SLO County foster family shortage hits teens the hardest. Can you help?
Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part series on the foster care crisis in San Luis Obispo County.
When Atascadero resident Holly Stangle signed on with to be a full-time foster parent, she wasn’t sure what to expect from living in a house with teenagers.
“Even though I was hesitant about having mostly teens in the house, I have truly been very surprised by their openness for connection,” said Stangle, who has cared for 10 to 12 youths at the emergency shelter run by nonprofit organization Seneca Family of Agencies.
Stangle said she expected that the teenagers would spend most of their time in their rooms with the doors shut. Instead, it’s been the opposite experience.
“I’ve had kids that don’t even shut their door when they’re sleeping,” she said. “They are so open for relationships, for connection, and are really quite resilient kids that are just trying their best to get through a really hard time in their life.”
San Luis Obispo County needs more resource parents — the preferred term for foster parents — people like Stangle who are willing to temporarily care for and shelter children.
The greatest need is for resource parents who can take in teenagers for emergency or permanent placements.
“We would love to have more foster parents, more foster homes, and parents willing to accept a child after-hours with support,” Social Services division manager Mark Haas said, noting that emergency placements often take place after work hours or sometimes late in the night.
The COVID-19 pandemic and changes in state law that banned out-of-state placements have pushed an already strained system to the edge, creating a crisis, said Jennifer Finocchio, placement and foster support supervisor at the county Department of Social Services.
Children older than 16 are more likely than any other age group to stay in emergency placements or sleeping in county offices, Finocchio said.
“Unfortunately for our teenagers, they tend to spend way more time on our emergency shelters, because our homes that are able and willing to accept older youth are pretty limited,” Finocchio said. “We have very few of them and they’re always full.”
What do foster parents do in SLO County?
The primary goal for foster care is to reunite a child with their parents or guardians, the Department of Social Services says.
A resource family provides a safe and supportive environment for a child pending reunification with their family, the agency said.
It is important to note that the foster care system is not an adoption agency, although sometimes permanent placement or adoption is possible after an unsuccessful reunification, Finocchio said.
The first step to becoming a resource family in San Luis Obispo County is to apply on the county website at slofostercare.com.
Next, eligible resource families receive education and training, which is currently conducted virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
All families need to clear a background check and meet state requirements, according to the department guidelines.
Atascadero resident Charlie Zinn and his family have fostered between 12 and 15 children over the past four years.
Zinn said the parenting classes offered by Social Services helped him better understand the experiences of the children his family is fostering.
“It’s almost like they should make some of these classes mandatory for every parent in the world,” Zinn said. “It’s very valuable information, and I don’t know how else you would learn it.”
Those classes cover everything from the nature of trauma and potential triggers to how to help children in foster care cope with them, explained Orcutt resident Barbara Rodriguez, who is currently a resource parent for four teenage boys from San Luis Obispo County.
For instance, she recently attended a class about how vaping can impact children who take psychiatric medications.
Before becoming a resource parent, Rodriguez worked at a boys’ group home for 21 years.
The Department of Social Services offers continuing education as well as 24/7 support for foster parents, including in-home support.
“We never place a kid in a home and then say ‘good luck,’” Haas said. “Whenever we place a kid, (the families) always have around-the-clock support if it’s needed, and that includes in-home support. We have the ability to provide staff to go out into the home and help them support the kids’ stability.”
Reuniting foster kids with families
The goal of foster care is to reunite the child with their parents, or if that’s not possible, with a member of their extended family, according to the Department of Social Services.
But reunification doesn’t always work out, local resource families said.
The Zinns have had a few young children come into their homes for emergency placements.
In most cases, he said, the children want to go back to their parents at first. But when a social worker comes to take the kids back home a week or two later, Zinn added, they don’t want to go.
“It’s sad to see that because these people just have to just do the bare minimum to get their kids back, and they’re coming from abuse, mistreated and maybe not fed all the time,” Zinn said. “That’s probably the hardest part. It’s sad to see that happen.”
Not every reunification story is emotionally fraught.
Tiffany Riojas of Atascadero was six months pregnant when her family fostered a 3-month-old baby with the goal of reuniting him with his biological father.
Riojas said that she and her family were able to build trust with her foster child’s dad very quickly, noting he came to every visit prepared with everything he needed to take care of his infant son.
“The day we got to reunify them, we didn’t even get emotional for ourselves,” Riojas said. “We were just happy for them,” Riojas said.
Riojas even continued caring for the infant while his father was at work.
The man and his son live in Bakersfield now, but Riojas and her family still see them about once a month.
“It was a beautiful thing to watch a dad fight for his child and get him back,” Riojas said.
What makes a good foster parent?
Some families want to foster children but worry they may not have the space, time or financial means to devote to foster kids, Finocchio said.
While it is often easier for families to foster if one adult in the household is a stay-at-home parent, or relatives are nearby, it is possible to find day care options for young children if both resource parents work, she said.
“If you’re able to support yourself, and you have an open heart, we can work with you,” Finocchio said.
Journey Bliven, 22, is a former San Luis Obispo County youth who currently works as an intern with the Department of Social Services.
Bliven said the most important thing resource families can offer a foster child is love and support.
“I think the biggest thing foster kids are missing is that unconditional love from their parents, from previous foster homes,” Bliven said. “They just need someone who can make them feel safe, and loved, and trusted, and, like, they’re a person who has value.”
Rodriguez said foster parents must also be deeply committed to the children in their care, especially during hard times.
“(If) you’re coming into a child’s life, you don’t want to leave them like they got left behind from their own parents,” she said.
She added that it’s important to make sure that the entire family — including any children living at home — is on board before signing up for fostering.
“You’ve got to give them the same thing, the same love,” Rodriguez said. “If you’ve got a lot of love in your heart, you’re the person.”
“It’s just communicating, listening and giving love to these guys because they don’t have it,” she said. “They don’t get it from other people. They need it to feel safe.”
Finocchio noted that many foster children have experienced trauma that sometimes manifests through negative attention-seeking behaviors or rejection of their foster family. She reminds first-time foster parents not to take these types of behaviors personally.
Foster parents also need to have “a willingness to come in and consider how to raise kids differently,” said Shelby Howard, executive director of Resource Family Programs with Seneca Family of Agencies. “You’re parenting a child who has had a different trauma experience than your own birth kids did, and so you have to come at that with a lot of openness to do things differently.”
Finocchio said it’s important to approach parenting a foster youth with an attitude of inquiry.
She encourages resource parents to try and understand the root of problematic behaviors, and to practice non-reactivity and deescalating situations — all skills that can be learned through the continuing education programs the Department of Social Services offers.
“I always say raising the child is like a marriage. You’re with them till death do you part, good or bad,” Rodriguez said. “You never let them go.”
Why foster a teenager?
When resource parents sign up to foster children, they can specify the age groups they prefer to foster or what types of children would be the best fit for their family.
From there, it is up to the Social Services team in charge of placements to determine which children are best suited to which resource family, Finocchio said.
The more resource families sign up, the more options the placement team has for finding the ideal match, she said.
However, she said, there is one age group that is consistently left behind: teenagers.
“We have several (teenagers) that are just sitting in emergency shelters, because there are no foster homes to take them,” Finocchio said, adding that the homes that are willing to take in teens are almost always full.
Foster youth in San Luis Obispo County, usually teenagers, can stay at Seneca’s emergency family home while awaiting permanent placement.
Stangle, a licensed therapist, lives at the emergency shelter in Atascadero and said she typically cares for foster youth for anywhere from a few weeks to about four months.
“Really, it’s a lot about just building relationship and getting to know these kids and offering ourselves is sometimes the best thing we can do,” Stangle said.
The majority of foster teens are trying to make the most of a difficult situation and are looking for love, support and guidance from grownups, Howard and Finocchio said.
“Having a stable relationship with an adult in your life is the best way to heal trauma,” Finocchio said. “It’s unfair to these kids that they don’t have the one resource that’s gonna give them the best chance to be successful adults — and that’s family, or some adult somewhere that cares about them and wants them to succeed.”
Rodriguez can care for up to five teenage boys at a time at her home in Orcutt.
She said her parenting approach with foster kids is to offer stability, talk about their future and help them build a plan to reach their goals.
She also teaches essential life skills such as personal hygiene, cooking meals and COVID-19 precautions, as well as finding time and space for positive self-expression and new experiences.
“Some of these kids probably have never been through preschool because of all the trauma and all the things they went through,” Rodriguez said. “So once in a while, I’ll bring out games or paint or arts and crafts for them … just for them to experience it, or take them places that they have never been before, like Magic Mountain ... or camping.”
Finocchio said that, unlike young children, teenagers are more independent and taking their first steps toward adulthood without any sort of safety net.
“They have no family. They have no safety net. All they have is an agency,” she said. “We do what we can to support them, but we’re not parents. We’re not families. We’re paid professionals.”
“What’s amazing is the impact that a family could have on a teenager is so profound if they were willing to give them a chance,” Finocchio said.
Those interested in becoming resource parents can call 805-781-1705 or visit slofostercare.com.
