A new effort to recruit foster families is launching on Cape Cod. CAI’s manager editor for news, Steve Junker, talks with reporter Jennette Barnes about this story.
Steve Junker: As of last December, 119 children from Cape Cod were in foster care because their families were unable to care for them, at least temporarily. Advocates say many are placed off Cape because not enough local foster homes are available. CAI's Jennette Barnes has been reporting on a new effort to recruit foster families and possibly open a transition house to serve more children on Cape Cod. Hi, Jennette.
Jennette Barnes: Hi, Steve.
Steve Junker: So tell us a little bit about this initiative and the problem it's intended to solve.
Jennette Barnes: Sure. A nonprofit group called Boys Town New England is launching a new effort to recruit foster families on Cape Cod because they say that there is a shortage of foster homes on both the Cape and the Islands. This group is based in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, but they are one of several nonprofits that work with the state of Massachusetts to help get foster homes licensed. And what they do is actually a little bit different from standard foster care. They do comprehensive foster care, which means that they provide additional support services for children who need it, although the children do still live in a home with foster parents. I interviewed Kim Gagne, who is a foster care recruiter and trainer with Boys Town. She gave an example from a few months ago of a couple of children from Cape Cod who had to be placed in a foster home in New Bedford because of a lack of spots on the cape.
Kim Gagne: We got them all settled in, in a new Bedford home. It was very far from their visits to parents and from their schools. They were going to have to move schools. And it just took some time for them to find a home in the Cape. They waited for other kids to move out of that home and then were able to move them. But then that's multiple moves for kids, having to leave the Cape, having to come back. Issues with transportation to school. So you can imagine if you're trying to keep a child in school, it's an hour and a half drive.
Jennette Barnes: So you can hear, there, how disruptive it is, and it's not just the distance from school, but also from visitation with their parents, which is important, of course, because reunification with families really is the first goal of the foster care system.
Steve Junker: Now there are some local people on Cape Cod who have been working on this issue as well, and they're now collaborating with Boys Town, but they have their own goals. What's happening with this local effort?
Jennette Barnes: Yes, there is a group of people on the Cape who have formed kind of an ad hoc committee to work on creating more foster homes here. This was actually happening — their effort was happening — before the partnership with Boys Town. Some of them have been foster respite parents themselves, which means they provide temporary care for children who are waiting for a foster placement. One of the leaders of this group is Linda Zammer. She is a business owner and a philanthropist on the Cape, and she says the goal of her group is to open what she calls a transition house that would provide a place on Cape Cod that could host a few children at once. Linda Zammer says this issue really hit home for her when she and her husband were doing that respite care.
Linda Zammer: Just think of a little 4- or 5-year-old having to go to four, five, or six — I mean, one little girl had been in eight foster homes, and they couldn't find her a permanent home. So we thought a transition home would be, instead of moving from house to house until they found a permanent home, they could stay here.
Jennette Barnes: She also says that if the home were prepared to have, say, four children at once, it could really help keep siblings together instead of having to send them to separate foster homes.
Steve Junker: And would that be a group home?
Jennette Barnes: No. A group home generally has staff who come and go. The home that the Cape organization, or the Cape committee, is envisioning would be still a family model where parents would live there 24/7. They would parent the children. Boys Town actually does that kind of thing on their campus in Rhode Island. They have multiple homes there on a single street, similar to a subdivision, and the foster parents live there in the homes. But Boys Town also has a variety of different supports available to them. Linda Zammer and her committee on Cape Cod hope to someday have at least one home on the Cape like that. But right now, as far as Boys Town the organization goes, their campaign is to recruit families for in-home foster care. And the Cape group is supporting that effort as well.
Steve Junker: How are they going about that?
Jennette Barnes: Well, Boys Town has hired a staff member specifically to recruit on Cape Cod. She is working out of the Rhode Island office right now, but these Cape volunteers have offered a conference room for meetings and for work to happen here. The Cape volunteers are also providing a lot of local connections, right? Typically, Boys Town gives talks to church groups and other community groups to raise awareness of the need for foster homes. And Kim Gagne says they plan to roll out those kinds of events on Cape Cod over the next few months. So the Cape residents are really helping to connect Boys Town with ways to do that, ways to spread the word. Here's Kim Gagne talking about that.
Kim Gagne: Linda and her team have put together different groups and connections that they all have with different clubs and groups across the Cape that we're going to partner with for different reasons. Some will be for donors, some will be for recruitment efforts. I think bringing the need of foster care to that community, and how great the need is, is going to be a priority.
Jennette Barnes: So they've set a goal to recruit five to 10 foster families on Cape Cod by the end of the year, and also just to become more of a presence in the community so people are more aware of the need and where to get more information about fostering.
Steve Junker: Jennette Barnes, thank you so much for that reporting.
Jennette Barnes: Thanks, Steve.
