Waiting for adoption

A state agency seeks homes for children whose chances of adoption are slim. There are hundreds of such kids in the bay area.

[Times photo: Fraser Hale] Terrance, 13, with his foster parents Frankie and Charles Porter, has been in foster care since he was 2.

By WAYNE WASHINGTON

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 24, 2000

TAMPA -- Terrance hasn't forgotten how to smile.

Ask him about the trophy he got for playing football or about the drawings people swear he traced and a wisp of a smile cracks his face.

It doesn't stay long. It's the smile of a boy who hasn't smiled nearly enough, who hasn't given in to happiness.

And why should he? There's pain and disappointment right around the corner. Always has been. Why should that change?

Terrance is 13. His older brother is mostly a voice through the telephone line. His mother is a grainy photo image, kneeling next to her boys.

He wants her back; says it out loud, the only emotionally charged words he lets himself utter: "I want to be with my mom."

No such reunion will take place. A judge terminated his mother's parental rights. If Terrance has a mother, she's out there somewhere. She's someone he has never met.

Finding her, finding a place to call home, is a needle-in-a-haystack search for children like Terrance. They start that search with two strikes against them: They're older than the cute and cuddly babies parents clamor for. And they're black.

Twice a year, the Junior League of Tampa underwrites an adoption picnic put on by the state Department of Children and Families. To some, it's a disquieting idea to have a picnic where children waiting to be adopted can mingle with people wanting to adopt.

Some child welfare advocates say such picnics are obscene. But whatever discomfort the idea causes, the reality of hundreds of children waiting for homes forces it to fruition.

This year's first picnic drew 13 inquiries from the 32 families who attended. There were 99 children at the picnic. Junior League and Children and Families officials say a picnic always results in at least one adoption.

"There is no other recruitment tool that has had the success that this picnic has had," said Barbara Ryals of the Junior League. "We were looking for a segment of children who are really forgotten."

Almost half of the most difficult to place children in Hillsborough County are like Terrance. They have a sibling or two or three. They carry emotional scars of being moved from one foster home to another. They know, deep in some place they don't dare touch, that Mom and Dad gave them up.

Children and Families takes on the toughest cases. The babies, the ones parents clamor for, are handled by private adoption agencies and lawyers. What's left is a roster of children whose chances of adoption are slim and get slimmer with each birthday.

The problem is particularly severe in Hillsborough, where 560 such children were awaiting adoption as of Feb. 1, state figures show. Parental rights have been terminated in 220 of those cases. About 58 percent, or 127, of those children are black.

In Pinellas and Pasco counties, 146 hard-to-place children await adoption. Just under a fourth of those children are black. (The state could not provide totals for each county.)

There is help out there for families who adopt difficult-to-place children. Medicaid usually pays for medical care not covered by private health insurance. The federal government pays for college. And families also can get financial assistance ranging from $284 per month for young children to $348 per month for older ones.

Still, the Department of Children and Families has not been able to find black families for all of the black children waiting to be adopted.

The department stressed that many black families do adopt. Department officials would like even more. Finding them is difficult, however. "A lot of people, particularly African-American people, don't trust the department," said Freddie Brinson, who works for an organization called One Church One Child that helps recruit black adoptive and foster parents. "They still don't trust "HRS' (the agency's previous name) . . . and that has a real negative connotation."'

Because many of the children for whom it attempts to find homes have been abused, Children and Families advises adoptive parents against corporal punishment. For many, that's how they were disciplined -- and how some still discipline their children.

"You tell an African-American family that they can't use corporal punishment, you'll hear: "That won't work,' " Brinson said.

Brinson said there weren't always so many black children waiting to be adopted.

"Prior to, say, the mid-'70s, a lot of our kids were not familiar to the system," Brinson said. "If Momma or Daddy couldn't take care of you, Aunt Susie or someone else in the neighborhood would raise you."

Drugs have broken that extended care system, Brinson said, putting an ever-heavier burden on black grandparents. "Grandparents have been overwhelmed," she said.

It doesn't help that many of the older black children waiting to be adopted are boys. "There is an overall fear of young black men," Brinson said.

Federal law forbids adoption officials from delaying a placement to find a same-race family.

White families, however, have their own reasons for hesitating to adopt black children. Those reasons center on two questions: How will I make sure this child understands and feels a part of black culture? How will our family and friends react?

Michelle and Steve Kiefer, who are white, faced those questions before they adopted an infant girl who is of black, white and Cuban ancestry. "We've had friends who have said, "I couldn't do it,' " Mrs. Kiefer said.

The Kiefers said they have made it clear to family and friends that rejecting their child is like rejecting them. So far, that has not been an issue. Everyone loves the baby. Only occasionally will they get a rude stare or question, they said. As for making sure their daughter embraces and understands black and Cuban culture, they said they'll cross that bridge when they get to it.

"It's not like we're going to be able to hide that she's adopted," Mrs. Kiefer said. "When the time is right and she starts asking questions, we'll explore that together."

Who will answer Terrance's questions?

Jeff Lusco, the Children and Families counselor who works with Terrance and 26 other children like him, said they rarely verbalize such questions.

"They think they're in foster care because there's something wrong with them," Lusco said. "Why am I in foster care for 10 years? How come my parents don't come and get me? They don't ask those questions directly, but that's at the root of it."

Terrance's foster parents, Charles and Frankie Porter, believe that's why he has flashes of anger. He has been suspended from school twice this year. He'll start an argument or a fight for no reason. He sometimes struggles in school and is repeating the sixth grade.

Yet one of his teachers, Virginia Olampo, said Terrance is well-liked in class and is making steady progress academically. He's the boy who can be counted on to bring the funniest movies to class on "Fun Fridays" and the boy who will make everybody laugh by mouthing the words to every line.

Terrance knows, however, he's not quite like his classmates. When the school day ends, they go home to a mother or a father or both. He hasn't seen his mother for five years. His father is never mentioned.

Two months before his third birthday, Terrance and his brother were placed in foster care. Children and Families, for privacy reasons, won't disclose why.

That placement lasted almost five years, until 7-year-old Terrance and his 8-year-old brother were placed in another foster home in June 1994.

"We were too bad," Terrance explains.

The second family to care for Terrance and his brother considered adopting them, but there were problems. Acting on a complaint, Children and Families found corporal punishment was being used. The adoption was called off and the boys were moved into the Porter home in April 1997. Terrance was 10.

Behavior problems forced Terrance's brother out of the Porter home in August 1998. The brothers talk by phone now and they see each other at picnics and occasional get-togethers the Porters arrange.

Other children enter the Porter home and move on. Some will stay a long time; others are "emergency placements," kids dropped on the Porters because the state needs a safe home for them.

Two other boys, 8 and 10, live in the Porter home now. The Porters think they will be adopted soon. However, it's clear that they worry that Terrance will grow up without a family that's really his.

Charles Porter, an electrician, and Frankie Porter, a teacher, have one biological son and an adopted daughter. Both are grown and gone. The Porters are in their 50s and are not interested in adopting again.

That fact hasn't stoped Terrance from reaching out to them.

"He wants to be adopted," Charles Porter said. "He wants someone to call Mom and Dad. Sometimes, he'll call me Dad. I don't try to correct that. He wants that ownership."

Olampo said Terrance surprised her with his response to an assignment she gave his class one day. He and his classmates were asked to write an essay on their most prized possession.

Terrance wrote about his family.

"My family is special to me because God made Moms and Dads for kids," Terrance wrote. "Without a Mom or Dad, this world would be destroyed. . . ."

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