At Family Services there’s a constant panic over foster care.

Currently all 136 children in need are placed with caring families but there’s nobody on the reserve list, and that keeps the department’s co-ordinator in a constant state of fear.

Selena Simons said: “We are always in panic about it. When an emergency arises we’re scraping because we do not have the pool to call on. So what has happened as a result is some foster families have doubled up — they have more than one foster child. We’ve called them because we have no where else. And that is our biggest fear — having a crisis and we literally do not have any place for a child to go.”

Ms Simons hopes her fears can be relaxed in the near future as we head into Foster Care Month. It’s a time when Family Services literally hits the streets in an effort to get able people to open up their homes, and their hearts, to children who have fallen on hard times.

There is no typical profile, the 98 foster parents currently serving come from all walks of life.

Antoinette Simmons has been a foster care provider for a few years, classified as a therapeutic foster parent because she has extensive professional training in mental health care.

Just recently she finished a stint with a teenage boy who was learning disabled and battled bouts of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Mrs. Simmons and her husband Allan agreed to a one-year contract and the child ended up at their home for three times as long. But on the day he was scheduled to leave she, and her two young children, didn’t want the 15-year-old boy to go.

Mrs. Simmons said: “My seven-year-old daughter ran inside and slammed the door. She said, ‘I don’t believe you’re letting him go!’ And my 11-year-old son was hanging on me. My granddaughters were there and everybody’s crying.

“I said, ‘This is what mommy does, we help them then we have to let them go’.

“Just to see him develop and grow and change was just so... I don’t even know if there are words for it.

The Simmons family experience was initially rough, but in the end truly rewarding.

They’ve signed up for another stint as soon as they are needed.

“Hook, line and sunk,” Mrs. Simmons said.

Foster parents get a monthly stipend for their foster child along with a clothing allowance and money for medical expenses. There’s also a tremendous amount of support. New parents are offered special training and must go through a 30-day review period. And for advanced foster parents like the Simmonses, there’s the opportunity to attend the National Foster Parent Association Conference in Washington D.C. On May 23 of this year, Family Services is sending three sets of local foster parents.

To be in Washington D.C Allan and Antoinette Simmons will postpone their 12-year anniversary trip. It was supposed to be the honeymoon trip they never had.

Mrs. Simmons said: “I had to call my husband because I knew he was going to think I’m crazy, but he knew that this was something close to my heart.

“He said, ‘Is it something that is really going to make you happy’.

“And I said, ‘yes’.

“So he said, ‘we can go’.

“I couldn’t believe it. I thought he was going to say, ‘Are you crazy, woman’!”

Ms Simons, the co-ordinator for Government foster care, openly admits she’ll take a lot more ‘crazy’ women if they can offer the kind of service Mrs. Simmons has.

She said: “Most definitely. We’re the professionals. We don’t have to take these kids into our home — we have to work with them and we have to talk about their circumstances — but when we talk about foster parents taking them in and becoming a part of their families, we are in awe. We can not believe that people are willing and so dedicated to do this. We sit back in amazement sometimes.”

For more information on foster care parenting call Family Services at 294-5871.