Help for Foster Parents: Advocating for Every Child’s Success

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Summarized Transcript of Episode

LaShaundra Barnes: Welcome to Her Desired Haven podcast, a community where we come together to discuss all things Jesus, family, life, and faith. I'm your host, LaShaundra. Thank you for stopping by today.

Today's guest is an educational advocate for children in foster care. Her work focuses on training foster parents on the education laws that affect the children and their care, with the goal of ensuring that they graduate successfully. She's determined to bring awareness of these educational needs to those in positions to change the policies and practices to give these children greater opportunities and outcomes, and help build the foundation for the ability to succeed in life after foster care.

Please welcome advocate, trainer, and speaker Sharon Dunlevy to the show.

Sharon Dunlevy: Thank you, LaShaundra. It's great to be here.

LaShaundra Barnes: Thank you so much for coming on the show. You are very passionate about foster care and helping foster parents, and you do it in a way that I don't see too many people doing. You train the foster parents to help them advocate for and support the children in their care on their educational journeys.

You describe children who are in foster care as some of the most vulnerable. What do you feel the public school system can do better or improve on to serve these children better?

Sharon Dunlevy: We need more trauma-informed care in our schools, and it's been discussed, but I don't know if it's being implemented as much as it could be. Some school districts still do a professional development course on it, but it's one hour. Trauma is not something you can learn about in one hour, right?

When somebody is in trauma, especially a child, it's all-consuming. Their brain is stuck in fight, flight, or freeze mode. And they can't get out of that. And when a school uses traditional discipline, like suspensions, expulsions, or even sending them to the principal's office, all of those types of punishments can be trauma triggers. Our kids don't like to be isolated. They don't want to be pointed out. They don't like to be seen as different. And whenever we do something like that, we're constantly triggering their trauma. I.

We need to make schools a safer place for our kids. They need to feel secure, and our schools need to be one of those safe places. And what we see is there's a lot of school refusal with foster kids, and a lot of it is just because they feel uncomfortable. Add in all of the trauma of hearing about school shooters and all of these other things, and school right now does not necessarily feel like the safest place for our kids. And we've got to switch that. We've got to make it feel much safer for them. Not just the foster kids, but every kid.

LaShaundra Barnes: One thing I found with the public school system specifically is that, like you said, the teachers, the administrators, the staff, they're not properly equipped and trained to handle children who have experienced trauma. And that's sad because I feel nowadays, it's even worse with everything going on in the world, trauma can happen at any time. Trauma-informed training should be required when dealing with children and working in the school setting.

Sharon Dunlevy: I always tell people when they say, "What can we do?” or "How can we help this?" that there are several different layers, right? Those of us serving the kids or who have kids in our homes need to be boots on the ground, bringing awareness to this. We need to tell people what's going on and why trauma-informed care is so important.

Then, the schools at their level need to do professional development for the teachers who already have their teaching certificates. They need to have a renewal on what trauma-informed care looks like, or for the first time, hear it.

At the next level, we need higher education programs to provide very intensive trauma-informed care training. Again, one class for three credit hours is probably not enough because trauma is so invasive in our kids and what it does physically, mentally, and socially to them.

Then you have the next level, which is the state laws. The states must require that part of the teacher preparedness program be trauma-informed. So that would force higher education to put it into their teaching programs.

And then, of course, at the federal level, we need to be reinforcing this need for trauma-informed care in all of our teacher programs, all of our schools, all of that.

LaShaundra Barnes: Yes, I do agree with you. I think it should be required because I've seen too many bad things occur. The schools don't know what to do, except for calling the parents, and the parents are working, and they have to keep leaving work, and they don't have a job now, so it's just a terrible downward spiral.

Sharon Dunlevy: And not to denigrate the schools because they're trying. They are, but they don't know what they don't know. And let's be real, in this country, we don't invest money into children. We are not paying these teachers an excellent wage; they already have too many kids in their classroom.

Then we added in a child with trauma, and I understand why they want to get that kid into the principal's office or something like that, because they already have 35 other kids to take care of. We do a poor job of setting up our teachers for success. And our schools for success.

LaShaundra Barnes: I know you also have a lot of knowledge about the educational laws that exist. What new policies or laws do you think need to be passed to help these children in foster care?

Sharon Dunlevy: We have the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the first federal policy explicitly focused on foster children's needs. They used to be up underneath homeless children, but not by themselves.

I also encourage foster parents to use the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to get an individualized education plan or an IEP. Trauma is not its own category under IDEA, and it should be. We have to sneak it in under other categories, but trauma is a disability that these children are dealing with. So, we need to redo that.

We must also bring in some more strategic planning around Independent Living Skills. I encourage and teach foster parents how to teach the kids independent living skills in their homes. But we also need to be building that into our curriculum.

LaShaundra Barnes: For IDEA, you said that trauma is not included. What are some of the disabilities or symptoms included under that act so that parents can get services?

Sharon Dunlevy: Specific disabilities, like developmental disabilities, are included. We can get a trauma IEP under what's called other health impairments. Suppose a child has severe A DHD and it's affecting their schoolwork. In that case, they can fall under other health impairments. If they have PTSD, conduct disorder, or oppositional defiant disorder, all of those can fall under that other health impairment category.

The biggest thing is that the kids' schoolwork has to be affected by their disability. So if you've got a kid with ADHD who's getting A's all the time, you're going to have a hard time getting an IEP. But, there is another thing you can get, which is called a 504 plan, specifically based on behaviors. Let's say you've got a kid with ADHD who can't sit still, but his grades are way up here. But his behaviors are causing him to get into trouble because he's not sitting still. So that 504 plan would allow him to have some accommodations to work around that type of thing. Instead of sitting at his desk during a lecture, he can circle the back of the room out of sight of the other kids, where he's listening but not sitting. He's not disruptive at his desk.

LaShaundra Barnes: Many parents don't know about these laws. So, a foster parent that's listening, what is one thing you find they are unaware of?

Sharon Dunlevy: Many foster parents don't know that if they adopt early, their children lose a lot of services, and it drives me crazy. A foster kid is under Medicaid, and they're able to get counseling and all of these other things paid for. That's part of being in foster care. But as soon as they're adopted, if they're adopted before the age of 16, they lose all of those services. There's this mentality that because they're adopted, they don't have trauma anymore, which is not true.

Another thing foster parents often don’t know is that once a kid in foster care hits 14, there's a law called the Family First Prevention Services Act, which provides funds for our kids to get help educationally. They can get money for a tutor if they want to go to college. They can get money for the entrance exams and the test prep, and once they go to college, they can get a computer. If they want to go to vocational training, there's money set aside for that. And that's from 14 up to age 26 in some states. Most states stop between 21 and 23, depending on the state.

In some states, as soon as the child starts getting close to aging out, they have the choice to remain a foster child, but they could live independently under these funds, with some getting help for rent and other things. One student I worked with took full advantage of the collaborative care program, and they got him an apartment with a roommate. They got him his driver's license. He decided he didn't want a car, but they got him a motorbike. Now he's a manager at a Domino's and doing great.

But so many foster parents don’t know about these funds. I was reading an article from the Annie Casey Foundation a couple of weeks ago, and they said the money set aside for this act is underutilized right now. Maybe 40% of their tutoring money is being used. However, only 12% of the vocational and educational vouchers are currently being used.

When I train my foster parents and give them the guide on using these Family First monies, they didn't even know they existed.

Unfortunately, child welfare workers don’t know either. Because case work is a very low-paid field, case workers tend to be right out of college, right? And then they turn over so fast that it's hard for them to know all the laws.

LaShaundra Barnes: Wow. That's really good information. Thank you so much for sharing that. There are so many different laws that exist for a foster parent who's listening, they're overwhelmed. They don't even know where to start. How do they access this information? Somewhere, like a centralized place, they could get everything they need.  

Sharon Dunlevy: Most education departments within your state will have some subcategory for foster kids. You should be able to look there. Or, let's say you're from Michigan, you Google “Michigan foster children”, you should be able to go to a page that will show you some of these things, but a lot of times, you do have to dig.

The other thing you can do is that there is a Child Welfare Information Gateway. They have a lot of state resources as well.

LaShaundra Barnes: Can we speak on mental health and how foster care can have a significant impact on the mental health of the children who are in the system?

Sharon Dunlevy: 80% of kids in foster care have some mental health issue, usually fairly severe. And that is because just being removed from their family is a trauma in itself.

Some children are removed for bad reasons. Yes, that happens, but it's not as often as some detractors try to say, but it does happen. We do have some states that still remove children because of poverty, rather than trying to help the family in poverty, so as not to lose their kids. That's a failing in our society. We tend to be reactive, not proactive. We could save ourselves a lot of money if we were more proactive.

If we put that aside, kids in foster care are going to have trauma based on whatever happened to cause their removal. Were they abused? Were they born addicted to drugs? Did their parents drink and do drugs in front of them? If they weren't sent to school, they can be removed. Parents lose their kids because they lost their jobs. Something to remember is that this could happen to anybody.

Then once they're removed, there's new trauma. They're getting used to a new family. They're getting used to a new school. Suddenly, they have all these caseworkers, therapists, and everybody who wants to know their life story, and so these poor kids, it's just trauma on top of trauma.

All of them get Medicaid, so they should have access to therapy. Now there are lots of different ways to do therapy, and what I find is, like here in Indianapolis, there's no problem. You pretty much can find a child therapist. The ones who struggle are those in rural areas, where they don't have the same resources we do. I have a lot of rural families that cannot find a therapist for their kids, and that to me is sad. Not just sad. That's scary, right? These kids deserve the same resources they would have in a city. I don't know if the answer is virtual, telehealth, or something else. They're not the best solution, but they would provide something.

I do know of a couple of different people who are working on programs for foster parents. They're working on apps to find ways to connect foster parents to more types of resources like that. But we need to think about these rural settings and what kind of resources they have, because if we don't help the kids early on, they will not be able to manage their trauma when they become adults.

Adults with unresolved trauma are much more likely to have eating disorders or abuse substances. They tend not to be able to hold a job because they've never dealt with their triggers, so they lose their jobs because they either fly off the handle or they shy away from everything. They’re not being able to be successful because they didn't deal with that mental health issue early.  

LaShaundra Barnes: Can you share any advice or encouragement to a parent listening today?

Sharon Dunlevy: Yes. We're never going to be perfect, just like we said, our kids have triggers. We as adults have triggers. And so remember that we're not going to be perfect, and one mistake will not ruin your child.

Take care of yourself as a parent. It's like the whole airplane analogy where they tell you to put your mask on first before putting it on the child. You've got to take care of yourself first. It's not selfish, it's self-care. We can't care for others if our cup is empty, and we can't pour into others if our cup is empty.

LaShaundra Barnes: Thank you so much for the incredible advice, knowledge, and education you shared on the show today. And to our lovely community. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. Did this help someone out? If it did, please share this with someone else so they can be educated on everything they need to know to help their children.

And I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.