council for the Child:
“There are good foster families and bad foster families, and there are
good institutions and bad institutions. Children are not a monolithic
entity. Each child is different. I don't want to see a system that only
tries to fit the child to the solution that happens to be fashionable
that month. I want to see a wide range of good options. ”When you have a
good, warm foster family, it's certainly the closest thing to what the
child needs. But when it's not a good family, and unfortunately that's
sometimes the case, the chances of uncovering any harm done to the child
are quite low. In an institution, the child is surrounded by social
workers, psychologists, teachers, counselors. In a bad foster family,
the child is trapped within the four walls, just like in his original
family, and who knows what will happen.” The Ministry of Labor and
Social Affairs pays a foster family about NIS 2,000 a month for each
child in its care. For children with special needs such as serious
mental or physical disabilities, who require rehabilitative treatment,
the payment is about NIS 3,000. There is also a policy of reimbursement
for certain medical expenses, for psychiatric or psychological therapy,
for special needs such as eyeglasses, and so on. Foster parents have
many complaints about this, though. As one foster father who is raising
several children with special needs says: “The expenses are very high.
We pay out of our pocket, and then we have to go through an unreasonable
bureaucratic process. It can take months or even a whole year before we
see the reimbursement. There was a time when the expenses came to
thousands of shekels a month and we almost had a total financial
collapse.”
Nicole and Avraham paint a similar picture: “We all
have the same trouble. They drag it out forever and wear you down. It's
a war of attrition. And we're treating these children as our own and we
want the best for them. You want an example? One day we discovered that
the regular monthly payments hadn't come in for three months in a row.
We suddenly had an overdraft of thousands of shekels in our bank
account. We complained and no one responded. What goes on with the
reimbursements for special expenses is a scandal.” Leibowitz admits that
the foster parents have a legitimate gripe. “The process as it exists is
intolerable and totally illogical,” she says, but adds that it's being
worked on. “A big effort is being made to change the whole system of the
reimbursements, so that the foster parents won't have to put out these
expenses ahead of time.” Another thing that bothers the foster parents
is the negative way they are perceived by part of the public. “People
think we're just interested in the money and not in the child,” says one
foster mother. “It's so absurd. I've heard insulting comments like that
more than once.” Many foster parents say that have to spend much more
than what they receive from the state. Based on her vast experience in
the field, Leibowitz confirms this, too.
Partial privatization
Foster care services have been operating in Israel for many years. In
the cities and larger local authorities, these services use to be the
direct responsibility of local welfare workers, who were frequently so
overburdened that they could barely deal with the subject. Thus, it was
pushed aside: For years, not a single family was added to the roster of
foster families and supervision of those already involved was
inadequate. Leibowitz: “There was terrible neglect. There were little
kids and teenagers living in awful conditions. We removed some of them
from families who were found to be unsuitable — to put it mildly. There
were definitely years in which the ministry's ability to know what was
really going on in the foster homes was close to zero. A district
supervisor from the ministry had to work with 70 or 80 authorities, not
all of which even had a single social worker.” Leibowitz and other
activists in the field launched a campaign to change all this. She
formulated and advocated the idea of privatizing the foster parenting
services, and was able to attain the backing of Motti Vintzer, the
director of child and youth services in the ministry, whose department
was also responsible for foster care. And she later gained the support
of former Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare director-general Avraham
Ben-Shoshan, who approved Leibowitz's proposal at the end of 2000.
In May, 2001, implementation of the privatization plan
began. A tender was held and won by three large foundations that
specialize in working with at-risk children and youth (the Israel
Women's League, which was subsequently replaced by the Or Shalom
organization, in the center of the country; the Summit Institute in the
south and in Jerusalem; and Matav in the north). Next to come around to
Leibowitz's side was the ministry's current director general, Dov
Goldberger. The privatization of foster care is only partial: The budget
(about NIS 7 million for 2004) remains in the hands of the ministry. The
social workers, counselors and foster parenting instructors receive
their salaries from the foundations. The foundations' budget is
comprised of funds from the state and private donations. Leibowitz and
four other senior supervisors are now the only ones who are still
employed by the ministry.
So how have things changed? Says Leibowitz: “In the
three years since the privatization, there has been an increase in the
number of children going into foster homes. We've gone up from 1,485 to
1,713 children. The social workers who worked in the local authorities
weren't trained to deal with foster parenting. Today, only fostering
instructors who have undergone special training can work with the
families. In smaller places that are hard to get to, there used to be no
contact at all. Today we don't miss a single child. The relationship is
personal and closer. Today there are also therapy groups for parents and
for children. Since the privatization, the budget for reimbursement of
special expenses for foster children has gone up from NIS 7-8 million in
2001 (and in the five years before that) to NIS 14 million, in 2004.”
Tali Orlov, who trains foster parents in the central district, is
employed “85 percent of a full-time position” by Or Shalom, and is
responsible for 32 foster families. She is required to visit the
children at least once a month “when everything's fine.” In more
problematic cases, she visits every two weeks or even once a week if
necessary. How does she do it? It's mission impossible, she says: “I try
to get to everyone for visits, but obviously if I have to spend more
time on one child, it's going to come at the expense of another. I'm
just one person and there are only 24 hours in the day.”
What does Hila the foster child have to say?
“I'm not interested in social workers.”
Tali Orlov is your foster counselor. Are you in
touch with her?
Hila: “Yes. She comes once a month for about a half
hour.”
Do you talk to her?
“No.”
Why?
“It's once a month. She doesn't know me. She's like a
stranger, so I don't talk to her.”
Who do you talk to if things that go on around here
bother you?
“No one.”
If something unusual happened to you, if you were
in trouble, would you contact Tali?
“No.”
Would you tell Nicole?
“No. We don't talk about really personal things.”
Would you tell your mother?
“No, I'd never worry her.”
Friends?
“I have friends, but I wouldn't talk about stuff like
that with them, because they don't know about it. At school they don't
know about the foster family and all that. I haven't told them. They all
think these are my real parents.”
Why didn't you tell?
“I didn't want to. In elementary school, the other
kids knew. Now, in high school, they don't. I decided to keep it that
way.”
Isn't there anyone in the world to whom you could
pour your heart out?
“No.”
Going through hell
The twins who came to Nicole and Avraham had been through hell. Their
father is a violent man. Their mother died of cancer. One of them told
Nicole that before their mother died, when her hair fell out, their
father complained that now he wouldn't be able to “pull her by the hair”
anymore. A few weeks after they arrived, one of the twins disappeared.
Nicole searched for him all around the house and the yard and tried not
to panic. But after a few hours went by, she called the police. They
finally found him on the roof of their (two-and-a-half-story) house,
surprised by all the fuss he had caused. “I was out of my mind with
worry. He looked at me in shock and asked why I was crying,” Nicole
recalls. “I told him that I'd been worried about him, that we were all
afraid that maybe something had happened to him. He was stunned. He
couldn't grasp the situation. And then I realized that it was the first
time in his life that anyone had gone looking for him.” During our
conversation, the boy stays in his room with the door closed and the
television turned up to full volume. Not cooperating. He doesn't want to
be with us. We had a bad morning, Nicole says. Sometimes, the monsters
come out. They argued in the bathroom — he didn't want to brush his
teeth. She told him to put on boots because it was raining hard. And
suddenly, all at once, he yelled at her: “Shut up, you maniac! Shut up
or I'll screw you. I'll beat you up. Shut up!” “I told him that I
wouldn't listen to him if he was cursing and that if he kept it up I'd
brush his teeth with the toothpaste that he doesn't like, and then I
went out,” says Nicole. “He doesn't know what he's saying. That's his
father speaking from his throat. He left for school today without giving
me a kiss. I gave him one on the back of the neck. He's a child who's
been very hurt. He needs professional assistance and support.”
His brother is more curious and open, wary but
communicative. He sticks close to us. Before answering any question, he
gazes into Nicole's eyes, as if seeking her approval before he replies.
“I'm happy that I came here,” he suddenly says, of his own accord.
Why?
“Because I have all kinds of stuff.”
Like what?
“All kinds.”
Give me an example.
“I don't know. Stuff. New things, nice things. But
there are also a lot of rules in this house and you have to remember
them all.”
Like what?
“No running on the stairs because you could break your
head open, and no bothering the dogs and no hitting them, and no
`looking' at stuff in the pantry with your hands — only with your eyes,
and no getting close to the stove when the burners are on, and no going
into Hila's room without knocking first and then only if she says it's
okay to come in.”
Is there more?
“Yeah, sure — that you shower every day and change
clothes, brush teeth and do homework, and when you eat you don't put
your elbows on the table and if you want something you don't just take
it, but you ask permission first and if you take something you have to
put it back in place because otherwise Nicole will throw it out. And if
I broke something or wrecked something to tell Nicole and she won't get
mad because it happens to everyone, but at least she'll know. And if you
burp, you have to say `excuse me' and there's more, but I don't remember
right now.”
It must be tiring with so many rules.
“Yeah, it's hard.”
So are you a little sorry that you came here?
“No. I'm really happy.”
Why?
“Because I feel like this is my home.”
'Transparent' children
Even after the privatization, the foster-care supervisors are
overburdened and unable, no matter how motivated they are, to spend time
each month with each of the families under their supervision - 25-30 of
them, on average. In the absence of direct contact, the system relies on
second-hand reports. Not to worry, the information is still relayed, say
the staff: If necessary, a psychologist will pass on a report, or else a
teacher or a school counselor. There is also contact with the foster
parents and sometimes with the biological parents, too, and all the
reports are put together to complete the puzzle. Dr. Dafna Adar, a
psychiatrist who has worked for years with at-risk children and youth in
Be'er Sheva, is bothered by this aspect of foster parenting. In an
article she wrote entitled “The Child in the Foster Triangle, in His Own
Eyes,” she says: “There is extensive professional literature about
foster care in Israel and abroad, but there is much less attention given
to the foster child himself ... There is little discussion of the
child's feelings, at the various stages of his life, within the foster
framework.” Adar is also troubled by the phenomenon exemplified by Hila,
who “didn't see fit to tell any one in school about her foster family.”
Most foster children are “perceived as `transparent' in their
communities, assimilated with no stigma, with no personal narrative, and
sometimes without the appropriate attention from local health and
education officials,” she explains. She says that the child absorbs a
message that stresses the need to adapt, even at the price of
suppressing his troubles or postponing them for another time. “When
foster children are asked about life in the foster family, their answers
focus on the concrete side of life — the schedule, the good food, the
extracurricular activities, the clothes and shoes that were bought for
them ... The emotional side of living in a foster family is talked about
in a vague and hesitant way.”
Vered Levy-Barzilai
24 February 2005
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/544641.html
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