For Darolyn Brooks, there was never a question that she would keep in touch with the Winnetka woman who was a foster mother to her son Lee from the day he left the hospital.
“They are like friends and just a very special part of his life. We’ve always communicated, it’s always been there,” said the 41-year-old Brooks. Brooks was 19 when she had Lee, her third child, and placed him in foster care because she wasn’t sure she was equipped to be a mother again.
Lee spent the first nine weeks of his life in the home of Joanie and Herb White as the family’s fifth foster child before returning to Brooks. Though Lee doesn’t remember the couple from his infant days, he knows them through the cards, care packages, photos and visits they have shared over his 21 years.
“At first,” said Lee, a sophomore at Kent State University in Ohio, “I wanted to know who they are and was interested in why and what really went on and to find out answers and get to know them. Then I found out I like them a lot, which was cool.”
The high-profile foster care case of Baby T reached a resolution on Monday, when a circuit judge ordered the 3-year-old be returned to his biological mother, Tina Olison, after spending most of his life with Ald. Edward Burke and Illinois Appellate Judge Anne Burke.
Yet a central question remains: How, if at all, will the boy continue his relationship with the Burkes in the years ahead?
The judge ordered that the boy be gradually transferred from the Burkes’ Southwest Side home to Olison’s southwest suburban apartment, but parties on all sides expressed a desire that both sets of parents work together in the best interests of the child. Yet social workers, mental health professionals and lawyers concede that such long-term cordial arrangements rarely happen.
For reasons ranging from class issues to competition, Lee Brooks’ experience is highly unusual.
“In a perfect world, everyone would get along,” said Karen Bowes, one of Olison’s attorneys. “But you can’t force people to cooperate.”
In the emotional aftermath of the verdict, Olison, 37, said she hoped the Burkes would continue to play a role in her son’s life but that she isn’t sure they “respect” her. The Burkes, for their part, have not facilitated court-ordered visits between Olison and her son, nor have they returned her phone calls, she said.
While many involved in the case hoped to see the two families craft some kind of connection, along the lines of a surrogate aunt and uncle, “I doubt that they’ll want to have me over for a barbecue anytime soon,” Olison said.
These complicated feelings are typical in the American system of child welfare, which supports some 450,000 children nationwide, including about 43,000 in Illinois.
“Thanks? You certainly don’t get that from the birth parents . . . and you don’t get much more from the state, either,” said Jo Ann Flaherty, who has fostered 40 children. Some stayed just overnight, others remained for years, and two–now ages 6 and 19–she adopted.
But, she adds, gratitude is not what brings most people to foster parenting.
“I’m always amazed that there are people who do this who aren’t religious, because it has to come out of a thanks to God. You have to view it almost like a ministry–those are certainly the people who stick with it the longest,” said Flaherty, a former president of the Illinois Foster Parents Association, which has 2,000 members.
Of the 40 mostly abused and neglected children who found refuge in her Niota, Ill., home Flaherty can count on one hand those who have kept in contact. Those who do usually arrived as teenagers, such as the 23-year-old woman who will be visiting from Texas in a few weeks.
“She came at age 15 and left at 17 and really wanted a relationship, which is unusual with teens. Her mom had been married so many times that she had to draw me a diagram . . . but she is working and a delightful young woman,” Flaherty said.
“What I’d like birth parents to know is that we’re not trying to take their children away . . . and that most of us become foster parents to help kids, not to be a threat.”
For the biological parents, though, there can be a strong sense of competition with these outsiders who supplied the necessary scaffolding when they could not. Once rehabilitated and reunited, they often don’t want to be reminded of a chapter in their life that they would just as soon forget.
“Why would I want to stay in touch?” asked a West Side woman who wished to remain anonymous. Her four children were taken into custody after she had been severely beaten in a mugging and faced a long hospitalization.
“It was a very painful time for me,” said the woman, whose children were in the foster care program operated by Lifelink, a Bensenville-based health and human service organization. “I will never be able to give my children the kind of material things they had while in foster care. I just want to move on.”
Dawn Schoeneck, 39, of Rockford, understands the fears. “At first it did cross my mind,” said Schoeneck of the notion that foster mother Linda Hunt would try to take her 15-year-old daughter. “Then I sat with her and it totally turned my head around about Linda. It was like we were sisters.”
Schoeneck and Hunt have the kind of friendship and mentoring relationship that child welfare experts hold up as an ideal. When Schoeneck’s daughter, now 18, returned home a year ago and had a baby, Hunt “was like another grandmother,” said Schoeneck.
More Top Picks Best Color Changing Smart Bulbs For Kids Rooms
Still, even in the best of circumstances, there can be differences of opinion. For Hunt, it was difficult to see the teenager leave foster care.
“I honestly didn’t feel the kid was ready to go home,” said Hunt, who has fostered 169 girls and keeps in touch with five of the biological families. “They didn’t know how to deal with situations with the kids once they got home. They call me and say, `What do I do and how do I do it?’ “
Simmering below the surface is also an element of mistrust.
Foster parents often are asked to supply information to social workers about the birth parents. Given that a DCFS attorney asked Olison on the witness stand if she had ever, after a visit, returned her baby to the Burkes with a wet diaper, it might be understandable why some biological mothers eye their stand-ins with suspicion.
After a long and contentious court battle, the likelihood of an amicable alliance is rarer still. And yet, experts say, these are the kids who would benefit most from a strong partnership because they are usually in limbo longer and suffer more separation and loss.
“These children have few enough meaningful people in their lives without losing those people, too,” said Carol Amadio, a professor of social work at Loyola University Chicago, an attorney and a former employee of the state child welfare agency.
But, added Amadio, such an ongoing relationship is “like joint custody with a divorce; not everyone is able to do that.”
The case of Girl M last year highlighted just how painful these conflicts can be. After spending the first four years of her life with Patricia and Phil McGuire in Tinley Park, Girl M was transferred by DCFS to Texas, where she spent the next three years with another foster family.
The McGuires waged a two-year battle over the girl, now 7, that left them financially and emotionally drained. While the tug-of-war occurred between two foster families, the bond was as strong as blood. And when the judge ruled in favor of the Texas family, she also sternly suggested that the two families learn to work together.
However, when the TV cameras clicked off and everyone went home, that admonishment went largely unheeded, said Patricia McGuire.
“It takes an unselfish person to allow their children to love and be loved,” she said. That love is not something to be hoarded, she said, but rather “a child can love a lot of people . . . To be honest with you, I’d never do (fostering) again.”