As published in The Independent June 26,2001

Editor's Note: This is the second part of a two-part series on the county's foster care program, in light of 11 pieces of state legislation proposed to fix problems with the system. The names of foster care children have been changed to protect their identities.

By Dwana Simone Bain
Staff Reporter

Late on a summer evening, on a quiet street, children are playing outside a two-story tan house. Two girls roll up on Little Tykes tricycles to greet a visitor. "Hi," says a little redheaded girl in a ponytail. "Hi," says another little girl with shoulder-length brown hair.
A brown-haired boy with ringlets rolls up in a plastic toy car, grinning widely. Lisa Wiesenborn comes out of the house, and sweeps the curly-haired boy into her arms.There are always children at Lisa and her husband Rick's house. Always a little one around to take to the zoo, to the park, out to ice cream, or even to Disneyland.
Lisa, 41, has operated a child-care business for 22 years. But at night when the parents come and pick up their children, "then," Lisa explains, "it's just the family."
This month, the family includes herself and Rick, their 18-year-old daughter, Rachel, and little boy Zaren, 2 and a half. Also part of the family are two 5-year-old girls, foster children Ashley and Mandi. Next month, maybe a new child will come.
Over the past four years, about 100 children have found themselves part of Rick and Lisa's foster family.
Rick and Lisa are some of the numerous parents providing the county's children with emergency shelter care.
The abandoned, the abused ... "we're the first place they come when they come into the foster care system," Lisa said.
But homes like Lisa and Rick's are disappearing. Fewer couples are choosing to become foster parents. Lawmakers and county officials -- who are working to pass legislation to make foster parenting more appealing -- cite low compensation for the demanding and emotionally draining task and busy lifestyles as reasons for the decline.
Whatever the reasons, the discrepancy between the approximately 600 abused or neglected children in the county's foster care program and the number of places to put them means 40 percent of the children are placed in homes outside the county. Those foster children who remain in the county are placed in one of several different types of care. In traditional foster care, children remain with foster parents for several weeks or months until more permanent plans are made. In Fost-adopt care -- the most popular program -- parents are both foster and prospective adoptive parents, taking in children considered unlikely to return to their birth parents. The foster parents commit to adopting the child if he or she becomes legally freed for adoption. Emergency shelter care -- where children stay until they return home or move into longer-term foster care -- is considered the most demanding, because of the instability of constant appointments with doctors and social workers, Lisa and Rick said. But when the couple signed up, they wanted to go where they were most needed. The two -- who've been married 21 years -- have talked about foster parenting since before they married.
"I've just always been a spokesperson for kids," said Lisa. "Society ... they don't think of children as human beings, almost ... The way that you hear people talk to their children is just atrocious."
Four years ago, the couple finally applied for the foster care program. They took a 10-week class through the county, learned first aid and CPR, submitted themselves to fingerprinting and extensive background checks and submitted their home to initial and final inspections.
Following program rules and regulations, the couple has housed children as old as 7 and as young as barely born.
"I've picked them up at the hospital," said Lisa.
"I really enjoy [foster parenting]" Lisa said. "Rick really enjoys it ... I've done child care for so long, it was just natural."
"I was expecting [foster care] to be this big nightmare of terrible kids," Rick said. "And it's not that way."
The perception that they're bad kids is "not true at all," according to Lisa. The problem isn't the kids, "it's the parents," Lisa said.
It's hard sometimes, "hearing the stories of where they came from," Rick said. When children first arrive in the couple's house, Lisa and Rick know their basic backgrounds. The children, however, reveal more.
For example, the Wiesenborns might be out driving and a child will say, "Oh, that's the jail my daddy's in."
Coming into the system, kids are told that they will stay with Rick and Lisa "for a while."
Despite the shock of being removed from their homes, the couple say most children adjust well.
"Kids are so resilient," Lisa said. "I've had kids sometimes, within two to three days, who are calling me 'Mommy.'"
The Wiesenborns say there's a perception that people do foster care for the money -- which according to the county statistics ranges between $345 and $1,700 per month.
"It's not something that you're going to make money at," said Lisa.
"If you're treating your children the way you're supposed to be treating them, everything you get from the state should be going back to the children," she said.
The benefit is emotional. Lisa and Rick have a wealth of anecdotes about the subtle things most children take for granted, like a warm bed to sleep in or a weekend excursion to the mall.
Lisa remembers a pair of Spanish-speaking girls who'd been sleeping on a garage floor. The first night at the Wiesenborns, the girls -- who spoke no English -- crammed into a single bed.
"No," said Lisa -- who speaks no Spanish -- trying to explain to the girls they had separate beds. Lisa pointed to the opposite bed, and they both got up and crammed into that bed.
And so it went for several minutes.
"They couldn't believe they got their own bed," said Lisa. "It's heartbreaking." Then there was the 6-year-old boy on a trip to the mall.
"He had never seen an escalator before," said Lisa.
Up and down he went on the escalator. Then up and down again. And again. "He could have done it for two hours," Lisa said.
To the Wiesenborns, it's an odd concept that a child could have never been to the mall.
They've always taken their children camping, to Marine World. Their daughter Rachel has been to Disneyland 30 times and their son, Zaren, travels everywhere with the couple.
The couple has had young Zaren, now 2 and a half, since he was three months old. They once found prospective parents for the boy, but the other couple changed their minds, to Rick and Lisa's thrill. The two shocked their friends when they announced they were adopting a baby.
"Everyone said, 'You are insane, your daughter is almost out of high school,'" recalls Lisa.
Rachel, 18, is reportedly crazy about her new sibling. When she heard they were going to adopt him, "Oh God, she was thrilled," said Lisa. "He's just wild about her. She's just crazy about him."
A typical busy toddler, Zaren drags a comforter from the girls' room into the den where Lisa sits.
Lisa takes it from him and walks into the girl's room to put it back.
Like a little dollhouse, the room has two tiny beds, made up with matching comforters. Winnie the Pooh graphics, Beauty and the Beast, and Teletubbies posters decorate the walls.
Lisa pulls open the dresser drawers to display an assortment of clothes, an emergency supply of boys and girls clothes to fit whomever might come through the door. "Some of them come in just a T-shirt and diaper," she explains.
Rick and Lisa never know how long a child will stay. Some are with them just a night or two, others stay for months. Though ideally shelter care lasts two weeks, the Wiesenborns say their children average a stay of two to three months. Within two to three days, the parents go to court. Then, the children either have a visit with the parent or -- in some cases -- go back home.
The Wiesenborns have little if any contact with the parents of their foster children.
A county van picks up and drops off the children, so the parents don't know where the Lisa and Rick live. Many times the children never return to their parents.
Mandi probably won't be going back to her mom, who's missed a month's worth of visits.
"It makes me angry at the parent," said Lisa. "We just give her a big hug, and tell her that we love her and that Lisa and Rick are here for you." The Wiesenborns have seen this happen before. Sometimes a parent tries for months and then -- according to Lisa -- "they just let go."
"I think sometimes people don't know how to be parents," Lisa added. "They think it's more complicated than it is ... Things are not what's important. It's the time you spend with them."
Sometimes, Lisa admits, she's tempted to try to adopt kids like Mandi. With her mother not showing up, "You just think, 'oh honey, let me save you,'" Lisa said.
On a perfect, sunny Friday morning, Rick and Lisa sit under a shade umbrella on lawn chairs, their two dogs, big and black, stretch out in the sun with them. Mandi and another girl her age from day-care play in a big hammock.
"Don't jump on the hammock," warns Lisa. "You'll fall." Despite warnings, the hammock starts swinging. Rick and Lisa shake their heads and once again warn the girls.
Rick and Lisa found out recently that Mandi will soon be moving into a fost-adopt home.
"Because [we're] a shelter, it's supposed to be temporary," Lisa said.
The hammock is sideways now, the girls joyfully tipping it as they swing. Lisa tells them, "If you want to play, please play with toys."
They climb off the hammock in search of something else to do.
A few minutes later, Mandi walks up, hand-in-hand with a little 2-and-a-half-year-old. "She wants to hold my hand," Mandi says, laughing, curling her upper lip with a big smile before continuing her tour around the yard.
Mandi leaving "really upsets me because I'd rather have her stay here," Lisa said. "After so long, she's like my little girl."
Mandi knows in her own 5-year-old way that she's only here for a while. Rick and Lisa have told her that. They haven't told her yet that she's leaving.
"I'm not going to tell her until I know for sure," Lisa said. Kids don't do well with too much notice, she explains.
Mandi will be introduced gradually to her fost-adopt family, over a period of about two weeks. First they come for a brief visit with her. Then she visits with them.
Then a longer visit, an overnight and one day she moves from Rick and Lisa's house to be with her new family.
Sometimes, the couple get to see the foster kids who leave again.
Rick and Lisa have dedicated a wall to photos of the children who've come and gone.
Sometimes it's hard to let the children leave. Yet, the couple says they know for a while they've shown children a better way to live.
And they know there is always a child who needs that.
"Foster parents," explains Lisa, "are people who are willing to help other people's children so that they have better lives."