Foster Care: Angels on a Battlefield |
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A staggering 2.5 million children in the U.S. have been identified as homeless.
For every 100 children entering foster care, only 57 licensed foster homes are available nationwide.
Approximately 400,000 children and youth are now in foster care.
Children need abiding love!
My friend Andy Palmer understands this now more than ever. For decades he was considered among the world’s top orthopedic hand surgeons and the world’s finest when it came to certain types of wrist surgeries. It was a reputation well earned, operating on high government officials in Japan, China, South America, top White House officials, along with professional football, baseball, tennis, golf, and hockey players.
Now retired on Outer Cape Cod with his wife Sharon, Palmer has lectured around the world, published about 150 medical articles, numerous chapters in medical books, served as interim chair of the department of orthopedic surgery, and was President of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, among others.
In retirement, Palmer, 80, embraced another hands-on calling that he never saw coming—foster care. His wife, a former preschool teacher and health care worker, was instrumental in this new direction. She always had a heart for children in need, and early on assisted with childcare at her church.
“Sharon asked me one day if I would agree to foster care,” Palmer recalls. “I knew in my heart that it was the right thing. The need for foster care is boundless. And so I agreed. We felt this was what God wanted us to do.”
And with good reason—Cape Cod is a microcosm of a national and worldwide crisis, a bellwether in this dreadful storm.
In recent years nationally, “a staggering 2.5 million children” have been identified as homeless, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness. “This historic high represents one in every 30 children in the United States”—identified as sleeping in cars, a tent, or on the street.
And that doesn’t include infants or young children in homes that cannot care for them. Nor does it include distressing worldwide statistics.
The Palmers became foster care parents in 2017 after detailed foster care training and licensing, and over the years have fostered 30 children awaiting reunification or adoption.
Foster care can be at times a black hole for adoptions. “It opened our eyes to the enormity of foster care needs. It is staggering,” says Sharon, noting that needy infant children, even before they can speak, discern intense trauma in their lives.
The numbers are numbing. The foster care system in the U.S. is in a state of crisis in terms of fulfilling needs. According to the Department of Education, approximately 400,000 children and youth are now in foster care.
For every 100 children entering foster care, only 57 licensed foster homes are now available nationwide, states the Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services, noting “this critical shortage means children spending nights in office buildings, teenagers shuttled between hotels, and siblings separated not for safety but for lack of space.”
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The foster care system, experts say, is designed to be temporary, providing a safe environment while families stabilize and work toward reunification, or, when not possible, other options, such as adoption, are sought. But in practice, many children remain in foster care for years in need of great love.
Palmer reinforces that such children desperately need love; in essence, as ancient Roman poet Virgil wrote, love conquers all: "Amor vincit omnia."
“Foster children come blameless into the system,” Palmer adds. “They often enter with deplorable belongings or a trash bag containing just random clothing items and spoiled food from a refrigerator that most would consider trash. Children understandably are upset at dramatic change in their lives when they enter the foster care system through no fault of their own. The first few weeks of a new placement can be stressful, as everyone tries to learn and adjust to new schedules and personalities.”
“It’s heartbreaking to witness,” says Sharon.
But often good can come out of bad.
Over time, Palmer and his wife discerned another critical foster care need, which then became their focus—the creation in 2021 of the nonprofit Cape Cod Foster Closet to provide donated clothing, diapers, food, baby equipment, toiletries and other critical necessities to improve the lives of children in foster care on Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard. The nonprofit also encourages families to continue fostering and recruits more families to consider becoming licensed foster parents.
Foster care parents, often on short notice, need to provide much, says Palmer. The foster closet offers much and provides a new duffel bag or backpack for every child so they never have to carry their belongings in a trash bag again.
Recently, Palmer and his wife were recipients of the Human Rights Award, a national award that recognizes “individuals and organizations doing extraordinary work in their communities on behalf of the least among us.”
They are heroes locally in the care of the underprivileged. And live by the wise dictum of one step at a time, and children need abiding love…
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