Scruggs

We started dating when we were in high school. She was in 9^th grade; I was in 11^th grade. We dated for five years before we married. Within a year of our marriage, our first child was born; the second just two years later. Biologically we were done. For health reasons, we would no longer be able to have children. We toyed with the idea of fostering or adopting for a few years after our children were born, but never did follow through. Once both children were well established in school, we let the idea go.

Years went by, the kids were now in high school and middle school, our marriage was on the rocks. While on my way to pick our youngest up from school one day, I was involved in a head-on collision with a semi. Two surgeries, twelve days in the hospital—five in ICU, ten days in a rehabilitation hospital, and nineteen broken bones later; I returned home, four days after Christmas, in a wheelchair. Unable to walk because of a broken hip; unable to use crutches because of a shattered elbow, my road to recovery was not going to be quick—or easy.

With nothing but time on my hands, and the help of a therapist, I was able to work through a lot of the baggage that made me the way I was. Not fully recovered from the accident—barely back on my feet—we received a call from DSS stating that a couple we had not seen in five years needed a kinship foster and had requested us. This phone call came the day before we were leaving to go on vacation. It was also the Thursday before Father’s Day. We explained the situation to the case worker but agreed to take the child as long as they (DSS) were okay with us taking the child on vacation with us.

We picked up an eighteen-month-old child who could not walk, could not talk (not a single word), could not feed itself. The child was glued to my wife’s hip the entire vacation. A single look from me would invoke a scream of terror from the child, and to make the slightest move toward the child… We learned quickly that I should avoid that at all costs. By the end of the week, however, I was at least able to look in the general direction of the child without terrorizing the poor child. We were at least making some progress. And thankfully so, because I was going to be the one watching the child while my wife was at work. In the three months the child was with us, we were able to teach the child to walk, talk (on level), and feed herself.

We were told from day one that it would be at least six months before the child went home and that before that happened there was a process of acclimation visits that would happen to prepare the child to go back home. That was, until we received a phone call one day telling us to have the child ready at 5:00 as the parents would be picking the child up. No warning, no acclimation visits; just a couple hours to get the child’s things together and then she was gone. That was a kick in the gut.

In the days and weeks that followed—now recovered and returned to work—a lot of time was spent thinking about the experience of those three months. One of the things that came out of my emotional recovery (and the recovery of our marriage) was a daily time of communication. Even if there was nothing of note to communicate, we still took the time to be intentional. A lot of those communication times were spent discussing the future of our family. The future was no longer about whether there would be an “us”. It was about whether our family was finished growing. So, one day, we sat the kids down and asked them to think about the possibility. If they weren’t willing to do it, there was no need to pursue it. They agreed.

The process to become licensed took a little over six months once we began. One of the reasons it went so quickly was because, after some research, we decided to jump from a regular foster license through DSS to a therapeutic foster license through a secondary agency. Within eight months of starting the process, we had our first placement. In the six years that we have been fostering we have had five long-term placements (one year or more) and around nine short-term placements. Some of the short-term placements were simply respites and were only supposed to be there for a week or so; others were planned to be long-term placements but became obvious very early on that they needed more care than we could give them.

There were good days; there were bad days. There were days (and probably still are) that the kids regretted agreeing to this chaos. There were days my wife and I questioned our own sanity for signing up for this journey. Through it all, the good has far outweighed the bad. At the time this was written, we have had one foster age out and head out on her own. She still keeps in touch with us and is doing well. We have adopted one of our fosters and she is currently figuring out which direction she wants to go in life. We have had another foster age out and move away and want nothing to do with us and that’s okay, too. We are also currently in the process of adopting another one of our fosters. Our fifth long-term foster is currently on a reunification plan. We wish her family the best and hope they can fulfill their obligations.