A Woman Is... A Foster Mom

Continuing our series on motherhood, this episode highlights one of the ways women mother, by being a foster mom.

Shayla shares a few statistics on the foster care system and interviews Liz Aguero who mothered over 19 children during her 10 years as a foster mom. We also learn about different ways to support foster families.

9 ways you can get involved with foster care without being a foster parent from Foster The Family Blog 

Transcript

Shayla: Welcome to A Woman Is… Podcast. I'm your host, Shayla Raymond, and welcome to episode two in our series on motherhood. If you haven't listened to episode one in this series, I'd encourage you to go back and take a listen. As I mentioned last week, we are highlighting motherhood because one of the most brilliant distinctions of a woman is her ability to conceive, carry and birth and bring forth life. But as we heard mothers share last week, motherhood goes way beyond just bringing children into this world. It is a long journey, and there are also many ways in which women mother, and it is not always to the children that they birth. Women have the capacity to mother, even if they don't have children of their own, and they serve in varying capacities and varying roles. And when women step into mothering in those different ways, it impacts our whole society and our world. This type of mothering is vital. And so today I want to highlight a special kind of mom, a foster mom. Fostering children. Choosing to be a foster mom is giving an amazing gift to children, to your community, and to the future. I came across a quote on fostering that said, the goal is to find a family for children, not children for families. And I thought that was a good way to view it, that the children are definitely already there. Statistics say that there are over 500,000 kids in foster care in the United States. 1200 kids enter the system every day. A child enters the foster care system every two minutes. Kids in foster care move an average of seven times. And so the goal of the foster system is to find foster families for these kids to find foster mothers. And so today I've invited my friend Liz Aguero to the podcast. She said yes to being a foster mom. Her family said yes to being a foster family, and I've invited her to come and share about that journey.

Shayla: Okay, so today I would love to welcome my friend Liz Aguero to the podcast. And Liz and I actually knew each other when we were teenagers, and we've kept up a little bit on social media. And so I would just like to welcome her to the podcast. So welcome, Liz.

Liz: Thank you for having me.

Shayla: So if we could start out, Liz, if you just want to introduce yourself. And tell us a little bit about yourself.

Liz: Okay, My name is Liz. I am married. Darren and I have been married for almost 19 years now, and we have two biological children. Treg is 17 and Tess is 16.

Shayla: So, Liz, I followed along a little bit on social media on your journey of being a foster mom and inviting foster kids into your home. And I just was always so inspired and blown away just knowing just what that must have taken to do that. And so I would just love to hear when you first started considering fostering and why you wanted to foster, and just kind of take us on what that journey was like, from the idea of it to when you first were officially foster parents.

Liz: That journey goes way, way back to early teenage years when my parents retired from their foster home. So when I was about, I would say seven years old to about 14, my parents fostered, and I'm one of four. And when the four of us became teenagers, my mom and dad were like, we need to focus on our teens, retire our home. And I knew then that was something eventually I would want to continue. And then fast forward many years I met my husband. We were going to church, and I feel like it was something that was always in the back of my mind. Hadn't really talked about it with my husband, but in church, I felt like we kept hearing about it and then running into friends who had started fostering or just random strangers. So I felt like God just kind of kept putting little things in place. And so our church had an orientation, and we signed up to go to that so we could just hear more about what that was in our area, like what that would look like for our family. And after that orientation, we were hooked. That's kind of how we started.

Shayla: That's awesome. And so what was that first placement like, the first child you guys brought in? What was that journey like? Were you surprised at how it went? Was it like last minute notice in the middle of the night? Was it fun? Was it terrible?

Liz: Oh, gosh, it was kind of like all of those things. Usually the moment you have your license, within the hour, you're getting that phone call. And it's hard to explain. It's like you're so excited and you're anticipating, oh, wait, we've trained for weeks and months for this. We can't wait to get the call. But then at the same time, you know what that call means that there's that meme, that a child has been abused or neglected. And so it's kind of a weird thing, like you want a child in your home now that you've prepared for it, but also wish there wasn't that need at all. So we remember Tregg had started kindergarten. Tess was in preschool when we started. And so we were like, we wanted babies younger than preschool. We wanted babies. In my mind, I was thinking newborns, and we just said babies. So Placement called and said, we have a baby boy. And I said yes. I didn't ask any questions, we just said yes. And so they came to the door, and he was 24 months old, and so he was a little bit bigger than a baby. He was a toddler. And that was very shocking and hard for us because there were some behavioral issues and just lots of adjusting. But later we just kind of found anytime you bring a child of any age into your home, there's going to be that days to weeks of that new adjusting. So there's hard times, there's fun times, just lots of adjusting.

Shayla: Yeah, I can imagine. So how many children did you have in your home? How many total years did you foster? And then how many children did you have in your home during that time?

Liz: Our foster journey was a little over ten years. Officially having foster children placements, we had 19 placements and over a little less than ten years. But that doesn't include respite. We did cradle care for many years, so we had many more children than just the 19, but 19 traditional foster placements.

Shayla: Wow, that's so many kids. That's amazing that you were able to help so many. Can you tell me a little bit about the respite care and the cradle care?

Liz: Yes. So respite care is just kind of like babysitting for other foster families just to give foster parents a break or if other foster families go on vacation, things like that. It's much more short term. And cradle care is a lot through private adoption. And it's you bring in the newborn into your home until everything is finalized with the adoptive parents, that time period is waived, papers are signed and things like that. So it can be up to one night to a couple of weeks.

Shayla: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. So what has been your favorite thing about being a foster mom?

Liz: Oh, gosh, I think my favorite thing was just having that opportunity to be the middle mom, to just be that person just in the middle from first mom to whoever, forever mom, whether they go back to bio or somewhere else. And just that opportunity for our whole family, really to just fill in that gap and love on the child, provide the things they need, things like that. We really enjoyed that part of it.

Shayla: That's awesome. And what was the hardest thing?

Liz: The hardest thing is definitely letting go. I think on average our kids would be in our home for like 19 months. Seemed to be kind of the average number, so that's a long time. And typically they were newborns coming into our home, so for that child, they really didn't know any different. And there were definitely those attachments. So letting go is definitely hard. The hardest one that we had long term, letting go, I was devastated and I thought I had ruined my bio children and just ruined their lives. And we were like, what on earth have we done? Because that was so hard for them. But just talking to other mentors and people who had kind of walked that, realizing if we hadn't said yes to that person or that child, we wouldn't have had that time we got to spend with them just doing regular things; it's not like we were special people or superheroes. We just did normal lives, doing home life, school life, church, different activities.

Shayla: Yeah. I can imagine when you have a newborn, the bonding and you want to give them that bonding experience, but you're bonding too, even for the child and for the foster parent. I can imagine if you have a baby from newborn to then leaving your home, that would be traumatic. I can imagine that would have a lot of feelings.

Liz: Yes, it was definitely traumatic. Definitely a heavy load on my shoulder. Like that responsibility of teaching that newborn to bond with me would then in turn, they would be able to bond with their forever person. And had we not done that, had we not bonded, they would have missed that. And for infants, newborns, once that's gone, it's gone. So just being able to do that so that they can attach to their person wherever they end up yeah, that's.

Shayla: Such a beautiful gift to give because just even for their physical health and their mental health, bonding with a caregiver, there's a lot of science behind why that's needed. And so to give them that, knowing that one day you'll have to let them go, that's just amazing to me. That's a huge heart you have. I don't know if I could have done that. That's awesome. What are the reasons that children end up in foster care? I know you mentioned maybe they were neglected or abused. What's kind of the statistics on that? And you might not have those figures, but just where does the need for foster care come from? I mean, we kind of have general ideas, but I would just love to hear a little more on that.

Liz: I don't know exact statistics, but I can tell you from our experience over the last ten years, the need mostly for us in our experience was parents who got involved in drugs and just were not able to overcome that and were not able to care for themselves, let alone the children they were bringing into the world. So for a lot of ours, I would say probably all of our foster littles that came into our home, it was because of drug abuse.

Shayla: Wow.

Liz: And the kids come to you because there's abuse, there's neglect, things like that. And with foster care, I always like to remind people, foster care goal is always reunification. Our heart is reunification. Our heart is what's best for the child. In our experience, we only had one of our permanent placements that was reunified successfully. So statistically, that's not a really good percentage. And we kind of walked through different parents, through rehab, through recovery, things like that, and just we did not see any success for our families. Sadly, since we did do newborns, a lot of our little ones would go to grandma, aunts, uncles, things like that, but we did have many that were with us until they transitioned to their adoptive placements too.

Shayla: Wow. And how did you balance caring for your foster children, with caring for your biological children, was that hard for you? Was it a natural thing in your family or were there any struggles there?

Liz: I think it was a natural. Of course, it's never easy adding a child to your home, but for us it was natural in that kind of like when we added our daughter, our second child, to our family, it was just like adding an additional child, a third or sometimes a fourth, sometimes for years. We did two little ones at a time and you just find that balance. And I think over time you learn to reach out to others for support and for help. And we have an amazing support group through our church, our licensing agency, other foster families. You'll find that through your foster trainings, the people that are going through those classes with you will become some of your greatest support. We did that over ten years ago and some of those people in those classes are some of our still really good friends. So for us it was easy because our kids were young and we just had the little ones coming in. So little babies, you just kind of strap them on, you attach them and go. And so I could still do all the things with my kids with little ones in tow, using that support for babysitters when we needed stuff like that. And they get into the toddler years and that definitely was a little bit harder. And I know it's very different for school age and older kids that might look very different for families, but our experience with little ones was for us, it was really easy just to add another child into our mix and they were always a little bit close in age to our kids. So it's not like we had teenagers and we're doing teenager things. We were still very much in that preschool elementary age where your life is just very different at that stages.

Shayla: That's awesome. What do you wish more people knew about foster kids or about foster parenting? Maybe misconceptions people might have or just things they don't even know that you wish they knew?

Liz: Maybe one thing I wish more people were aware of is that we're all called to care. If God does not call specific individuals to foster care, I feel like we are all called, but that looks different for all of us, whether it's opening your home up for placements or being support for foster families. And there's so many ways you can support and be part of the cause without having your home open. There's wraparound families, there's people who can pray for you, help with respite, deliver meals, churches that can open foster closets, there's lots of things for you to do. So people think foster care and think, oh gosh, I can't do anything with that because for whatever reason I can't open my home. So they just kind of don't help in any way, but we all are called to care for the orphans, and we feel that foster children are our modern day orphans. So there's something everybody can do for sure.

Shayla: Yeah, because I found out this month is a foster awareness month, which I didn't know when I planned this interview. And I saw a post that I'll be adding in the show notes and talking about at the end of just ways you can help if you can't be an actual foster parent, but different ways to support foster families. And so I love that you mentioned that, just that we can all be more aware that foster parents need our support and there's ways we can do that. Small and big, different.

Liz: And I wish I knew the statistics. And it's different for every area, every county, but the need is so great. There's always children who are bouncing from home to home, night to night. There's kids who are sleeping in offices. Like the need for foster homes is so great. So anything people can do to help. And I think more people would be likely to open their homes if they knew they had support systems and that they weren't alone in doing it, too.

Shayla: Yeah, that's true. If someone's considering fostering, maybe they're on the fence or they want to do it, but they just haven't started the process yet. What would you tell them?

Liz: I would tell them to pray about it. Pray about it, be obedient and search their area for a local foster licensing agency's. Orientation. All the orientations are there's no obligation. Just because you go you don't sign your life away, but go to the orientation, sit through it, and that's the opportunity to ask the questions and to learn, what does this entail? What will my life look like if I sign up for this? And there's a lot of different organizations and churches. I know one that I love. The no More does a no More Orphan experience and they go to churches all over. If you have one of those near you attend that just different things like that to just kind of see what it entails. See, you just learn so much in that and it's kind of once you realize the need, it's kind of hard to then ignore it.

Shayla: Yeah, you can't look away once you hear those numbers and see the face. Hear the story, right?

Liz: Yeah. 

Shayla Is there anything else you want to add about your journey or balancing foster motherhood and anything else you want to share?

Liz: I tell people all the time, we don't regret having our home open for the time we did. It was hard, but we loved it. And people ask all the time, like, what do my kids think? Did my kids hate it? Will they never do it? And I just remind people that I was once that kid, I was once that foster sibling. And so I feel like I'm grateful that through it, their eyes were open to the need. And I know if you ask my kids, especially my son talks about it all the time, like he does talk about opening his home one day for it. And I know for a fact, even if they don't open their homes, they will always find ways to support people who do. We definitely enjoyed it, that's for sure.

Shayla: Yeah, well, I just think it's beautiful. And I love the idea of just even teaching your own kids just about the need and how to love other people and how to I'm just sure that it cultivated something in them that will last, just like it did for you. And then you went on to open your home. So it's beautiful. So what was your journey like, deciding to end your season of fostering? Was it hard to make that decision? Was it just a natural transition with the age of your own kids? What was that like?

Liz: A little of both. It was definitely hard, but definitely something I felt like we had a piece about just the timing. And I felt like it was a time in our kids lives where they were getting a little older. My son Tess will be a junior next year. Trey will be a senior. Their time in our home is very limited. And that was all of a sudden that happened. They were in preschool and kindergarten, and now they're at the ends of their schooling and just realizing we really wanted to be able to focus on them. So I feel like it was definitely hard when our last placement left. That was really hard. But we also didn't walk away from foster care. We are still very involved with our foster licensing agency, helping with fundraisers. I just helped with the golf tournament. Any way I can help with their gala, things like that, advocating. And I tell people all the time, if you know someone interested in fostering, give them my number. And so I talk to new people all the time. So it's definitely something we haven't walked away from. I feel like we're still very much in the thick of it, which it just looks very different. It's very different being on the outside of it. But we deliver meals to foster families, things like that. And I think because we were a foster home, we very much realized the need and things. I wish we had had more of the kinds of support we had. We're able to give that to other families.

Shayla: That's awesome. What's the most practical,  If I know a foster mom in my life, what's the easiest way I can support her up to the biggest way?

Liz: I  would you say the easiest way is, Don't ask them or don't tell them “Let me know if you need something” or just do it. Just deliver a coffee, deliver a gift card, deliver groceries, bring a meal, whether it's a hot meal, or a frozen meal or say, we'd like to help you with respite. And don't have it like the open ended, let me know because they'll never tell you. Just say this week, what night this week can we take your children for you and help you and extend that invitation to the whole family, the bio kids, not just the foster kids or the adoptive kids, to the whole family. Because that was always really important to us and meant a lot to us when our bio kids were included in all the things too. But just be upfront with offering the help, things like that. And prayer. That's prayer. Finding a support system, people who will pray for you. There's so many things in our journey that were out of the control of case management, judges, our agency, just out of everyone's control. But having someone to be able to kind of talk through those things and know someone's praying specifically for things upcoming in cases, things like that. Prayer changes things. Prayer helps. Just knowing that you have people supporting you was a huge thing for us too.

Shayla: Yeah, that's beautiful. I love how you said, just do it. Don't say, oh, let me know because I think we do that for anyone going through something.

Liz: Yes, truly, we mean well, just do it. Yes. It never happens. And it's kind of like, oh, let's go out for dinner. Well, unless you say get it scheduled, it just never happens. And then it's crazy how weeks, months, years go by. So just being really intentional about your offers and your help is huge.

Shayla: That's awesome. So with respite care, do you have to be certified in some way to offer that or maybe sit for a night for your friend?

Liz: It depends on I think it's different for every county, every state. And so just kind of look in your area and see it's kind of for our area, it's up for hour. Like the number of hours under, I don't remember what they are, but I think it's under like 42 to 72 hours. You don't have to be licensed under that. You don't over that. You would have to be licensed so you can do one or two nights. And like I said, it's different for every area. And then too, there's like the normalcy where they don't have to be all the background checks done, but it's kind of like would you allow your children to spend the night there or to be babysitted by that person? Things like that. So there is a lot you can do to help without having to be licensed yourself.

Shayla: Yeah. Okay, well that's helpful. Well, you hear a lot of talk of people kind of abusing the foster care system and using it to get paid and mistreating children and all of that. And how prevalent is that really? Is that just kind of something people say? How Because obviously you guys are like the best foster parents anybody could want. But you hear a lot of stories out there, too, of the opposite, 

Liz: for sure.  And there's definitely those homes, I would say they're very few and far between. There's very few. I would say I see more, like, single parents with way too many children sometimes. That's an amazing situation and it's a good thing. And sometimes not so very few and far between. And I think those people who do that, more often than not, it becomes very aware in the needs and just school because they have to go to public school, so teachers and what not see things and report it. And so I feel like those homes get shut down. So it's really not a huge, like the movies and all the things not saying it doesn't happen. It definitely happens, but more times than not, I mean, honestly, I think when we started, it was like $12 a day, and when we ended, I think we were at like $14.75, I think, a day per child, which is not especially when you look at the needs, like when they're little, like diapers formula. Yes, you can get WIC, but WIC is a supplementary program so that didn't cover all the things. Yes, you get like, clothing stipends over the summer, but for little kids, you have like diapers formula, but as they get bigger, you have the kids who want the cool shoes and the neighboring clothing. I feel like every foster parent I know spent way more than they made. So it's always kind of comical when people talk about, oh, they're doing it for the money. And it was like, what money are you talking about?

Shayla: What program is that right? Yeah. Well, that's good. It's not as prevalent as people say.

Liz: No, definitely not. Definitely not. From what I've seen and experienced and witnessed.

Shayla: Yeah, well, I enjoyed talking to you. I'm just so inspired by all of it. And we always talked about having I always wanted to foster teenagers, but I've always felt like I had to wait till my kids were older than whoever we had in the home because it felt safer that way when you have teenagers to not have a little I don't know. And then now my kids are teenagers and life feels so crazy, so I don't know if I'll do it in the future when they're out or if.

Liz: It's so funny you say that because we were always like, in the early stage when our kids were babies, too. We're like, you know, when our kids go to college, we'll do teenagers. And don't get me wrong, our kids are amazing, but now that I have two teenagers, we're like, why would we do that? But I will say Darren is a deputy. And when he was working nights, it was so sad because almost every single night he would go to a group home and they'd have runaways, they'd have things going on. And more times than not, it wasn't the child. And it was just like if we had foster homes that each one of those kids could be at that's our heart. And through our agency, I know that's our agency's heart and their goal is to open more Christian foster homes so that there are no group homes. So it's like as hard as teenagers are just in general, like I said, when you see the need and the need is so great. It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking.

Shayla: It is. 
I just want to thank you first for just loving all of those children for all of those years and supporting foster families now and just all the lives that you're helping. I just want to thank you for. Being for being awesome like that. And then just thank you for sharing with us and opening up your time so we could hear and learn. And I'm hoping that we've inspired some people to love on a foster family or open up their home to become a foster mom. So I just want to thank you for being here.

Liz: Thank you so much for having me. I love sharing our story and about our journey. So thanks for having me.

Shayla: Yeah, you're welcome.

Shayla: Thinking about what Liz provided for those babies by giving them a healthy relational connection in their earliest days. I saw this quote by Dr. Bruce D. Perry that said if in the first two months of life a child experienced high adversity with minimal relational buffering, but was then put into a healthier environment for the next twelve years. Their outcomes were worse than the outcomes of children who had low Adversity and healthy relational connection for the first two months but then spent the next twelve years with high Adversity. So this doctor's findings really just highlight the need for those newborns to bond with a caregiver and experience a loving relational connection. It has a massive impact on that child and their future and the health of our overall society. But then I think about the older kids too. And the statistics are that 23,000 kids age out of the foster care system every year. Only about 50% graduate from high school. The dropout rate is three times higher for foster youth than other low income children. Approximately 25% of former foster youth experience homelessness within four years of being emancipated from the foster care system. So obviously the need is great for loving foster mothers and foster families from ages zero to 18. Randall Nichols, the founder of We Are the Echo, said that all social issues poverty, addiction, human trafficking, all have an intersection upstream with foster care, and that getting involved in foster care is one way to tighten or close that pipeline and solve or reduce these other problems. And that's encouraging. But another statistic is that 30% to 50% of foster families quit within their first year, depending on the state, and it's mostly due to lack of support. So obviously there's a great need for more foster moms and more foster families, but there's also a great need for help and support for those families. And so maybe today you've been inspired to become a foster mom or you are already thinking of becoming a foster family and this is just giving you that extra nudge and that's so needed and so wonderful. But if you are compelled by the need but recognize that you're not in a position right now to be a foster parent for a variety of reasons you can't have foster children in your home, there are still ways that you can support and there's a need for supporting and helping those who have chosen to foster. There are ways to make a change in the foster care system without becoming a foster parent. Everyone can do something. The Foster the Family blog posted nine ways you can get involved in foster care without becoming a foster parent. And I linked the original post in the show notes, but here are her suggestions you can become a backup or respite provider. You can mentor foster youth. And there are many organizations you can.Partner with to do that. You can become trauma informed, so that in whatever circles you're in, becoming trauma informed will help you serve and advocate for vulnerable families, for kids in foster care, for foster adoptive families, and just become a more compassionate listener and friend. And you can also join a wraparound ministry or start one. As a way of supporting foster families by coordinating meals or organizing babysitting or raising money, you can become a cuddler. Many newborns entering foster care spend weeks or months in the NICU. Detoxing and healing NICU nurses are amazing, but they can't just hold babies all day. But you can. Many hospitals have programs where you can sign up to hold and comfort NICU babies. You can befriend a struggling or vulnerable family. And supporting vulnerable families can help keep kids out of the foster care system to begin with. You can support a single mom, invite struggling neighborhood kids over for dinner, get groceries for the parent who lost their job, make your home a safe after school space for kids. You can also serve a foster family by running an errand babysitting, bringing meals, helping with a chore. And you can donate to organizations that support children in foster care. And I know where I live, there's a place that serves a free store for foster kids where you can donate items or money or time. And then foster care kids can come in and just take what they need. So there are a lot of ways. To help, even if you feel like.You cannot be a foster parent. And I think being aware is the first step. And so I hope today has brought awareness for the needs out there and also honored those foster moms who have chosen to mother in this way. If you are ever looking for more information from any episode, make sure to check out the Show Notes. The Show Notes should be linked below the episode wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can check out our website, A Womanispodcast.com, where you'll find our Show Notes and the links to all our socials and the link to our patreon. Becoming a Patreon is a way to help keep this show on the air. Patreons provide monthly support as little as $3 a month. If you are loving this podcast, it would mean so much if you could please leave us a rating or a review. Also, be sure to subscribe or follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't ever miss an episode. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.