“We Once Wanted to Be Foster Parents. Then We Learned the Truth.”
Every year, as the calendar turns to May or November, the flyers appear again.
Smiling faces. Carefully worded appeals.
Radio ads. TV campaigns. Social media posts.
“Become a foster parent.”
“Open your home.”
“There are children waiting.”
The flyers say “Now is the perfect season to foster.”
But they never say how many children were removed from families that never got a second chance.And we listened.
Not because we wanted praise, or a paycheck, or to play savior.
We listened because we care.
Because we believe children deserve love, consistency, and belonging.
Because some of us had struggled with infertility.
Because some of us had already raised children and had more to give.
Because we thought we were signing up to help in moments of real crisis.
But no one told us the crisis was often created.
The same system recruiting us as helpers was also tearing families apart over false reports, poverty, misunderstandings, or punishment disguised as safety.
We wanted to be foster parents.
Until we found out how many of those children did not need saving.
They needed to go home.
What the Campaigns Don’t Say
They don’t say how many of those children are removed not because they are unsafe,
but because someone decided their parents didn’t look the part.
Too loud. Too firm. Too poor. Too unpolished.
Too different to be understood.
Too unfit by someone else’s standard.
They don’t say how many families were never offered services, never given time, and never told their rights.
They don’t say how quickly children are placed with strangers when kin were never even called.
They don’t say how safety often means silence, and how parents are gagged while the public only hears one side.
They don’t say that DHR feeds the police.
The police feed the media.
And by the time a child is in foster care, the public already believes the parent must be guilty.
And most of all, they don’t say that foster parents like us are often given only half the story, if we are told anything at all.
We Started Listening
We started noticing the patterns.
Mothers who followed every step of the safety plan still lost custody.
Fathers were never contacted for placement.
Children were taken for “emotional abuse” when no therapy was ever offered.
Babies were removed at the hospital without evidence.
Marginalized families, struggling families, and sometimes even families who simply crossed paths with the wrong worker on the wrong day were monitored more closely, penalized more quickly, and given fewer chances to reunite.
We met parents who had never been charged with a crime.
Their children had no bruises, no broken bones, just bad luck and the wrong zip code.
We read stories of teenage girls coerced into statements they could not take back.
We saw toddlers passed between homes while their parents begged the court for help.
And we asked ourselves:
What happens if we are handed a child who was taken unjustly?
What does it mean to love a child well, if that child’s mother is still out there grieving, silenced, and fighting?
We Chose to Walk Away
It was not an easy decision.
We had prepared our homes.
Attended the trainings.
Prayed for the opportunity.
But we will not build our dream on someone else’s nightmare.
We will not hold a child the state took without cause and call it grace.
We will not comfort a child who is crying for their parent and call it healing.
We will not prop up a system that destroys families to fill rosters.
And we will not participate in the lie.
The Deeper We Looked, the Clearer It Became
We did not come to this conclusion lightly.
We did the research not just to prepare for fostering, but to understand what parents were saying from the other side of the system.
And the truth is not pretty.
What we found was not reassurance. It was heartbreak.
Over and over, we heard stories from biological parents and even from foster parents themselves describing the same thing.
A system that removes first and justifies later.
A system that fails more often than it helps.
If fostering is truly meant to be about safety and healing, then the system must rebuild trust on all sides.
Children should only be placed in foster care because they truly need protection, not because the system failed their family.
So far, we have not seen that.
What we have seen and what we have heard are cries from both parents and foster parents begging for change.
And the cries are horrific.
So We Say It Clearly
Not fostering.
Not like this.
Not when deception plays a role.
Not when we don’t know the full story.
Not when the system steals to supply.
Not when the goal is to terminate, not to reunify.
Not when children are shuffled to meet quotas,
while their parents are buried under silence, stigma, and shame.