Foster families flock to Bangor for conference

Carla Hamilton and her husband entered the world of foster care three years ago when they took young twins into their Penobscot County home. The girls, now 4, have been adopted by the couple who now are working on adopting a 14-month-old baby they took in as their third foster child.

Hamilton was among 200 people attending the fourth annual training conference put on by Adoptive and Foster Families of Maine Inc. The event began Friday and lasts through today and is held at the Bangor Motor Inn.

The Hamiltons had raised three biological children, now adults with successful careers, when they decided to become foster parents. They run a treatment foster home, which means they can accept children with special challenges. Hamilton, a former school secretary, and her husband, a longtime teacher, find more rewards than setbacks in their decision to parent children the second time around.

“It’s such a reward to see kids grow and flower,” said Hamilton.

The biweekly Maine-ly Children column usually portrays a foster child available for adoption. Today, a special column has been issued to focus on the noble and much-needed function of foster and adoptive families. These are people qualified and willing to give of their time, attention and other resources to help a child get a second chance at life.

Maine has about 3,000 children in state custody and 2,000 of these are living in foster homes. The remaining 1,000 children are in group homes, or institutions.

The state has about 1,550 foster families but needs more.

Bette Hoxie of Old Town knows about the need for foster families. She and her late husband opened their home to 150 foster children over a span of 30 years. They adopted several, and now Bette Hoxie is also raising a grandchild.

Program director for Adoptive and Foster Families of Maine, AFFM for short, Hoxie said foster families can “make a difference for this generation of children and for the next generation as well.”

Foster and adoptive families flock to the annual training conferences put on by AFFM because of its timely, pertinent topics, Hoxie said. This year keynote speaker Dr. Steve Gray, a pediatric neuropsychologist, spoke on “down-in-the-trenches” topics from psychotropic medications sometimes given children to ailments from attention deficit disorder and attachment disorder to problems controlling anger.

Kevin Concannon, commissioner of the Department of Human Services, spoke Friday and compared the commitment shown by foster and adoptive parents to the state of National Guard troops.

In normal times, “the National Guard is something we all take for granted,” Concannon said. In crisis periods, we appreciate their dedication, said the DHS commissioner.

Foster parents “day in and day out are kind of a domestic National Guard for us without uniforms,” Concannon said. Foster parents often “provide care and nurturing to children and often go unrecognized. I recognize it and the governor recognizes it and I want to say thank you from both of us,” Concannon said.