Foster parents use training support to make difference

Dan and Carolyn Cumming have been foster parents for more than three decades, welcoming children into their home and helping them to grow.

Charlie and Joyce Getchell are just beginning the process of becoming treatment foster parents through Community Health and Counseling Services. They are a caring couple who want to share their home with children who need a little boost to live their lives to the fullest.

Both couples share bonds that are at the root of being successful foster parents – a love of children and a desire to make a difference.

“We’ve always had kids around the house,” Dan Cumming said. “I don’t think we could imagine it any other way.”

The Cummings, foster parents with CHCS since 1995, have heard and read all the myths about foster care, including that foster parents are in it only for the money. They take offense at that myth.

“Some of the things we’ve seen and done over the years as foster parents, you couldn’t put a dollar value on it,” Dan Cumming said. “The relationships you build – we have some relationships with foster kids of more than 30 years, they still call us Mom and Dad. And seeing a child break down some of the barriers they have just makes you feel good.”

Another myth of foster parenting involves the supposed intrusiveness of the foster care professionals upon the privacy of the home. That just hasn’t been the Cummings’ experience, and they question why that myth endures.

“They say your home doesn’t belong to you, but that’s not true at all,” said Carolyn Cumming. “They’re not at your door all the time. But we use the support when it’s needed. I’ve got all the phone numbers, and I know they’re there if I need them.”

The Getchells have two grown children, but have stayed close to younger children through their church. Joyce is a Sunday school teacher, and Charlie has driven the Sunday school bus.

“We have a big house, a lot of empty space,” said Joyce Getchell. “We bought this house years ago knowing some day we were going to get into elder care or foster care, and now the time is right.”

Becoming a CHCS foster parent may seem like an extensive process, but CHCS provides assistance to guide applicants through. The application process includes interviews with a foster-home developer and training related to foster parenting. The simultaneous Department of Human Services licensing process involves interviews with a licensing worker, background checks and an inspection of the home to ensure that it meets water quality and fire safety standards.

“It definitely helps you to get ready,” said Charlie Getchell of the training involved with becoming a foster parent. “You learn it’s a lot like being a regular parent, and you learn there are a lot of people willing to help, that support is just a phone call away.”

That support for CHCS treatment foster parents comes from a team of dedicated professionals who work with the parents to implement a treatment approach that builds upon the unique abilities of each child and family while finding ways to overcome each child’s challenges.

CHCS Treatment Foster Care services are individualized and include intensive case management, therapy and psychosocial rehabilitation services. The goal of treatment foster care shared by parents and professionals is perhaps best expressed on a T-shirt Joyce Getchell wears with pride.

“A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in or the kind of car I drove – but the world may be better because I was important in the life of a child.”

For more information about CHCS treatment foster care in the Bangor area, call 947-0366.