Letter to the State

Dear South Carolina DSS and staff,

I know we share a mutual heart for suffering children and being a part of fixing the abuse and injustice in broken families. Thank you for your often thankless and difficult work to help provide hope and healing amidst the hopelessness and hurt that hangs heavy over so many stories of despairing kids. We recognize that your work is so vital and I’m sure you don’t hear that enough.

I want to share briefly my heart on what my wife and I have felt so far in the foster care licensing and adoption process. We hope that it can help open up further conversations for ideas on reform and positive change in the Foster Care and Adoptions systems.

There’s a great scene in the movie Glory where the Massachusetts 54th infantry regiment finally gets called near the front lines of battle only to be told to wait. They’re visibly frustrated given everything that’s transpired. They’ve trained for months and have sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears; putting their very lives on the line so that others would know freedom. Now they’ve come all the way to the front lines but they’re told they cannot fight yet. More than just frustrated, they are baffled. Because before them they see the wretches of the battle. A battle that could be changed with their presence. The advancing Confederates have pushed back the Union troops and they desperately need reinforcements. There’s a huge need for fresh soldiers. They’ve trained and are ready for action and yet they’ve not been summoned to the battlefield. In fact, their own commanders have told them they cannot go to it. They soon realized that before they could enter the battle on the ground they would first have to engage a battle to get to the ground where they would give their lives.

Child welfare and child protection is also a war. The battlefield in this war is strewn with kids who’ve been carelessly neglected and abused and mistreated in horrific ways. The wounds and scars are real. The stories often hard to hear as you know. But like in military wars, hope is represented in numbers, in troops, in reinforcements that come onto the scene to help turn the tide of despair. God will not leave these children forsaken. He has reinforcements coming to their aid—the loving families in the foster care licensing and adoption process trying to get to their battlefield of hopelessness, despair, and rejection.

There’s something analogous in this classic movie scene from Glory to the emotions and feelings my wife and I have felt in our journey through foster care licensing and adoptions. We felt God’s strong call to pursue adopting a sibling group of kids. Two of which we were their house parents for nearly two years at a children’s home here in South Carolina. So we stepped up in November of 2014 to inquire about starting the adoptions process. By Thanksgiving we had started the initial paperwork. The day we submitted the forms in the mail we heard that the mother of the kids we were pursuing for adoption relinquished her parental rights. This seemed to be a huge sign of validation from God, winking at us to confidently press on. And we did.

We hurried to get to the battlefield to bring these kids off of it. We did our paperwork as fast as we could. We scheduled everything we could as fast as possible. They’ve been in the foster care system and in residential group care for well over 2 years. This is too long and we have felt their pain. We completed our trainings, our physicals, and our background checks. Everything the checklist said to do we’ve done with urgency. In faith we moved into a larger house to accommodate three additional kids and spent lots of time and money getting it ready. We renovated it as fast as possible and paid $400 to change the frame size of a window to pass the fire inspection. The house was ready for inspection within just a couple of months of nearly nonstop work. We rushed and rushed to get things done on our end.

Then we waited. And waited. Our caseworker reassured us things were on track and to “be patient.” So we waited. Politely but frequently checking in to see what we could do to help the process. It took months before the first inspection could be scheduled. More waiting. And then a few months later before the next inspection could be scheduled. This pattern of long waits to schedule inspections and home studies has continued on and on. The home study itself was at least a 3-month process after the initial meeting with the person.

In the process of waiting, we have had multiple different caseworkers. Numerous items of paperwork have been lost in transition on DSS’s end, and we always quickly resent originals. Eventually we switched to “foster to adopt” to at least more quickly have the 3 children placed in our home. Or so we thought that would be the case.

We understand that the Division of Social Services in SC is taxed with a heavy burden of removing kids from abusive homes, assigning them to safe care, and processing piles of applications for prospective foster and adoptive parents. We also know that DSS has a high duty to protect the kids in their care from potentially abusive and harmful parents getting into foster care and adoptions for the wrong reasons. Even protecting from self-centered motivations to foster or adopt can be harmful and kids need to continually be protected through placements and processes. And we understand vetting the right people out takes time. Time also reveals true commitment and we get that as well.

But. . .we were over a year into the process of becoming licensed to foster—going on 14 months when we finally heard it is finished! 14 months?! Like the 54th Regiment, waiting to get to the front lines, we are baffled. We are even familiar with many of the case workers and the system as we’ve been house parents in a children’s home for nearly 2 ½ years and regularly interacted on their behalf with DSS. Some days we feel like the system doesn’t even want us to proceed. Some days it’s easy to feel like someone is hoping we give up. But I ask myself, “Why is that?” Doesn’t DSS want to cheer us on to the finish line? Many days we’ve felt confused and discouraged.

Our state DSS Director has said SC needs 1,400 new foster parents in 2015 to meet the current need of displaced kids. We know that due to the shortage of available placement options South Carolina DSS has been forced to house kids overnight in hotels and even DSS offices. Nationally, I’ve heard that if just 1 in 3 churches had a family step out to adopt a child up for adoption in foster care there would be no more kids in America awaiting adoption. The need is definitely there. So is the solution. The reinforcements are on the scene to get into the action and yet there seems to be little urgency in the system to bring the troops onto the scene to help.

We are committed to these kids. We know and love them. We have seen God’s hand at work in His calling us into this. We certainly will not give up in this grueling process, but something is very broken in the system if we feel we are already at war before we’ve even stepped onto the battlefield. The battlefield is supposed to happen after we’ve brought the kids home. That’s when the true struggle and tests are supposed to take place. Yet we are already weary. As I am sure many DSS staff members do, we are far from feeling appreciated for stepping up to heed the call to take on hurting and displaced kids. We have often felt like the system views us as an obstacle to deal with in the process instead of being the solution to the problem. Our efforts to immediately mail in what is missing, fix forms for the third and fourth time, and continue to furnish additional paperwork over and over after we’ve been told “we should have everything” continually makes it feel the urgency is one- sided.

If we feel this much frustration, anger, and sadness over enduring the difficult and drawn out process of fostering and adoption—all while knowing and loving immensely the children we are pursuing—then why would anyone that steps up with the slightest trepidation to become a foster or adoptive parent (not knowing the kids in advance or the system at all) continue on after a few months? What at all would motivate them to stay in the game? I would guess many do not stay in the game. I know you agree that we need foster and adoptive parents to “cross the finish line,” so how can we make it easier for that to happen?

If UPS drivers are docked without pay for missing a package on a truck, I would think there would be at least as much accountability for DSS in regards to managing the forms and files for the most important “commodity” in the world—human life, wouldn’t you? I’m very passionate about the need for lots of good families to step up and get skin in the game by becoming foster and adoptive parents. As passionate as I am, I feel guilty recruiting them into this process and system we’ve endured for a year and are still going through. But I’m not giving up. And I won’t give up on helping to recruit others because these children’s lives are too precious. The call is too important.

The scariest thought that comes to my mind is not the great need of good and loving parents, it is that we seem to have a system in place that wears out the very ones answering the call to bring children into loving homes through this brutal process. That is scary because it will eliminate many good people in the process, and those that get through will be weary from a battle (the process itself) it doesn’t seem they should be fighting before the real battle of welcoming hurting children into the home begins.

South Carolina DSS, we need urgency to get new troops onto the battlefield of child welfare! Over a year to simply become licensed for foster care is not acceptable and I know from conversations with peers we are not alone in it taking this long. We need to make people that step out into this important call and process empowered, encouraged, and valued! Let’s join forces together and come up with solutions to fix the process—together.

Here are some quick ideas I’ve had that you may already be doing:

• Interview couples who have gone through the adoption and foster care licensing process to get feedback on their experience and hear helpful ideas they may have to make improvements

• Streamline any unnecessary redundancy

• Bring in business experts that can give practical solutions from the “for profit” sector

• Learn from other states known for innovation and success in their systems

• Incorporate better use of technology to aid in efficiency

• Lastly let us know practical ways we can help you. (I know my church would love to throw parties regularly for DSS workers to thank them for their work). Let’s unleash the power of human compassion and human innovation!

We need action or the reinforcements will just be numbers on a paper. And numbers don’t rescue children, real people do. Take care of the 54th…they’ve come to serve admirably, sacrificially, and lovingly. They’ve answered the call to battle. Let them go fight the real fight—bringing hurting kids into healing homes to walk with them in their wounds and pain and to help redeem their extraordinary lives!

South Carolina DSS, please do everything you can to reform this needless battle before the war because in the end, it is only hurting the very kids we all want to love and protect. May God bless you!

Sincerely,

Travis Vangsnes
(a weary but still hopeful troop in the battle of foster care licensing and adoption)

P.S. I would love to have more conversations or help bring change in any way that I can. You can reach me at 314-223-7179 or email me at barnraisingcain@hotmail.com