Barriers to Understanding: Local Control
Foster care, a part of child welfare, is administered at the county level.
That means the social workers, judges, lawyers, etc are all organized at a county level, and are culturally impacted and influenced by that county - foster care is not a state or federal program (though counties must abide by state and federal laws.)
What does this mean? Across the country, there is huge variation in how foster care happens on a day to day basis.
Given this variety, its hard to understand the lived reality of foster care - just because you know how it goes in one area, doesn’t mean it isn’t, in practice, totally different somewhere else.
I served as a foster parent in Marin County, California, which is part of the nine county San Francisco Bay Area, and one of 58 counties in the state. While my personal experience was limited to Marin, I heard about how other counties operated from people who had either worked there (as social workers and lawyers, for instance) or volunteered (as foster parents or CASAs.) Here are some examples of county variation:
Size and Infrastructure: Marin County had on average a caseload of about 80 kids (though that swung between 50 and 120 during my tenure there.) All of the social workers had cubicles in the same room and they all knew each other and about each other’s cases. When I called the main line, it was easy to find someone to answer a question. When someone was out sick, it was relatively smooth having someone else cover for them. Most of the social workers knew my kiddo and could greet her by name.
San Francisco - which I could see from my living room window, and to which my husband commuted every day - had a case load of around 760* during that same time. Their offices were spread across the city. There was no way all the social workers knew each other, or about each other’s cases; and they couldn’t possibly know all the kids, never mind be able to greet them by name.
Adjacent counties, completely different experience.
Down in LA, meanwhile, they have the largest caseload in the nation with around 20,000 children. That, as well, is a completely different reality.
Bio Parent Supports: Early in the case, I asked our ongoing social worker if there was a peer mentoring/support program our kiddo’s bio parents could join. Our wonderful, professional, diligent social worker, who had 20 years of experience, had never heard of such a program. Turns out our county didn’t have one - even though another local county did. However, my kid’s family wasn’t eligible for it because…it was in a different county.
Meds: depending on local sentiment, some foster care systems are very quick to prescribe medication - even very heavy, signficant drugs, like anti-psychotics - to mediate the behavior of children in their care. Others are not. Marin County, with a lot of pride in all things organic and such, had an ethos of avoiding prescription meds as much as possible, due to the local mentality, but also due to the more manageable caseload and infrastructure. This is yet another way a child’s trajectory through the system can be incredibly different depending on the wild card of geography.
Judges: Marin County has one judge. A few years before my tenure, there had been a different judge, with a different style. The first judge liked to take things into consideration, a habit that often dragged out the court process and required more court dates and a longer timeline for everyone. The second one was very decisive, minimizing court dates and keeping things rolling along.
As for my experience, having only one judge meant that I, as a foster parent, knew what to expect. She had a clear style, and liked things a certain way, and everyone who showed up at court knew what was expected of us: there was consistency. In other counties with higher caseloads and therefore more judges, there is the possibility of having a case reassigned to a different judge - and therefore everyone may have to readjust to a different style, set of expectations, and biases - partway through, adding a whole level of complexity others may not face.
Foster Parent Community and Support: I had the great good fortune of fostering in a county with a wonderful non-profit, the Marin Foster Care Association, whose goal was to support children in foster care and the adults caring for them. Through them, we had continuing ed opportunities, Mom’s/Dad’s Nights Out, access to grants to cover the cost of extracurriculars (they funded a family music class for us), a Winter Holiday Party and Summer Picnic that brough the whole community together, and the Community Resource Center where we could get pretty much any material need met. Over the more than two years our kiddo was in care, I estimate that the CRC supplied about 80% of our “stuff”: high chair, booster seat, stroller, crib, toys, and clothes, clothes, and more clothes as little kids sure do grow quick. The MFCA was a massive support for us and had a significant positive impact on us. Many counties have no such organization.
Size, infrastructure, supports, meds, judges - these are only a few ways in which things can vary from county to county. There is no one path through foster care; there is no “standard.”
What You Can Do:
Learn what you can about your local foster care system and its specific realities and needs. You can’t learn about your local reality from my blog (unless you live in Marin, and even then, this is growing outdated by the day.)
Know that the county next door might be a totally different world.
Realize that just because you know a person or family that has been impacted by foster care, you still know basically nothing (I include myself in this statement.) It is impossible to know and understand all the things when it comes to foster care.
Luckily, you don’t have to know much in order to have a positive impact. Stay humble, stay curious, stay respectful, and always be willing to listen and learn. That alone is enough to get you somewhere.