My name is Kate, and together with my husband, we fostered and adopted our son. It’s an everyday (or every moment) job to help my son navigate triggers that send him to the back of his brain, and COVID-19 has only amplified it.
My family is relicensing to be a foster family again and I started the process incredibly confident, and then…the coronavirus hit.
Licensing your home in the best of situations is incredibly difficult. Worth it, but difficult. But this time our agency didn’t know what to do when shelter in place orders went into effect. I mean can you blame them? They’ve never had to license people in a global pandemic and even the state was scrambling with what to do. Everyone involved in licensing is getting incredibly wise and super creative when it comes to getting training complete. Child welfare is essential, but think about it…. it definitely isn’t the safest choice to send caseworkers from home to home with a virus like COVID19 on the loose. But let me tell you, they worked it out! You would think, “praise be to God. Let’s roll.” But for our family, licensing during this time has actually been incredibly hard on our son.
You see for our beautiful son, who was adopted two years ago and is home full time as schools are closed, is witnessing the caseworker interactions and remembering his own. He sees us checking through minimum standards and remembering when we did that for him. He’s watching people clear out grocery store shelves and remembering how food security isn’t something he’s always had. He’s watching people be uncertain about the future and remembering a time when he was uncertain about his own. When you’ve experienced trauma, you always live in trauma to an extent.
I have struggled as a mom greatly during this time. Am I being too hard on him? Am I using TBRI effectively? Does he know that I really will do anything to keep him safe? Is this virus robbing him of the normalcy he just started to settle into?
It’s a lot.
But it’s also a lot on the children who are suffering in abusive living situations. Child abuse and neglect has grown since the coronavirus has swept our world and the children of our nation need people to open their hearts and homes. So we are. Fostering and adopting is the way I respond to the grace I have been shown by my Heavenly Father. Our family is going to continue to walk in obedience and chase after these amazing kids…. even during COVID-19. Our hope is that someone out there reading this would also feel the call to open their home. Our nation needs us now more than ever.
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