by Jeff Colbourne
Northern News Services

NNSL (Oct 24/97) - Two years ago there were nearly 45 foster homes in Yellowknife and close to 80 foster children.

Today there are barely 30 homes and more than 100 children.

"Children are growing up without families," said Angela James, a Yellowknife foster mom of two teenage boys.

"That's a tragedy. That's a crisis. The family is the most fundamental unit in society. If you do not how to handle yourself in a family, what's it going to be like when you go to a school, to a job, to a university, a college, to a relationship, to having children yourself?"

Providing a home to someone in need is the reason James chose to become a foster parent. But James and fellow foster parent Calvin Wood have found that providing that home isn't as easy as it sometimes sounds.

Wood said there's a certain stigma that often comes with foster parenting. For instance, some people think parents do it for the money.

"Fostering is not a bunch of people who have taken kids in because there's money to be had and want to take in money and they don't care about the kids," said Woods.

"To be honest with you, there might have been a few parents over the years that have done that," he added.

Nobody really does it for money because of the time invested and care needed for children, particularly those with special needs, which are a majority of foster children, said Wood.

"Special needs is a category used to describe a child who has significant behavioral problems, emotional problems, biological problems, medical problems but requires constant supervision," she said.

"Many, many of the kids are FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome)," said James.

James and Wood are not turned off by the frustration and pressures of fostering. In fact, the pleasures often make the job worthwhile.

"You just got to have one foster child in your home to realize that it's a commitment. They're a part of your family and you are going to teach them the best you can -- values that we all have in place in society, personal hygiene, how to act, how to get along, make friends and have a social life," said James.

"It's a labor of love."

Foster parents can be called on any time of the day or night, often without warning.

There's also not a lot of support or resources parents can rely on.

"When there's a moment of crisis, when there are moments of need, there's really nobody they can call on to help them get through," said Wood.

"There's more and more children being apprehended and going in to care now and less and less foster homes and less and less money put into proving support for these kids," said James.

It's not unlikely a child could be taken from a family in crisis by social services, placed in foster care and within months removed from the foster home and placed in their real home all within a short period of time, effecting the foster parents, the real parents and the children.

"Foster parents are there to provide support to families in crisis and in that regard, foster care needs to be a well-planned, well-oiled machinery that works effectively and doesn't let things fall through the cracks," said Wood.

"Unfortunately, the way things are running now there are a lot of cracks," he added.

A possible solution

To fill some of the cracks, the Yellowknife Foster Family Association is proposing building a "receiving home" in Yellowknife located on School Draw.

But the department of Health and Social Services has failed to provide the necessary funds for the program.

Tammy Krivda, president of the Yellowknife Foster Families Association, said there's a great need for this receiving home.

It would have two live-in professional parents trained to handle children in crisis until a foster family is properly lined up.

While the association continues to push for a receiving home they are establishing a number of support programs for parents in the city.

"We've opened an office in Storefront," Krivda said. "We're setting up a resource library with parenting information and special needs information."

Next month they are also hosting a parenting training and orientation weekend for foster families.

Krivda, who has five foster children and two children of her own, said they will be talking about a list of topics and issues parents are faced with like the stigma Wood and James outline.

"It's really frustrating, trying to break that stigma we have attached," she said. "If we can break that I think we'll get a lot more people."