What You May Not Know About Foster Care & Adoption - Kathy York (POY 54)

I think it's fair to argue that foster care and adoption represent a system of care that not everyone understands. At least that's my perspective as an outsider. Children and youth enter the system to find spaces where they and their families can be made whole. Or at least that's the idea, right? The reality, though, is much more complicated. But there are people working within the system to hold every vulnerable child or guardian above the cracks. So I talked with a longtime friend of mine in Alabama who's doing just that, and I asked her how any of us can help the foster kids or adopted kids we know in our own lives. I'm Josh Morgan. That conversation is coming up next on the plural of you, the podcast about people helping people. I'm a data analyst and sociologist living in Baltimore, Maryland, and I want to honor as many kind and helpful people as I can in my lifetime because I aspire to be like them. I publish this podcast on the 15th of every month so I can introduce them to you. You can check out the episodes from the past nine years. You can subscribe if you haven't already, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you wouldn't mind, tell a friend if you liked this episode. I hope you enjoy the show. This month I'd like to introduce you to Kathy York. She's a licensed clinical professional counselor, or LCPC, who lives in Madison County, Alabama, the same county as Huntsville. Shes also the founder of York Counseling Resources, her private counseling practice, which is also in Madison. Kathy sees patients from ages three and up for all sorts of mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, and trauma. But shes proud to specialize in a few other issues that include infertility and support for foster and adoptive parents and their children. Shes dedicated herself to serving that population, in particular because of her own experiences. She's an adoptive parent herself, formerly a foster parent, and has a special passion for families with kids from the foster care system. My only exposure to foster care and adoption has been indirect, like from reading articles online or from movies I watched. My wife and I had considered adoption a few years ago because of our own fertility issues, and we were honestly pretty intimidated based on what little we knew. Like what if we took on a child with issues that we couldn't help them with? Or what if our own issues got in the way of being good parents? Talking with Kathy helped me realize that both foster care and adoption are problems to be solved ahead of time. Instead, they're experiences with the same potential for joy as any other aspect of being human. Kathy is someone I've known since, gosh, the late nineties. And I've always admired her for her kindness and her curiosity about others. To me, that's why she's an outstanding counselor. And I think you'll get a sense of her heart for people, too. Here's my conversation with Kathy York, licensed counselor and founder at York counseling Resources. How did you get into the field of counseling people in the foster care system?

Yeah. So I really worked on this question probably more than any of the others to keep it as short as possible, because it was kind of like a 15 year process. Before I started high school that summer, I was diagnosed with Turner syndrome. So it's a genetic diagnosis. The bottom line meant that I was going to have to go through growth hormone therapy and surgeries. To give you an idea, I was four foot six when I started high school. My nine year old son in third grade is four foot six. That's how significant some of the issues were. And I was also told that I would never have children. And so I kind of went that summer, between 8th grade and 9th grade, I kind of really withdrew into myself. I could think of a pretty healthy way, but just to try to figure out what to do with that information. I hadn't even started high school, and I'm faced with this, you're not going to have kids. Information which turned into this passion for adoption. And it kind of felt like if I'm a mom that can't have kids, I'm going to find kids that need a mom. So that was just like my personal plan. And then my freshman year of college, I took psychology. And I don't know if you had this experience when you were in school, but there are some classes that just like, when you're in that class, your mind just opens up and you're like, this is what makes me tick. I didn't know until I got into class.

Yeah, I had a few of those.

Yeah. So I wanted to do something with psychology, and that turned into a master's degree in counseling. In my master's degree program, I had two internships. The first one was in play therapy. And I took that opportunity to develop some skills working with children, but also go to counseling myself because I knew with the fertility issues, if I was going to work with children and their families, I needed to bring my stuff into that space in a healthy way. So I thought internship is the safest place to figure out, can I handle both of these things? And when it was done, I felt confident that I had the tools to do it. And I was in a good place for it. My second internship was in community mental health, and when I finished my internship, they had created a program to put a therapist in DHR, which is Alabama's.

Child protective services, department of Human Resources, I think. Right?

Yep. And so, like, essentially, I got to walk across the graduation stage into my dream job and to doing exactly what I wanted to do. It took me 15 years to get there, but there I was. And so I did a lot of counseling for kids who were in foster care, reunification for families, support for foster parents. And so that kind of was the start and is what I do now. I do counseling for all issues that you would consider for counseling. But I do specialize in adoption, foster care, fertility issues.

Is there, like, a percentage of time that you split between the two categories?

You know, it ebbs and flows. You know, sometimes I'll get a surge of people who would. Who have those topics, adoption or related issues, and then sometimes it'll focus on more typical depression, anxiety, other presentations. But I would say it's about half and half.

Okay, so you also see adults as well as children? I mean, I know you see families, but I guess with the two categories, do you see adults and children in both of those?

Yeah. So it just depends on what the family is asking for. When I went, I went into private practice a few years ago, and I had to figure out, how does this work with adoption work when I'm not in community health? Because most of the foster care stuff comes through community mental health and community programs and develop this specialty in working with adoptive parents themselves. Like, I'm the adoptive parents therapist to help them confront what they're dealing with as far as the issues at home, their reactivity, their struggles. So if the parent is my identified client, then I help them with their topics. Sometimes the child is adopted, so they're on their parents insurance now, and they're my identified client. So I work with a kid on their issues and expressing their emotions. And when I work with children, I really do try to make an effort to include the family as it's reasonable, as it makes sense because I'm with that child for an hour. But if I can equip the parents to communicate with that child, that's like a 24 hours support to the kid.

It sounds like a unique position that you found, especially since, you know, once you finish with your master's degree and your internships and everything that you kind of walked into this field.

Yeah.

Were you aware of it before you discovered your. Well, I mean, I know you're in private practice now, but when you discovered the, the position with DHR, were you aware of this kind of field? Because it sounds like it overlaps, like there's a little bit of social work, there's a little bit of counseling or a lot of counseling, I guess I should say, but, yeah. And then a lot with foster care.

Yeah.

Were you aware of how all of these things kind of came together?

No, I wasn't. In fact, I had to. I grappled a little bit with actually getting the degree in counseling because so much foster care work is social work oriented. But I couldn't deny the leaning and the drawing and the passion to counseling and therapy. So I just kind of rolled the dice and said, this is the population I want to work with, but I want to work through the vein of therapy and counseling. So let me just develop that skill. And you're right, it can be specialized. So when there was a need for it and I had that specialty training, it was a good fit. So I wasn't aware of any specific counseling positions for people in foster care, but I guess because I kind of cultivated it when it opened, I was ready for it.

What types of challenges do the people that you serve face? I mean, I know there's probably a broad range of things, but is there like a through line or a theme that you see quite often?

Yeah. So when you said the questions, I think the question was, what are challenges that people face and how do you help them? And I was talking with my family about this and my son said, well, you help them because you're really good at telling people what to do. You're really good at bossing people around. I was like, well, okay, I guess that's a compliment.

That's funny.

When you work with foster care and adoption, the main issue that you have to address is trauma. You have to deal with the pain and the fear that kids have experienced and honestly, the foster parents have experienced and adoptive parents have experienced and the biological parents have experienced. So I focus on helping clients confront their trauma rather than pack it down and resolve it in a way that works for them. There's no, this is how you resolve trauma in three steps. Everybody has to resolve it in a way that works for them. So if it's a kid, I'm going to help them resolve it through play therapy. I use DBT for older kids. I use trauma focused cognitive help. So it just depends on, like, the person who's sitting in front of me, what's the trauma and what is their method for resolving it. And how can I join them in that? Like, I want to join you in what works for you to resolve your trauma.

So DBT, is that dialectic behavioral therapy? Do I have that acronym correct? Okay. I just want to make sure I elaborate for those that may not be aware of what that is. Okay.

Yeah. Thanks.

Okay. I tend to ask this question of a lot of people that I talk to. What do you find gratifying about the work? You know, like, where you feel gratified and where you feel like you're making an impact or maybe they're both the same. I'm not sure.

I think they're very related. I think they're very related. So I think what's really gratifying for me as a counselor is to see my clients actually feel understood for the first time. People say things in counseling that they are afraid to say in other spaces. And when that's met with unconditional support and no judgment in that space to see them, I mean, you can even see it a physical. Like, they physically relax when they recognize, I can say this out loud, and it's okay to say it out loud. It's also really gratifying to see people let go of shame that they've been experiencing, either because of what they experience as a child or with adoption. It's a beautiful thing. Adoption is so beautiful, but it's equally as hard. And adoptive parents are often like, oh, you're such a great person. You're doing such a great thing. Meanwhile, they're really exhausted. They feel lonely. They sometimes feel like they're not doing what the kid needs. The child may act differently at home than they do at school. So other people don't understand what the family is dealing with at home. The child may feel safer at home, so they're going to exhibit a lot more emotions and a lot more behaviors at home. And so sometimes parents need to say, I'm exhausted, I'm frustrated. This is hard. But when they say in some spaces, they're met with judgment or like, well, you signed up for this, or they're just kids, they can't help what they're doing. So when a parent can say in all reality what they're dealing with and let go of the shame and have somebody say, yeah, I've heard that five times this week. Like, I've experienced it myself. I'm an adoptive parent. I've experienced it myself. So let's take care of you so that you can also take care of this child and the situation. So that's. I really love to see people just, oh, it's okay. It's okay to have this emotion. It's okay to have this struggle. I don't have to accept this internal dialogue that I'm having about myself from my experiences.

I know you're an adoptive parent now yourself. You have two kids. How long have you been an adoptive parent?

So we were foster parents from 2015 to 2017. So for about two years, we were a foster parent, and then our kiddos were placed with us at the end of 2017, and we adopted them in 2018.

Gotcha.

We just celebrated our six year famiversary, is what we call it. We always make a big deal of celebrating our anniversary, and I kind of let them take the lead on that. Some years, they want to make a big deal out of it. Some years they want to kind of keep it quiet. As the years have gone, they've really more enjoyed the big deal, like celebrating it bigger. Six years.

That's cool. How has your work in your professional life informed your work as a parent, an adoptive parent?

Yeah, I think that's a really important question, actually. It's given me empathy both ways. You know, there's been some really hard experiences, and so when I'm in the counseling session, it's given me empathy to what my clients are experiencing, because I don't just know the information, I know the experience. I'm going home to it in the evening, you know, so it's given me empathy to their situations. It's given me empathy to what the kids are experiencing, because I see my kids experience, or I've seen my kids who've stayed with me as foster kids experience it. But then it also helps me be a better mom, I think, because there's sometimes that I'll have a moment in counseling with a family or a client, and then the light bulb will go off, like, oh, that's what's happening at your house. Like, way to help somebody else get there before you figure it out for yourself. But that's, like. I think it's the gift of being a therapist, is that the empathy can go both ways. You can see things in your client that make sense at home and things that happen at home that make sense when you're a therapist and in that space with the families.

Okay.

And specifically have people seek me out because I have fertility issues, I have adopted, I have been a foster parent. So I have clinical skill set, and I have real life experience. And so sometimes people will specifically seek me out out as a therapist who has lived it. They want to talk to somebody who gets it, and that's been a gift to give my clients.

I feel like there's so much we can talk about with foster care. You know, me, for example, I've never had contact with the foster care system, but I've only kind of heard secondhand or even third hand what the situation is like for children and youth in the foster care system.

Yeah.

Can you give sort of an overview? And of course, it varies for everybody. You know, every child has a different experience, but, like, what are some of the common challenges that children and families in the foster care system face?

Yeah, so I actually, I love to involve my kids in these questions, so I asked them in this podcast, what did. What do you want people to know about your experience in foster care or kids in general in foster care? And while experiences are varied, there are a couple of themes that show up in almost every situation. One is the lack of permanence. Almost every case, the kid will talk about neglect or the struggles that they went through that led to foster care. But they will almost always say the biggest pain is being moved, coming home to whatever home they're in at the time, to see their bags packed, or even worse, garbage bags packed with their belongings. And you don't know where you're going next. To give you some context, we were our kids fifth placement at three and five.

You mean they moved five times before then, right?

Yeah. And they were in really good foster homes, and they had a pretty stable case.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah. And that, and they had a pretty good, as far as foster care goes, really great foster parents, pretty decent situation. But that's not out of the ordinary for kids in foster care to be moved so frequently. And every time a kid in foster care is moved, it puts them behind academically, it puts them behind developmentally. It increases the significance of attachment disorders when they're really little. So that's one of the biggest issues facing foster care, is permanence. And the second issue is kind of related, and that's the lack of resources, the lack of foster homes, or the lack of placements that can adequately meet that child's needs, the lack of support services for foster parents. I think that there is this idea that permanent like that puts the responsibility for permanence squarely on the foster parents shoulders or the adoptive parent shoulders. But in reality, for permanence to work, there has to be a lot of things in place to provide support for them. There has to be mental health services, there has to be tutoring for school, there has to be respite for both the kid and the foster parent. So if there's a recurring theme is the struggle of permanence, but it's also the struggle to find resources to make that permanence a possibility.

So my wife and I tried having a kid of our own a few years ago and just, it wasn't happening.

Right.

And we have considered like foster care and adoption and that sort of thing. So I set that up with context to ask, like if me, for example, or if someone listening has ever considered foster care. Yeah, what can they expect?

So the first thing that you would need to do, and I think this is nationwide, you have to connect with a licensing agency and that can be your child protective services. There can also be secondary agencies that don't work for the state, but also have, they're able to license you to be a foster parent. So the first step that you will go through is a class called GPS. And it's like a twelve week course, I believe. And so the class is meant to teach you about trauma and how a kid responds to trauma and family dynamics. The priority and the purpose of foster care is to return kids to their biological family, if at all possible, will train you for that. So if you want to be a foster parent, that's going to be your priority. Helping with reunification, if at all possible. If you want to be an adoptive parent through foster care, then you could be an adoptive only placement that may take longer than the fostering process. Once you've completed the class, the social worker will come and do a home study and you will fill out paperwork, you will fill out, you will have so many questions and backgrounds and like, they'll check your water temperature, they'll make sure you have like all these safety things in place in your home.

Oh, wow.

So that's a, like, that's a one day thing that will happen. You'll get a packet that says, this is what we expect to see from you. And you'll fill out the forms and they'll come check your house. Foster care is a lot of hurry up and wait because you got to get this stuff to them quick. But then it's a matter of waiting for the placement that fits you. Also, when you become a foster parent, you can choose the age, the number, what type of placement you would be a good fit for. And that's part of the process of getting matched with kids, that you have a home that matches these particular kids needs. And then after that you will get a call one day in the middle of the work day, and it's all hands on deck. These kids will be at your house in a couple hours, and you have to be ready to go. And you'll have monthly visits from social workers and part of the kids plan. If you're a foster parent, adoptive parent, you'll have monthly visits leading up to the adoption court date.

Something that my wife and I have struggled with in considering becoming adoptive parents or foster parents is. I'll just be open about it. Like, what if we get a kid that has too many issues that we can't handle?

Yeah. Yeah.

Do you have any advice for those sorts of anxieties?

Yeah. Things. And I think that's a really common concern, and I think it's a good concern to have both for yourself and for the possible children that may come in your home, that they have everything that they need.

Yes.

I think it's good. Your. Your first and probably best resource will be to find a community of foster parents who are veterans, who have already been there and done that, to kind of walk you through the process. You cannot be afraid to advocate for that child and for yourself. You may be a long part of the story, or you may be a shorter part of their story to get them to the best resources, but if you know other foster parents, they can tell you how they got through it. And there's a lot of times that kids may be placed with you, that the whole story is not known until they're placed with you. So just, I think by virtue of being prepared for, hey, I may be here for the long haul, or it may be that in my home, the realization, like, we actually understand what the kid needs, and I can advocate for that, for the child. Don't see it as a failure. See it as like, okay, so I'm going to be the space, maybe, that we recognize what they need, and I can advocate for it. It's not an easy process, but it's definitely part of the process of being a foster parent.

Okay, I appreciate that answer. I feel like I'm not alone, like, in people that may be considering foster care or adoptive care. Yeah. So.

And if you have a network of other foster parents, they can kind of help you learn how to advocate for yourself. They can help, you know, what to watch for. They can give you some ideas and resources that have been helpful for you. That question, and the second question that people always ask me, that's kind of a fear going into foster care is what happens if I connect with that child and they go back home? Or, you know, the fear of. Of connecting with a kid only to lose them.

Yeah. Getting attached.

Our reaction to that was kind of twofold. One was that when we were ready to have permanence in our home, we told DHR, we're an adoptive only placement, so the kids that you place with us, they already need to be ready for an adoptive home because the in and out is not. We can't do it anymore. The second thing is that we saw ourselves as an aunt and uncle to these kids versus a mom and dad. So that enabled us to connect with them on a family level. We didn't want to just be some glorified babysitter. We are. We're family. But I'm not your mom, which means you have a mom that we need to get you back to. So it allowed me to connect, but also connect understanding that they have a family that they may need to go back to. And so I didn't have to guard myself, but I also didn't have to be so scared of that kid leaving because I knew the role that I was playing for that child.

I've never heard that before. I really like that being an aunt and uncle instead of a mom and dad, because I would just naturally assume, like, we're the surrogate parents now, but thinking of it as a different type of relationship, I think would be really helpful.

Yeah. Yeah. We've even had nicknames that were aunt and uncle nicknames so that they could have something to call us besides Mister Micah and Miss Kathy, but that weren't mom and dad, so they had a family name for us, but it was very much respect to the biological parents.

Gotcha. Okay. We've already talked a little bit about challenges that the children that you often see face. Is there anything else that we can do to kind of help make the lives of these people better?

Yeah. So I recently relocated my practice to answer that question when I was working with Department of Human Resources. What always amazed me is the simple needs that these families in foster care had and how easily they could be met by this group of people who desperately wanted to meet them. But there was this huge gulf between the two, like these people who were ready to help and have the resources, these people who needed it, but the connection was not there. So that's one of the primary goals of my practice now, in addition to the therapy side is the community side. How can I connect these two communities? The short answer is, whatever you naturally do in your life, you can find a way to connect that to foster kids. Foster parents have told me some of the best help they've ever been given is for someone just to call them and say, I'm dropping off a pizza at your house for dinner so you can have a moment. Our church that we were involved in as foster parents hosted a monthly date night for foster families. So your biological kids, adopted kids, foster kids could come and have a pizza movie night, and they just had a great time. And all the parents like, we got to go have a moment to ourselves to kind of talk and process, because it can be difficult to find appropriate childcare for kids in foster care. Because it was a church program, they were background checked and you knew it was going to be a safe place for the kids. I've heard of people saying, you know, the coaches and the athletic community will extend scholarships to foster kids, and that just helps. So whatever you naturally do, you can look for a way to attach that and help foster kids. If you're taking your kids to the movie, see if you could take somebody's kids to the movie with you, if you can support the parents in any way. So if you don't know somebody, though, in that field, I would say the second thing is to look for agencies that are already doing things. So, for example, in Huntsville, there's a clothing closet just for kids in foster care, so you could help support that closet and provide for them. There is a foster parent support group so you can contact them and ask if there's anything you could do to help the families involved with them. So the first step, I think, would be how do I find families who are involved? And secondly, how do I use what I naturally have going on in my life to help these families?

What is it about being an adoptive parent when previously a foster parent? What is the thing that you've enjoyed most about it?

I think the foster parent and adoptive parent answers are different for foster care. We really learned that you are not just working with the kids, but if you want to be an effective foster parent, you need to have a relationship with that child's family in whatever way is okay. Whatever way is safe, because when they go back, you can still be there for the family. We have had contact with every kid various levels after they went home to their biological family. Some of them have come to spend the night with us again. We've been to their birthday parties. We've talked on the phone with their parents because we gave their parents respect. Like, you cannot. I feel like people whose children are involved in foster care, they get villainized. Well, really, they're just dealing with their own problems. And so I enjoyed, like, connecting with the whole family and seeing, like, the reunification, the restoration of that family, because there's a lot of parents who were involved in foster care, they did make poor choices, but they were doing the best with the resources they had, and they just needed help. Regarding adoption, it is similar to being a biological parent. There's a lot of ways you get to relive the good stuff about being a kid with them. Like, the day that my kids asked to watch Star wars was probably the best day of my husband's life. I can't wait to share that with you. But also to watch them become the person they could be in a safe and secure environment. Probably the best part.

That's really cool. Thank you for sharing that. Is there anything you'd like to plug or would you want us to follow anything online?

Well, I wanted to share, if it's okay, a message from my kids, because I asked them, what's something that you want to share? And what they said was that two things. One, you never stop loving your birth family, your biological family, even if you don't remember them. And I think it's really important to always make space for the biological family. We have information, we have pictures, we have everything we can to keep them connected with their biological past. And it's really important to know that for them to feel safe with you, you have to make space for their background. And they know their parents names, they know things about their family, because we're not going to act like that didn't happen. And they said, it's important you never stop loving them, even when you can't see them or even if they can't take care of you for whatever reason.

That's really sweet and very mature of them.

Yeah, I think it's really cool to see them be able to articulate that. And the second thing they said was, the thing that has made them feel the most safe is being in a home where they know, like, this is going to stay the same. I'm going to come home and you're going to be here. And I come here every day. And it goes back to that permanence conversation we had earlier.

Wow.

So I just wanted to make sure to share that anytime I talk about my kids, I've always. I've already asked them, is it okay to say this about you in, like, a public forum? So they're kind of used to it. Also, I've been, you know, I've been given strict instructions on what I can't say sometimes, and that's fine. I do have a website as yorkcounseling.com and that's probably the hub to reach me for counseling services if somebody needs counseling services. I'm at the 90 day mark of my new location. And so we will be rolling out classes this summer and some training in the fall. So some of the other programs that I want to launch will be I wanted to do 90 days, get my clients stable and get in the routine in my new place. And now we're going to start launching the classes and the community efforts. So that is probably the best hub to stay involved. It's as we're reaching the 90 day mark, I'm going to put more stuff out there on yorkcounseling.com dot great.

Well, thank you for your time, Kathy. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Enjoyed it. Thank you.

This is the plural of you. I'm Josh Morgan and the show's website is plural of you. That's all.