These foster parents are, amazing, and yet, they had to, deal with, a ton of, gossips, from all around them, it’s just, not asked-for! Off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
Ms. Pan in Nantou started fostering children seventeen years ago, she’d taken care of seven children and adolescents, not very many in comparisons with the average foster care parents, because the cases she took care of are mostly, older, and therefore, they were all placed with her, longer, to the point of staying five years with her. As Ms. Chen from Taichung saw her relatives’ signing on as foster parents, she’d felt for the children who were abused, and, decided, to join in the list of foster care families, and she’d been a foster parent for a whole of eighteen years now, took care of over twenty children.
Ms. Pan currently takes care of two children one in the first, another in the second grades, she said, to be a foster parent, there’s a need, to take on, a ton of negative feedbacks from the outside world, the whole family needs to be onboard with the program, but, the process isn’t, necessary, all, smooth-sailing, she’d met a child who was influenced by a head mobster, that skipped home many times before middle school graduation, she’d gone to collect the child, and she was undeterred when the mob threatened her, in the end, with the help from the police, the county government, as well as the Taiwan Fund for Families & Children, she was finally able, to get that child back with her.
“Is that child from your husband’s affair?”, as the parents become foster parents, they’d faced these sorts of rumors, Ms. Pan told, that her husband worked in China from before, and whenever there’s a new child in her house and all started calling her “mom”, the neighbors get too nosy, too curious, and the rumors would flow, and the families would ask her, “are they from your husband’s affairs?”, and she’d not known, how to react to that.
Ms. Pan was timid over fostering children once too, there were the children who got out of foster care, and didn’t get on the right paths of life, she’d, blamed herself for not steering the child in the right directions, but thankfully, someone pointed it out, that there’s nothing but love and positive influence in the foster care environment, that if a child strayed, it wasn’t her fault nor responsibilities, and “affinity was what made them ours”, and all of these beliefs, had helped carried her to date.
Ms. Chen is a housewife, her husband is a Taiwanese businessman, they have three children of their own, many years ago, they’d visited the relatives who was a foster parents, saw how they were raising up a three-year-old little boy who had been abused, the child’s two front teeth were broken from him getting beaten, and they’d, felt for him, and decided to join the group of foster parents, opened up their family, to take in the children and adolescents who had nobody they could, count on.
Seven years ago, Ms. Chen started caring for a child who’s developmentally delayed, and had to work even harder with her child, gone to the hospitals, two, three times a week, but she’d not felt strained one bit, continued to help the child in the early intervention programs; seeing how the child learned to walk on his own from unable to walk, making a little progress each and every day, she’d felt achieved, which was what drove her to continue foster children. She said, “to be able to do something for these children, it’s meaningful to me, I will keep on doing it until I can’t do it anymore!”
The office manager of the Hsinbei Chapter of Taiwanese Fund for Children & Families, Fang said, there were about forty-percent of children in foster care who are handicapped, in recent years, there were the “drug-addicted babies” in the foster care programs on the increase, the caretakers often had to stay up all night, and there’s a need for a ton of patience, and strengths too.
Fang told, that there’s the complexities of the situations of children in the foster care programs, and so, the parents would have to have trainings in the nursing, the nanny, or early childhood education backgrounds, and once the foster parents were ill-matched with a child, there would then be, more options to where the child can be placed, to reduce the strains of caretaking and obstacles too.
And so, a ton of love, tolerance is needed, for these parents who are foster parents, because, if you don’t have that, then, you can’t, take care of that child who’s, in need, and some of the foster parents use the foster care programs to earn a little extra government “incentives” but not these parents, because they have a TON of love, and they really, want to, help these children who are from bad beginnings out, and that’s, worth, noting.
Life, the Obstacle Course 