HEBER SPRINGS — With nearly 5,000 children in the Arkansas foster-care system, representatives of one Heber Springs-based organization hope that area families will answer “the call.”
The CALL in Cleburne County, a local branch of the statewide organization, trains residents on how to become foster families. According to the Arkansas Department of Human Services Division of Children and Family Services, 4,971 children were in foster care in the state in the third quarter of the fiscal year, which is a 4 percent increase from the previous quarter.
“Our mission is to educate, equip and encourage the body of Christ to provide a future and a hope for children in foster care,” said Ashley Herring, county coordinator for The CALL in Cleburne County. The organization accomplishes that through its mission ‘to recruit, train and support’ foster and adoptive families.
Herring said The CALL’s job is to fill in the gaps by preparing foster-care families; the organization does not place children in foster-care homes.
“We don’t do any of that,” she said. “We offer help. We’re an assist. We do our best to not be a burden but to be an alleviant.”
Herring has been a foster parent for 5 1/2 years and has adopted children as well. She has been with The CALL for five years. Herring said potential foster and adoptive families go through 32 hours of training with The CALL.
“It talks from childhood sexual abuse and what to look for and what modifications you need to make in your home with discipline to reunification to the family — because that is the goal. It’s always the goal,” she said. “I think that’s one of our greatest joys out of this — our families. We really have discovered that we can love this child well, but if we don’t love the family well, we’re just sending this child back to a family that also hasn’t been loved well.”
According to the state Division of Children and Family Services, the top three reasons a child enters foster care are substance abuse, neglect and parent incarceration. While a child is placed in a foster-care home, the biological parents — who can still visit their children — have a lot of work to do, Herring said.
“They have a lot of hoops to go through,” she said. “They have to get a job. They have to have housing. They have to do rehab. They have to do parenting [classes]. They have to test negative [for drugs] all the time and attend visits. For some of them, it’s just not easy to do.”
Felicia Stone, family support coordinator, said more foster homes and less drug use would reduce the number of children in the foster-care system.
“I think the community needs to be more involved with people who are around them who are hurting,” Stone said. “Drugs are a huge problem and a huge reason why children are coming into care, but there is an underlying reason why people seek out and use drugs, and most of it is hurting families. They’re seeking out a comfort for that pain.”
Stone has been a foster parent to about 23 children over the past four years and became involved with The CALL as a family support coordinator three years ago, after receiving foster-family training through the organization. Some of the foster children in her home have stayed overnight, and some have stayed for up to 15 months.
Stone said many people have a fear of becoming a foster family because they worry about being too busy, damaging their own children or having issues with time management.
“For my children — who are older now, they’re 17, 15 and almost 12 — if you ask them, they would absolutely do it again,” she said. “I think all three of them will be future foster parents. It has created an attitude of unselfishness with them. It’s really opened their eyes. It’s made them realize there’s more than just them. There are other people in the world, and they absolutely can do something to make the world a better place.”
Herring said there are 51 children in the foster-care
system in Cleburne County, and she encourages anyone who has considered foster care to give it a try.
“It’s going to be a good thing for your family,” she said. “It’s a mission in your home. It really is so rewarding.”
For more information, visit thecallinarkansas.org.
Staff writer Syd Hayman
can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@
arkansasonline.com.