Foster Care – Spokane, WA

Posted on October 24, 2014 by admin

• Fixing foster care: ‘Where do I belong?’, By Jody Lawrence-Turner, October 19, 2014, Spokane Spokesman-Review: “Alkala Michener’s green eyes pool with tears as she recalls the night she lost her family: She was 7 years old, dressed in a Cinderella pink nightie, her lace-rimmed socks soaked and muddied as she ran away with her big brothers. A social worker found the children wet and desperate to find their dad, running along a stretch of a north Spokane highway. The siblings were split up. Alkala went to a Newman Lake foster home and wouldn’t see her brothers again until they knocked on her door eight years later. ‘For years, I had the impression (my family) didn’t want me,’ she said. Her story is all too common in Spokane County, where children are pulled from their families at three times the rate of those in King County…”
• Fixing Foster Care: Fostering stability, By Jody Lawrence-Turner, October 20, 2014, Spokane Spokesman-Review: “As Diana Stegner lay in a hospital bed, alone, homeless and suicidal, she acknowledged her newborn son would be better off with someone else. Within hours Michelle Trotz cradled baby William as she welcomed him into her home. Trotz and her husband, David, first became foster parents four years ago. They wanted to help babies who needed them. Their home is among more than 500 across Spokane County licensed to care for children taken from their parents. Communities need foster homes because ‘we live in a broken society,’ said Linda Rogers, a former foster care recruiter who got the Trotzes involved. Foster parents are the backbone — some say heroes — of a system tasked with the toughest of jobs: caring for the children of broken homes…”
• Spokane area agencies prioritize fixing family relationships, rather than traditional foster care routes, By Jody Lawrence-Turner, October 21, 2014, Spokane Spokesman-Review: “Sometimes children are best left in ‘bad’ homes. Evidence is pouring in that keeping families together – even those deemed dysfunctional – is less harmful than pulling them apart. It’s a U-turn in thinking and practice for child advocates, as new programs emerge with the aim of keeping children in their homes while fixing families…”