FOSTERING HOPE: FOSTER PARENTS PROVIDE SAFE HAVENS TO CHILDREN

Jamesetter and Ronnie Abraham have been foster parents for about five years.

Janet Woods was working at the Family Learning Center seven years ago when she "fell in love with" one of her charges.

"He got put in foster care, and I saw the effect it had on him," she said. "He cried a lot every day. I told my husband, Mike, if we can get him, let's do it."

The Jackson couple became foster parents to the little boy for four and a half years until he was adopted by "a really neat family, and we still kind of keep in contact with him," she said.

Letting go wasn't easy.

"Every time I talk about him, I almost start crying," she said. "He was a really difficult child, but I know we helped him and made him be where he is now."

Today, Janet Woods helps train new foster families and is a full-time foster parent to one child.

The couple also have two children of their own, both out of college.

Kathy and Dan Upchurch of Cape Girardeau have adopted three of the children they fostered, now 17, 13 and 3, and are now foster parents two more children, a boy, 16, and a girl, 10.

"When they came, we just immediately felt a bond," Dan Upchurch said. He is a career foster parent, meaning he must be available 24 hours a day to the foster child.

"I take her to school. I pick her up from school," he said. "If she has to go to the doctor or counseling, I take her there. I help her with her homework. I monitor her. I try to work with her, to give her a stable home. Something better than what she came from."

Their foster son will be in their care until he's 18. That doesn't mean the Upchurches won't be making a home for him after that birthday.

"If he wants to go to school, he'll live here," Upchurch said. "This is his home. We're not going to turn him away just because he's of age."

Ronnie and Jamesetter Abraham Sr. of Cape Girardeau have six foster children.

"The oldest one is 12. The youngest one is three," Jamesetter said. The couple also has four biological children, but two are grown and out of the house.

The Abrahams have been foster parents for about five years "because I see the need for children, especially our black children," Jamesetter said. "We don't have enough homes for black children."

The Woods, Abraham and Upchurch families are among the 50 or so families in Cape Girardeau County who have opened their hearts and their homes to children who need safe havens that, at least temporarily, their own parents can't provide.

Missouri has a shortage of foster parents, said Cindy Stone, a social service worker at the Cape Girardeau County Division of Family Services office.

"There are a lot more kids than there are parents," she said.

Especially needed are foster parents who will take older children into their homes.

"We have a lot of parents that want the younger kids," Stone said. The need is foster parents that will take teens and minority foster parents."

Being a foster parent isn't easy. Many children in the system have behavioral disorders or require counseling because of past abuse. Some may suffer problems caused by their biological parents' drug or alcohol abuse. They may have special medical needs.

Sometimes, Kathy Upchurch says, "they're on the bratty side. That's the only way I can put it. You have to keep in mind that the reason they're that way is the situation at home."

And foster parents have to accept the fact that, in many instances, the child may view them as the enemy who is keeping them away from their biological parents, Woods said.

"You have to be tough to be a foster parent," she said. "You have to be able to forgive and love the kids even when they don't love you back."

The Woods family has always had foster children with behavioral problems or children who have either been in residential treatment or are at risk of going into residential treatment.

"Our main goal is to try to get them to fit into a normal life even though they're in an abnormal situation," Woods said.

There are days when she wonders what she's gotten herself into, she said.

"But then when DFS presents me with a case and I hear the history, it's hard to say no when I have the space and the time," she said. "I can't really find a reason not to do it, except selfish reasons."

Sometimes the hardest part of being a foster parent is sending the child home.

"The hardest thing is them coming in and having to go back to that same environment," Jamesetter Abraham said. "I worry about different things that affect them. I'm very protective of them. I don't want them to be hurt. I just want the best for them."

Abraham still sees some of her former foster children.

"They even want to come back," she said. "They do. It's very hard, knowing they need to be where somebody cares about them and would be there for them."