‘Do you know why your child ended up in foster care?’ 

It’s a question foster carers frequently receive, and I’ve had my fair share too. I suppose it’s basic human curiosity: here is a gorgeous child, running around enjoying life – why can’t they live with their parents? What has happened to leave such a precious child in need of a new family? Do foster carers know what happened in a child’s story?

The answer is probably, ‘Yes’, they know – at least some of the story. Foster care agencies provide what information they have on a child’s case to carers to allow them to adequately and appropriately care for the new member of their family. Often times this knowledge builds as the child grows more confident and secure in their new home. But foster carers cannot freely answer such questions in detail. And neither should they be made to feel they have to.
A child’s story is just that, the child’s story. If and when they decide to share the details of their past, or the reasons for their separation from their birth family, that will be, and must be, their choice.

But why do children end up in care? Can we simply pass it off with a judgmental glare and shake of our righteous heads?
No. I don’t think so.
For a child to require separation from his or her family there are usually deep and serious reasons. Abuse, neglect, mental illness, drug addiction, domestic violence, prostitution, intellectual disability and more. Children become victims in the very place they should feel safest – their family. The reasons are complex and we cannot, dare not, fob them off into one category. Every parent of a child in care will have their own story, usually one including much brokenness; of life not ending up the way they had once dreamed, or perhaps devastatingly repeating itself. As a Christian, I find myself aching for the stories not just of the children who require care, but for their families. If I had not been raised in a home where safety, love and grace abounded, if I had not discovered the love of Christ, would my story be much different from theirs? I cannot say.

The extent of brokenness reveals itself when you stop and imagine your own life going horribly wrong. You know that if you ever had a time when you were seriously struggling in life and as a parent, that Grandma would step in, or Aunty May, or (hopefully) your church family – there would always be someone who could step in and support you to get help, get healing, and bring your family back to a point of health. But in the stories of children in care, bad has gone to worse and often times there has been no one in a position of safety or health to provide care and protection. The entire family network has broken down.
And this is what really breaks my heart about foster care. Why are children in care? Because of brokenness. Wide scale brokenness in the communities all around us. Our communities – not far across the ocean – but all around us.

The untold stories of children in care break my heart.
But they must break Christ’s even more. And this is why we who follow him need to respond to the issue of foster care.

Penny 

Note: If you’ve only just arrived in our conversation about foster care, you can catch up on earlier posts here and here.