What is it like to participate in a system that inherently sets you up for failure?
Most of us have heard of someone’s involvement with the childhood foster care system, whether it be from a family friend, through the news, in a movie or any other related connection. But it is doubtful that an event this life-altering can truly be sympathized with unless one has had a first-hand experience. The same case goes for Circulation Coordinator, Kenneth Herniman, at the Wofford College Sandor-Teszler Library.
Herniman and his wife chose to foster while living in Florida and endured the experiences that the privatized childcare system brought them. At the very beginning of the couple’s journey, Herniman said they quickly realized that “you have to be able and willing to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare of the system in order to get the benefits and stresses of fostering children.”
In some instances, Herniman said it felt as if the agencies were setting them up to fail. On one occasion, an agency tried to convince the Hernimans to foster a child for three months, just until she turned 18 and aged out of the system. “They told us that she would inevitably run away,” as she had with all of her other foster families in order to return to her biological family, which meant a life of prostitution and drugs. He spoke of how painful and frustrating it was to see children be treated as more of a transactional part of business instead of as human beings.
Despite these challenges and countless others, there were still many experiences that made their time as foster parents worth the uphill battles. “No matter what, any child you are given to foster will hopefully reap some benefit from staying with you.” One experience in particular stood out to Herniman. Q* was fostered by the couple for a few months, and in a short period of time they saw her grades rise from Fs and Ds to Bs and Cs. When asked what led to this improvement, Herniman simply answered: “treating her as a child should be treated.” But the most rewarding part of this experience for Herniman was to “see her go from being a timid, shy and scared person to… [seeing her] be comfortable in her own personal growth and strength.”
When asked what he would most like to change about the foster care system as a whole, Herniman focused on the idea of increasing the budget. In his experience, agents were often overworked and underprepared. As a result, they were encouraged to give children back to their biological parents as soon as possible, even if it was not in the best interest of the child.