S.C. needs more foster parents, especially for teens

Batesburg-Leesville foster mom who has parented 100s says being on-call 24/7 is tough but beyond rewarding

“This is not gonna change on me. They're not gonna leave me. This is not gonna change on me.”

There’s a dirt road over in Batesburg-Leesville that ends in flowers. Pollen and kids cozy up on a rust-red seat swinging in the rural breeze overlooking gardening tools.

There and all about the house, kids learn from Mama–at the piano with notes scribbled on the keys, at the dinner table on Sundays where time is set aside for airing grievances and saying what’s what. Mama always encourages getting it out in the open.

Frances Watson has been ‘Mama’ to so many kids over so many decades. For over 30 years, she has been on call when a Lexington County kid or another one nearby needs a foster home. For over 30 years, the dirt road, greenery and gardening tools in Watson’s yard have been many kids’ first sight of steadiness.

“I always tell them, ‘You’re so brave, you’re so brave,’ because they are,” she said. “I don’t know if I could be pulled from my family like that. … But after a while here, they realize: This is not gonna change on me. They're not gonna leave me. This is not gonna change on me.”

Watson says she always gives a kid a year. Adjustment takes time. That time, she says, almost always pays off.

She has two biological children and three adopted children who started in her home as foster kids.

According to the Department of Social Service’s dashboard, which shows the most up-to-date data on South Carolina Midlands foster care, there are currently 93 Lexington County children in foster care, 468 in Richland County, one in Calhoun County, 95 in Orangeburg County, 80 in Aiken County, 12 in Saluda County and seven in Newberry County.

Across the state, there are 3,239 children in foster care; 33.53% of them are teenagers. If they’re not in a foster home like Watson’s, they’re likely in a group home. The younger the child, the more likely they are to find foster parents.

Majd Abdallah, now an employee with the South Carolina Youth Advocate Program helping to match children with foster families in the Midlands and beyond, entered the system as a teenager.

It didn’t take long after telling an adult at school about his mom’s worsening schizophrenia that he was placed in a boys home.

Majd used to run laps outside that boys home, always under a watchful eye. He wanted to run on his school’s track team but kids in the system don’t often get the chance to join extracurriculars.

It took a team of foster moms who were not his own driving him to and from practice for Majd to experience the privilege of being on a school sports team.

One of the moms eventually took him in as a foster kid, setting him up to thrive, but this is rare for teenagers in the system, Majd said. There were so many variables that made this foster kid story a successful one.

Most variables were foster parents willing to step in for him and present him with opportunities many teenagers in the system miss out on. In the end, it helped him with self-love.

“It’s hard to want something good for your life when you don’t value yourself,” he said.

That’s why Frances Watson always tells her foster kids from the start that they’re brave, so brave.

She gardens with them, takes them on her family vacations, to her church, to school, to all the places that can help them want something good for themselves and provide them with any sense of steadiness, normalcy.

It’s teenagers, however, who are the least likely to experience steadiness and normalcy if they end up in the system. Majd said it’s relatively easy to match a child under six with a family, and that it’s rare he finds families willing to take in teenagers.

“This year, more than 20,000 young people will leave foster care without a family. Many of them will not have anyone they can call for help, for advice, for a ride when their car breaks down,” according to an article on adoptuskids.org. “It’s disturbing, but probably not surprising, that outcomes for youth who age out of foster care are often poor. Studies show that they are at increased risk for homelessness, young parenthood, low educational attainment, high unemployment rates, and other adverse adult outcomes. The good news is that it only takes one person to improve these odds for a young person.”

The South Carolina Youth Advocate Program can help get you started on your fostering journey or find out if it’s even something you want to take on.

There is a monthly foster parent information session every first Thursday you can register for at scyap.com. There are other resources there, too, including information on community-based services for youth, mental health services for youth and transportation services for youth.

“I think [fostering is] just so rich and rewarding to me,” Watson said. “It takes love, it takes time. It takes time and time and time.”