54 foster children adopted in Mat-Su this year

WASILLA — Parents and related agency employees agree that foster families are often complicated, but a blessing to those with a lot of love and determination.

On Wednesday, Dec. 2, 14 of 54 foster children adopted in Mat-Su this year established permanent homes in a Palmer courthouse ceremony facilitated by Alaska’s Office of Children’s Services (OCS), Alaska Center for Resource Families (ACRF) and Court Appointed Child Advocates (CASA).

ACRF Mat-Su trainer Betsy Woodin said the number of local adoptions from the foster system this year was “pretty high,” but down from 69 last year and 64 in 2013. In those years, however, more children (up to six siblings, she said) were adopted by a single family, while this year, 31 families adopted just one or two children each. Seventy percent of this year’s adoptees went to relatives.

“Reunification is the first goal,” Woodin said.

But if a parent doesn’t complete their OCS case plan — which typically includes treatment for substance abuse, mental health or domestic violence issues, Woodin said — the child will go to a different home permanently.

Though that home will ideally be with a relative of the child, she said, several in this latest round of adoptions were not. The Marinos are one family that took in children unrelated to them.

A family portrait

Amy and Tyson Marino are the legal parents of three children: 5-year-old Faith, their biological daughter, 19-month-old Aria, who came to them through a private adoption, and 4-year-old Carlie, who they adopted on Dec. 2.

Amy Marino, who works in ministry, said she wasn’t sure she would ever have children when she got married 13 years ago. She was working with inner-city, low-income kids before she and her husband moved to Alaska, and felt like she was already a mother to hundreds.

“We’ve always felt called to the ones that are overlooked,” she said.

Eight years after the couple married, they had Faith. Then they started to see advertisements for adoption and foster care “everywhere we looked,” Marino said, and began to research it. Two and a half years ago, they became licensed foster parents.

“Our heart is, ‘If not me, then who?’ If not us, then who is going to take in the kids?” she said.

That’s not to say they haven’t struggled. When Carlie first entered the Marinos’ home at age 2, she had been exposed to drugs and her behavior was less than ideal. But over the last two years, Carlie has undergone a transformation.

“When we first took Carlie in, she was a different kid than she is now,” Marino said. “It’s like night and day.”

‘Not for everyone’

Marino and Woodin both said that foster parenting is “not for everyone.” Not every foster child will be adopted by the first foster parent — or adopted at all — and many are returned to his or her biological parents. The Marinos have fostered five children under age 5, one of whom eventually went to a grandmother out of state. It was hard to let him go, but “family always comes first,” Marino said.

She said the heartbreak is something foster parents must put up with in order to help.

“I would not not do it (foster parenting) just because of the heartache,” she said.

Every child is different, Marino added, and some are more difficult to parent than others.

An individual child’s tendencies might not be clear right away, either — “sometimes OCS doesn’t know,” Woodin said — and some foster parents find themselves unexpectedly overburdened, at a loss for how to discipline the child.

Any kind of physical punishment of foster children, including spanking, for example, is forbidden, Woodin said. When a child does not respond to a permitted form of discipline, new parents can become frustrated, to the point where they request that the child be relocated.

“Some of these kids have been … bounced around way too much, and so, they don’t get to heal. It’s almost like continuing the trauma,” Woodin said.

But by the time foster children become pre-teens, it’s harder for them to get placed in a permanent home, and more likely that they are already out of foster care, she said. According to the OCS website, 22 “legally free” children — meaning they are wards of the state — between the ages of 10 and 16 are available for adoption.

Every child is different, and some are more difficult to parent than others, Marino said.

Systemic problems

There are problems within the system, Marino said, that lead to situations like that. While she recognized that she wouldn’t have been able to grow her family the way she has without the help of OCS, she also said the state could work with biological parents better.

In Marino’s estimation, the timelines for parents to complete their case plans can be unrealistic, given the load of an individual caseworker and the paperwork they constantly have to fill out for things like parent-child visits. Department of Health and Social Services Public Information Manager Susan Morgan said the average caseload is 30 families per worker in Wasilla.

Marino said she was also concerned about the Valley’s lack of a detoxification facility for low-income parents who need rehabilitation.

Morgan said that the amount a biological parent pays for treatment varies case by case, but that all should receive some kind of financial assistance.

“It is an involved process, but it should be,” she said.

Marino said the bottom line is that children need to have a fair chance of being placed in the best environment.

“We need OCS, you know? We need a system that helps protect children, but how effective is it when we have … (so) many kids in custody?”

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.