Pay it Forward with Foster Care

In the January issue of The Reporter there was an article titled “Foster Care Rhode Island” written by Jeanine-Trinh Le-Kreuzer¸MA of Devereux Therapeutic Foster Care-Rhode Island. After reading the article, I felt the need to comment.

Four years ago this month, my husband and I began doing Foster Care with the arrival of our first foster child who was fifteen months old. The social worker brought her into our kitchen and sat her on our island. She immediately reached her arms up and gave me a great big hug. My heart melted into a giant puddle and tears came to my eyes. Over the next few months, she settled into her new room and new home and slowly she became very comfortable with us. As with all children, things are not always rosy and wonderful, but we worked through each and every problem and learned from each new situation. She was premature at birth and weighed 2 pounds, 11 ounces. She has been through physical therapy and is now in speech therapy and occupational therapy and is progressing beautifully. She will enter kindergarten in September.

At the time she was not available for adoption and we were just planning to foster, not adopt. A few months later, we were informed that she would soon be available for adoption and that DCYF would be moving her to a foster-to-adopt home. We discussed it and decided that we could not live without her in our lives. We promptly changed our status to foster-to-adopt. In September 2014 we went to Family Court in Providence and became the proud parents of a beautiful little girl. Every day I give thanks that our little girl is safe and she is loved and she is living as normal a life as is possible.

I have three grown sons and my husband has one grown son and we are starting all over again with our new daughter. I am sixty two years old and if I can do it, anyone can.

The January article quotes Howard Zinn, historian and peace activist saying, “Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world”. That is a wonderful goal to try to accomplish but what if we tried to bring it closer to home, to do the same in our neighborhood, city or state. What if we try to reduce the number of children in Foster Care in our area or even bring it down to zero? Wouldn’t that be a wonderful accomplishment for the children, to pay it forward…

Deb Crepeau (401)369-0164