“If one family in every four churches would foster, then there would be no more kids in foster care in Illinois.”
That’s the quote Corey Johnston, lead pastor at Heights Community Church in Collinsville, and his wife, Andrea, heard five years ago that inspired them to become foster parents.
The couple applied to become licensed foster parents and “started praying that maybe four other families would respond.” Today, the pastor said, “We have more than 20 families who are fostering and adopting 30 kids.”
As a result, it’s “really changed the whole culture of our family and our church.”
The number Johnston heard is a rough estimate, but the statistic helps put the need into perspective.
For the month of November 2023, there were 19,849 children and teens in foster care in Illinois. Multiple races are represented with the largest being white (11,306) followed by black/African American (8,362). There were slightly more males (10,033) than females (9,816) reported.
“We’re always looking for foster parents,” Heather Tarczan, Director of Communications at the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) told the Illinois Baptist. She couldn’t site a number, since the list fluctuates, but “there is always an opportunity for a child to go into a loving home,” Tarczan said. “We’re always recruiting for foster parents.”
Prospective foster parents must undergo background checks, including police, criminal, and sexual offender registries, along with finger printing. She describes the process as “deliberate and cautious, we don’t want to rush it for obvious reasons.” The entire process can take 6-12 months.
Tarczan calls fostering a “very rewarding experience. It is perfect for someone with the ability to love and be loved; an opportunity to give a child an experience unlike any other.”
A huge ministry for Christians
Mike and Deb Robertson are members of Rochester First Baptist Church. They have been foster parents with the state of Illinois for 30 years and were first licensed when their two children were young. After taking a break, when the couple became empty nesters, Deb said they felt the call again.
“It’s extremely important people understand that Christians step up,” she said. “People don’t realize it’s a huge ministry for Christians.”
She’s heard people say they couldn’t foster, that it would be too hard to say goodbye and let the kids go, but Robertson takes a different view as a retiree. “We’ve raised our family and are not looking to raise another one.” That’s not to say it isn’t hard letting them go. Sometimes the couple will have to send a child on to a family that shares a different set of beliefs. “I’ve had to learn that I just have to turn it over [to God],” she said. “My goal is to do the best I can for them while I’ve got them. That’s all I’ve got control of.”
Placements can be for undetermined lengths of time. “We’ve had kids placed with us for as little as 48 hours and as long as three years,” said Robertson, who is also an Illinois Baptist Disaster Relief (IBDR) childcare volunteer. “They travel with us, when we go, they go.”
The need is great
Tarczan said the need is great to find foster homes for children of all ages. “They range at any point in time from newborn up to teenage years.” However, she acknowledged, “Teenagers are in general a little more challenging because they’re tougher to manage in terms of their teenage makeup.”
The preference is always to keep siblings together, but it can be harder to find homes for siblings. “We have thousands of foster homes in the state, but unfortunately we have thousands of children needing loving foster parents,” noted Tarczan.
Many of the 30 children the Robertsons have fostered have been developmentally delayed. They work hard to advocate for them and to get them caught up both mentally and physically.
Robertson told of one young girl who came to them at 15 months old, diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome, a chromosomal disorder, and verbal and oral dyspraxia. The doctors had not given her much hope. “We got her glasses and early intervention. That child is now an adult, and a mother with a full life. She’s gone above and beyond.”
The girl left their care at age two and half and then her adoptive parents took over where the Robertsons left off.
“The kids usually have a lot of emotional issues and baggage, Robertson said, “even babies if they’ve come out of a domestic violence situation. It can be a challenge but it’s a very rewarding ministry.”
A biblical calling
For Johnston, fostering and adoption are a biblical calling. “Ephesians 2 tells me that I was once the orphan that God brought into his family,” the pastor said. “We were the alienated and the vulnerable. At the expense of his Son, God adopted us into his family.”
For Johnston, the “reality is that I’m no different than a kid that’s been left alone.” He told about their adopted son, the first foster child they took in five years ago who was just eight days old, weighing barely five pounds, born addicted to opioids. The couple adopted him when he was two. Johnston and his wife, a neo-natal nurse practitioner, also have two biological children, and another foster child.
His own testimony is one experienced by many of the kids who find themselves in foster care. Johnston was raised by addicts, his father dying from a cocaine overdose when Johnston was seven. He had several stepfathers, and his mother was in and out of rehab to avoid going to jail before her own death. Johnston described being addicted himself and selling drugs by the time he reached high school. The better times in his life were when he was with his grandparents. It wasn’t until after college at 23 that he came to Christ, and God called him into ministry.
Johnston said it’s been a joy to see his children learn, by being foster siblings, to “actually believe the gospel for themselves and not just because their daddy told them to. They have to learn how to sacrifice time with parents.”
But Johnston says even while fostering is “hard, laborious, and takes a lot out of you, it’s really rewarding.”
Jordan Bird is the Executive Director and Director of Church Partnerships at Restore Network. He pastored at Journey Church SI (Southern Illinois) until December, when he left to devote his full energies to the network. The organization partners with local churches to recruit foster parents while advocating for a better foster care system.
“There is a vast, huge need,” Bird said. “The state is struggling to meet this need, (but) they’re overwhelmed with the number of kids that needs homes.”
While 50% of foster families who work with state quit in the first year, only 10% who have help from Restore Network quit. “The difference we make is to train, recruit, and support with better quality training and resources that other families don’t have…. Because we’re privately funded, we can respond like we think Christ would creatively and quickly,” he said.
When Bird’s family took in its first foster child, a five-day-old newborn, “By the time we said yes, Restore had responded already with a crib, diapers, wipes, and pizza.”
Bird believes it’s important for the pro-life community to take a holistic approach and join the fostering network. “People who want to see babies being born aren’t showing up for the ones who have been born.”
A woman who volunteered as a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) volunteer told him about spending a day with five siblings while a DCFS caseworker tried to find a home that would take all five of them together. Near the end of the day, the exasperated caseworker asked the woman, “Is there not anyone in your church who can take them?”
It broke the CASA volunteer’s heart to say, no.
Bird describes foster care as a ministry of reconciliation. The children have been removed from their homes through no fault of their own. “They need someone who will look after them for a season while their parents get help. If that’s not possible, then they need families who will love them for a lifetime.”
Bird said confidently, “If the church stepped up to meet this need, we could be the answer to this struggle.”