Word: fostering
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COMING-HOME WOES Kids in foster care should be reunited with their biological families when possible. That's been the prevailing wisdom. But a study spanning six years published in the journal Pediatrics sees reason for caution. Researchers found that kids reunited with their families had higher levels of risky behavior and substance use and were more likely to drop out of school or be arrested than kids who remained in foster care. A possible explanation: the problems that led to the child's initial removal were still unresolved...
...Generations of Hope, a nonprofit organization, Hope Meadows is the brainchild of University of Illinois sociologist Brenda Krause Eheart, who got the idea after five years of research into the adoptions of older children, which she discovered often failed. The key problem, she found, was that even the best foster families felt isolated. Without constant, accessible support, they found the task overwhelming. Eheart also fondly recalled having older neighbors who were devoted to her family when her children were young. In the early '90s, when some politicians were promoting a return to orphanages and group homes, Eheart says, "It sent...
Buttitta is careful not to press too hard, as Andrew is just beginning to come out of his shell. Prior to being taken in by his adoptive family two years ago, he and his older brother Anthony had been shuffled through five foster homes. Before she moved into the neighborhood, Buttitta had had hip, heart and back surgery--all within a 12-month period--and suspected her days of enriching young minds were over. Now the two provide sustenance for each other in Hope Meadows, a community that seems to have been carved out of an earlier time...
...that it is not just multigenerational but multiracial as well. Previously part of the Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, Ill., 125 miles south of Chicago, this three-block array of ranch houses has been transformed into the home of a pioneering program that targets difficult-to-place foster children who are--or are likely to be--available for adoption. A quarter of the 568,000 children in state care in America, these kids tend to be older or in sibling groups; they are likely to have been severely abused or neglected, exposed to drugs and a slew of foster...
...difficult-to-place kids have been adopted; six are expected to be; 19 have returned to a family member; and just seven have returned to state care. Hope's adoption rate from 1994 to '99 was more than three times the average rate of adoption and guardianship for foster kids in the state as a whole. Its initial success has inspired an Excellence in Adoption award from President Clinton, backing from TV-talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell, a book (Hope Meadows, by journalist Wes Smith) and grass-roots support from community leaders across the country eager...