The Department of Family Services is desperately seeking foster care parents during Foster Care Month this May.

Potential foster parents are already responding to flyers sent out by Family Services on Monday, said coordinator Dianna Taylor this week. In fact, she received three calls just while she was talking with The Royal Gazette on Tuesday.

"We are looking for people with a special kind of commitment," she said. "They are not just offering food and shelter - this takes a special kind of love, a special kind of heart, and a toughness of skin."

Foster care is a temporary remedy with the ultimate goal of reuniting children with their natural families, she explained. In that way it differs from adoption, which is a permanent move for a child who for some reason cannot return to their natural family.

Foster care also differs from kinship care: in kinship care a child temporarily lives with a relative or friend of the family, whereas in foster care they are usually sent to live with strangers.

There are also emergency foster parents, Ms Taylor said - parents who are "on-call", and can have a child fostered on them at a moment's notice for up to four weeks.

In the search for foster parents, Ms Taylor said factors her organisation tries to avoid include many of the pitfalls that land children in foster care in the first place. Those include: problems with substance abuse, histories of domestic violence, or any situations placing the children at a moral risk. They also include information which may be turned up after a standard Police check into a potential foster parent's history.

Family Services interviews the potential parents, Ms Taylor explained. If a couple is interested in fostering, both parents must be interviewed. The organisation also sends a health visitor around to inspect the parents' homes, and those interested are asked to fill out an application form as well as a form releasing information such as their medical history to Family Services.

Once they have completed this process, potential parents are asked to attend a two-day orientation session which provides them with more information about the role they will play in conjunction with Family Services workers and other community groups in fostering children.

"It gives people a chance to see if they are still interested," said Ms Taylor.

If they are, at this point the parents decide what type of child they could best welcome into their family depending on age, gender and race. They are also given information on what expenses Government takes care of, such as: food and personal care, a clothing allowance, certain school fees, bus passes, tutoring and after school activities, necessary counselling and summer camps.

Government also handles liaisons between the child and their natural family, as well as providing social workers and aides to keep contact with the child.

Parents, meanwhile, are expected to provide the child with a proper nurturing home, proper food and clothing, guidance and direction using positive techniques, help with building social skills, adequate supervision, promotion of good hygiene, and encouragement in school attendance.

As soon as parents have been approved for foster care Family Services attempts to match them with children in need.

"These are not `normal' children with `normal' situations, whatever that is anymore," said Ms Taylor. "They are behaviourally, developmentally, and emotionally challenged."

Some of the situations which could land a child in foster care include: sexual or physical abuse, neglect, domestic violence placing a child at risk, substance abuse issues, parents becoming homeless, or some other factor such as a mental illness which hampers the parents' ability to adequately care for their child.

"Foster parents are a very special brand of people," Ms Taylor continued. "The level of commitment these people have - I don't know where they find it."

The challenges foster parents face include children who are hurt and confused, with very low self-esteem and needing encouragement. They often have behavioural and emotional problems. Despite all, said Ms Taylor, sometimes the hardest challenge for foster families to face is saying good bye to the children once they return to their natural homes.

At the end of 2002, she said, there were 139 children in foster care in Bermuda - up from 82 at the end of 2001. During 2002, however, 77 children were returned from foster care to their natural homes.

"More went home than came in," she observed. "But there do seem to have been more children (coming in to foster care) over the past two to four years."

Of those children in foster care in 2002, she said the majority were in the 11 to 14 age bracket. The next highest were in the 15 to 18 bracket, with infants to three years old being the third highest. There were 73 males and 66 females in foster care in 2002.

Family Services held this year's orientation session at the Bermuda College yesterday and today, and the Foster Parent Association will be holding its first tag day on May 23.