Orphans

57. Foster Care, Adoption & The Church - Kids of the State with Darren Freidinger and Ian Minielly

About this episode

In this episode of The Bad Roman, we look at foster care and adoption. This topic comes by request from listener Darren Freidinger, who is a foster parent himself. Since Darren asked us to do an episode on this often discussed topic, we invited him to be the guest! Beyond being a father, Darren is passionate about the church stepping in and fulfilling its role to care for orphans. He shares his experience with foster to adopt, the foster care system, and alternatives to the state-run system.

Joining Craig and Darren in this episode, is a long-time friend of the show and Bad Roman contributor, andIan Minielly. Outside of writing articles on The Bad Roman Blog, Ian is also a foster parent and has experienced the great loss of having his first foster daughter taken from him and his wife. You can read his story in his short book, Emily's Tears, and hear a synopsis on the show.

Darren and Ian share their mutual and different experiences and struggles with the system, and what they see as ways to fix it and best work with it — and Craig compares his cats to children (as normal). This episode touches on every emotion and gives a glimpse into the system that holds the fate of thousands of children who become wards of the state, through no fault of their own.

Christians are called to care for orphans and widows – those who are helpless. We can do that even without fostering any children ourselves. More than anything, these kids need something positive in their lives. They need support. And it’s our job to provide for them. The question is, how?

Episode Timestamps:

5:15 Why Darren’s a foster parent

  • His wife was passionate about it

  • Unable to have kids

  • Got licensed through Catholic Charities

    • Can sign up to do temporary foster care or to adopt

    • Can stipulate at-risk kids or not

  • Got 4 and a 6-year-old girls

    • Had them for 9 months before adopting

  • There’s a LOT of paperwork

    • Probes into the intimate details of every aspect of your life

      • They want to ensure that parents are adopting for right reasons and will provide kids stability

      • But it’s invasive

  • Getting kids older than infants is like being thrown on a treadmill that’s already on full speed

    • It’s your job to keep yourself and those kids upright and healthy

  • “It’s a whirlwind… waiting so long to be parents, you get the kid placed with you and you're waiting, and you're just chomping at the bit, but all of a sudden it happens. And you're like, ‘Oh, hey, wait a minute, time out. I wasn't ready for this kind of thing.'” - Darren

9:52 Is there a better way to do this without the state?

  • “There's always a better way than going through the state, in my opinion.” - Craig

10:38 Ian’s Story

  • Emily's Tears

  • His wife was involved in jail ministry

    • One of the pregnant women asked her to take power of attorney over her baby

      • So, they picked her up at the hospital

        • Had no formula or anything

        • Felt like kidnapping

  • His wife had wanted to do foster care for 20 years, and he was finally coming around

    • Suddenly, this opportunity fell in their lap

  • DHS called them on their long drive home

    • Nurses had called CPS because baby had been taken

    • Power of attorney gave them rights

      • But DHS recommended they register as foster parents for more rights

        • The government wanted her in the system so she would keep the industry running

        • Had to go through all the classes and invasive interviews

  • “We can’t do better as long as the government controls it from top to bottom.” -Ian

  • There’s billboards everywhere begging for foster parents

    • Because they abuse the good ones

      • They find they are not helping kids and get discouraged

17:09 Does the state want kids to get adopted?

  • Once parental rights are terminated, a case worker spends 30 days looking for/evaluating adoptive parents

  • But they fight not to terminate rights

    • The goal is always to send kids home to their bio parents

    • Sometimes, this is the best idea; sometimes, it’s the worst

      • The problem is the one-size-fits-all mentality

  • The system runs on there being kids in the system

    • Parents have classes

    • Kids have classes

    • Entire industry run off foster kids

  • Ian didn’t get licensed when they moved states

    • “I said, ‘I'm not ready to deal with the state again’… You opened up your entire life to the last people in the world that should have access to it so that you can get a child and help. And it’s painful.” - Ian

20:36 Emotions and Turmoil

  • Instant Family movie

    • Eventually, the government takes the kids back

      • Hard on the kids, the foster parents, the bio parents

      • Gotta really screw kids up

  • “The state coming in and taking kids from families is abhorrent to me. It just sets my teeth on edge to think about it.” - Darren

    • But this is the norm

23:23 How can we fix this? It is not working

  • The state pulls kids after abuse happens

    • How could we prevent the abuse?

      • Has to be a community-based intervention

      • Cannot push blanket solutions

        • Individualized help

  • If a kid’s being adopted, the state is always involved

    • It’s a legal matter

    • Nonprofits cannot handle it on their own

    • BUT

      • Organizations like Safe Families exist

        • Provide temporary support to families in crisis

          • Families take in kids for a time

        • The state is not involved

        • The only issue is that it’s church-based, and many people will not set foot in a church, so they’ll avoid reaching out for help

  • Kids don’t wind up in foster care overnight

    • It’s years of bad decisions and struggles

      • That build-up and explode

    • We have to catch them further upstream

      • Even before the child is born or even conceived

    • Generational abuse further complicates things

      • Kids have seen some stuff

      • Move from one type of dysfunction to another

        • “Some of us are a slightly better dysfunction, but we're all dysfunctional.” - Ian

    • In Michigan, almost all foster kids who graduated high school ended up in prison within 3 years

      • “It's not because those kids are failures. They've experienced trauma that they can't recover from in a simple manner.” -Ian

29:28 The Church is not being the Church

  • Love widows and orphans (James 1:27)

    • Generally, as a whole, we are ignoring them      

    • Some specific congregations are doing great work

      • Adoption/foster care ministry

        • Give information to parents and help them with paperwork

        • Support groups

        • Network

30:52 What it takes to become a foster parent [in Illinois]

  • 9-week course plus online training

  • Gives you things to think about

    • Prepares you for trauma responses from your kids

      • Even if the kid was not yet born when the trauma occurred, it affected their development

  • Support and supplies

    • When Ian picked up the baby, a church filled a room with diapers, formula, and other supplies

      • They didn’t have to buy a diaper for 6 months

      • And that was not even in the town where they lived! It was where the baby was from, several hours away

  • “If you're not capable- if you're not able to adopt or foster- you can help in other ways.” -Craig

    • It seems daunting, but a pack of diapers really makes a difference

    • More people might adopt if they knew the church would support them

    • Babysit for a couple of hours

  • “Even if the state's going to be involved with it, these kids need homes.” - Craig

  • The government vets respite providers (in some states)

    • You can’t just let someone babysit your foster kids

    • DHS must do a background check

      • Makes people not want to be involved

  • There are so many hurdles!

    • Urchins bleeding the system for money

      • Monthly court dates

        • Focused on budget, not the child’s needs

      • Once there was an opportunity to send Ian’s child to a different state so Michigan didn't have to pay any more, she was gone

      • “They're more worried about what it looks like on the books than about doing what's right for the kids.” - Darren

    • If you don’t have a respite provider approved and get caught letting them stay there, you would likely lose your kid(s)

  • So many horror stories with the same plot

    • Given a child

    • Told they could adopt

    • Had them taken away

40:00 Ian’s story continued

  • Had a baby from birth to 17 months

  • Jumped through all the hoops

  • One night, they told Ian and his wife that the baby was going to Oregon the next day

  • They appealed the decision to take her

    • Took out a loan and sold a bunch of stuff to afford the lawyer

  • Turns out, that someone wrote a bunch of lies in their file to get the girl sent away, like

    • They weren’t socializing her

    • They were withholding food

    • So, the person who made the decision to remove her could not be blamed 

  • Even though they had the same judge they’d had for 17 months who knew them, he would not overturn the decision because he had never done that, and he was about to retire

    • He acknowledged that the decision was wrong

    • And their baby is still in Oregon 

  • They lived down the street from more than one person involved, so they moved to Kentucky

49:12 Older kids

  • “The bottom line for me is there are kids that need help. If it means some discomfort for me to help kids that need help, that's okay.” - Darren

  • If you can’t take an infant, take a 10-year-old

  • Bring in 16 or 17 year-olds and just give them the normalcy of having Thanksgiving

    • Let them come back for holidays when they’ve aged out

  • Older kids are rarely adopted

  • Most foster kids get kicked out at 18 and become homeless

    • Some places have a transition program

      • Job training, rent money, other support…

    • Some states continue paying foster parents to support their kids as adults

51:54 Doing it just for the paycheck

  • People take in kids because the state gives them money to care for them

  • Right now, the state can’t even find people to take in babies

    • “If you don't have enough families to be in foster care, you're willing to take anybody. And so that's a system that's ripe for abuse.” - Darren

  • Farming foster children for money

  • Disabilities bring more cash

    • You might only get $300/month for a kid

      • But if you label them with a bunch of conditions, you get an added $75 for each problem

    • Of course, foster kids legitimately do have a lot of issues, but people take advantage of this for the money even when kids don’t need the extra support

    • Labeling them falsely

      • Changes their social status

      • Holds them back from taking more advanced classes

    • Labeling an infant

      • Brings them services

        • But many services are not useful until they’re older

        • Therapists and parents waste their time

      • Sticks them with the label forever

        • Before they’ve even shown what they’re capable of

        • Even when they show what they can do, the label stays

57:36 Final thoughts

  • Help with fostering in any way you can

    • If you don’t know anyone who’s doing it, maybe it’s you who should

  • Let’s work on helping people not get to the point of having their kids taken

  • “As much as I am down on fostering because of having to be involved with the state, that's the system we have. … They need whatever kind of stability they can get, whatever positive experiences they can get… Get involved.” - Ian


Related Episodes

Related Blog Post