An ex-foster parents tells his story dealing with the foster care system in Idaho

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) —With Idaho’s Foster Awareness Day coming up on Monday at the Idaho Capitol, people from across the Gem State will gather with Idaho lawmakers to educate them about the current state of Idaho’s foster care system.

According to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, many different Idaho adults and families can qualify to be a foster parent; which gives children a safe place to go when the state has deemed that they can no longer be with their parent or other family members.

The main goal of the program, is to reunite the children within the foster care system with their family, once the time is right or the legal situation has been resolved.

Kids between the ages of newborn to eighteen can be placed into a foster home at anytime by the state, it just depends on the circumstances.

Brian McCauley, an ex-foster parent, was the foster parent of a newborn and lived with the baby for 15 months, until the Department of Health and Welfare decided the child could be returned to his biological family.

McCauley explains his experience with this particular child, “We had him in our home for about 15 months and the departments goal was to place him wit a very distant relative that lived clear cross the country and details started to come out that it wasn’t a fit home it legally didn’t meet the requirements but they were going to do it anyway and the department was concerned that the baby was becoming to attached to us.”

When the child and the foster parents build a bond, it is an emotionally difficult situation to deal with.

McCauley recalls this experience of the baby moving and how the system handled it, which was traumatizing, “They had the new foster family come and pick him up and when we put him into that car seat he was just screaming in agony looking at us and reaching for us.”

After the experience McCauley and his wife decided not renew their credentials for foster parenting through the State of Idaho.

Coming up next week we will be speaking to the director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, and also hear what lawmakers have to say and what they are doing to try and fix Idaho’s broken foster care system.

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