A new drive to keep foster kids in their home neighborhoods finds the greatest need in west Medford

Leaving his home was hard enough.

Moving in with strangers wasn’t easy.

But when the little boy newly placed in foster care had to abandon his teacher, his classroom and his school, too, it was almost more than he could bear.

"He was taken away crying and clinging to the teacher," recalls Pam Zaklan, principal at Medford’s Wilson Elementary School.

"It was just heart-wrenching to watch this child being taken from the only stable thing in his life."

Helping foster kids remain in their home neighborhoods — if not their homes — and to stay in the schools where they started is the goal of a new effort to recruit foster parents where they’re needed most.

In Jackson County, that would be west Medford, according to Penny Esser, a foster care specialist with the child welfare office of the state Department of Human Services.

Of the 250 children removed from families in Jackson County because of abuse or neglect each year, 40 percent — about 100 — come from the west Medford area, Esser said.

But only a fraction of the area’s available foster homes are in that region. Of the 200 foster families in the county, about 100 are certified only to take care of relatives or friends. Of the remaining 100 or so, most are spread from Ashland to Eagle Point, Phoenix to White City, she said.

In Zaklan’s Wilson Elementary School attendance area, for instance, there’s only one foster home offering two beds. Based on referrals for placement of neglected and abused children, the Wilson area should have 18 beds, Esser says.

The story’s the same in other west Medford neighborhoods. In the Jackson Elementary School attendance area, there are only two foster care providers when the need calls for 13. In the Oak Grove Elementary School area, there are two homes and a need for 14. In the Washington Elementary School region, there are four homes, but a need for four more.

"That’s why we’re adopting the slogan, ‘Let’s bring our kids back home,’ " Esser says. "Let’s not send them to Central Point or Talent or Ashland."

Not that Esser won’t welcome new foster families wherever they live. But if the point is to minimize disruption in a child’s life, neighborhood care is best, she says.

That philosophy was underscored last year by Jackson County’s selection by the Annie E. Casey Foundation as a pilot program for creating and sustaining neighborhood care. The Baltimore-based foundation gave $1 million to three state programs, including sites in Klamath Falls and Portland.

"It’s bad enough being taken out of their biological home," Esser says. "But to also be taken out of school? It’s really sad. I just hate it."

That’s why she’s doubly grateful for the efforts of folks like Paula and Dan, a Medford couple in their late 30s who became certified foster care parents in January.

They received the first of four foster children in March and have since added two boys, ages 5 months and 8, and two girls, ages 4 and 11, to their own children, John, 13, and Alicia, 11.

"We weren’t sure this area had been particularly needy," says Paula, whose last name — as well as the names of the foster kids — has been withheld to protect privacy.

They soon learned how desperately care is needed in west Medford. But Paula says the couple would have been committed to filling the need wherever they were. They decided to become foster parents after following the lead of Dan’s parents, who took in 16 foster kids over seven years while he was growing up.

So far, it’s worked out very well, says Paula, who left a banking job to become a foster mother. Her foster children have thrived within their new structure.

"They need redirecting and manners and routines," she says. "Above all, they just need love."

The most difficult part of becoming a foster parent was the detailed paperwork, Paula says. Actually being a foster parent is filled with the joys and difficulties any parent experiences, with some intricacies.

Paula makes sure to communicate regularly during visitations with the kids’ biological parents. She asks permission when she wants to cut someone’s bangs. And for Mother’s Day, she took everybody to the photo studio at Wal-Mart for inexpensive, yet meaningful, pictures.

It requires a commitment that goes beyond the state’s financial compensation.

Foster parents receive $374 a month for children up to age 5, $393 a month for kids ages 6 to 12 and $500 or so for teenagers. That is augmented by a medical card and by support and training, Esser says.

Getting the word out that foster parents are needed in specific locations is vital, says Gigi Michaels, who has been a west Medford foster mother for five years.

"When you read about drug busts in the paper, they rarely say, ‘And two children were removed from the home and are in need of foster care,’ " said Michaels, a longtime advocate for west Medford.

"People don’t know that these kids lose their home, they lose their families and they lose their school," she says. "Keeping them in that school is crucial."

For information about becoming a foster parent, call Esser at 776-6120, Ext. 264.

Reach reporter JoNel Aleccia at 776-4465, or e-mail jaleccia@mailtribune.com