this pisses me off
ok first read this article
By Stephanie Akin
Staff Writer
The little girls in Miriam Michel's home switch effortlessly between English and Spanish. One minute, they want to go to the "piscina" -- the oval-shaped swimming pool behind Michel's house in Lawrence.
The next minute, they are asking Michel in English to tell them who is her favorite baby.
Michel, a foster mother who has taken care of 20 children in the past three years and speaks limited English, said she loves them all like her own.
Theirs is a success story -- so much of one that Michel was honored at a recent banquet for being one of the state's exemplary foster mothers.
But it touches on what is becoming a major problem at the Lawrence Department of Social Services. The girls' biological parents speak English. But because there is a shortage of English-speaking foster families in the Merrimack Valley, they were placed with a family whose primary language is Spanish.
It sounds like a reality television plot line: a child from an English-speaking family spends a week in a Latino household and learns to like tortillas but doesn't understand bedtime stories. The child then returns to his or her parents.
But for foster children across the Merrimack Valley, the story is much more complicated. Generally, they come from families with drug problems or domestic abuse. When they arrive at their foster homes, they are disoriented and scared. Some never go back to their biological parents.
"It's hard enough to go into a stranger's home," said Laurie S. McNeil, area program manager for the Lawrence Department of Social Services. "But to go into a home where someone may love you and may really want to take care of you but then not to be able to communicate with them, that's really hard."
In other parts of the state, McNeil said, social workers struggle to find homes for children in linguistic minorities -- to place Spanish-speaking children in Spanish-speaking homes, for example. But in the Valley, it's the opposite. Partly because so many Hispanic families volunteer to take foster children -- an abundance for which McNeil is grateful -- and partly because so few Anglo families open their homes.
The Department of Social Services works with 65 foster parents in the area. Of those families, 11 speak only English and 13 are bilingual. The remaining 41 speak only Spanish. The Department of Social Services could not immediately provide statistics showing how many of its foster children are mismatched linguistically.
"Sometimes there's a perception that child welfare issues only occur in the minority community," McNeil said. "There is sometimes the perception that it doesn't happen in Methuen. It doesn't happen in Andover. It doesn't happen for Anglo kids. And you know, it certainly does."
When the Department of Social Services places children in homes where they do not speak the primary language, McNeil said they try to move the child to a friend of the family or relative as soon as possible. If it looks as if the child will have to stay in foster care and is having trouble adjusting, she said, the state will generally move the youngster to homes trained to take care of children with special needs. Even if the children do not have special needs, sometimes it's more important to have a linguistic match, she said.
Social workers at the Department of Social Services say there could be something else about Latino households that make them more willing to open their homes to strangers' children: a tradition of multigenerational families, a culture where relatives raise each other's children when there is a crisis in the family.
There is also the widely reported fact that poor families, like many in Lawrence, are much more likely to take in foster children than wealthier families in communities such as Andover or North Andover -- often because state stipends for foster children can supplement meager incomes. While Merrimack Valley social workers said that can happen here, too, they say it generally isn't the case. Foster families are required to have a stable income. They receive $6,669.50 every year for children under the age of 5. State stipends vary depending on the child's age, but top out at $7,913.35 a year for children 13 and over.
McNeil said a much likelier explanation is that Hispanic foster families are the agency's best recruiters.
That's what happened with Michel, who had never considered foster parenting until she moved to Lawrence from New Jersey four years ago. At the time, a close family friend was volunteering as a foster parent. She seemed to enjoy it so much that Michel's daughter Yahayra, now 25, convinced her mother to volunteer herself. Now Michel counts five other friends who are foster parents, and said she knows more who are interested.
After Michel made the decision, she said, the mothering came naturally. Michel always thought she would have a big family, at least six children, she said. But she only had two.
Her 26-year-old son is in California and just became a father. Yahayra, a magnetic resonance imaging technician at Holy Family Hospital, student and Army reservist, lives with Michel and took the Department of Social Services eight-week training course to help her mother care for the foster children. The Department of Social Services requires that foster families have a steady income. For the Michels, that's Yahayra's salary.
Yahayra Michel said the majority of the 20 children who have come through her mother's house have had at least a relative who speaks Spanish, so they have adjusted quickly.
"They just pick it up," she said. "They're sponges."
Yahayra added that her mother understands enough English to know what the children are saying.
This year, Michel is adopting two girls, a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old born to an English-speaking family. When the girls first came to Michel two years ago, the youngest was too young to speak much and the oldest child's language development was delayed, Yahayra said. Now the girls are bilingual.
Michel is also taking care of a 1-year-old who was so weak when she arrived this summer that Michel was up at 4 a.m. on most days to feed her with a medicine dropper.
The social workers who deal with Michel said one reason the children who live with her adjust to a bilingual lifestyle so well is because she is so dedicated.
"In my opinion, she just goes above and beyond the minimal requirements (for a foster parent,)" said Marisele C. Sigman, the family resource worker who follows Michel's case. "That tells us she's not doing it for the money. She's doing it because she wants to help the children and she has a heart for that."
Michel cares for children from infancy to 5 years old. When a new one arrives, her whole family comes to welcome it to her tidy two-story home.
The children in Michel's home wear clean white corduroy pants and crisp pink T-shirts. They watch television on a wide, flat screen. On warm days, they go in the swimming pool with Yahayra, and they are always trying to convince Michel that the day is warm enough.
"As soon as they come home from school, they say, 'Aye, Mami, es caliente (it's hot)!'" said Michel. "So I wait for the school bus with their swimming suits in my hand."
ok its great that they want to be foster parents but ok lets get real. the only reason they do it is for the money dss gives them. they dont spend half of it on the kids, they keep it. ok ok im not saying they all do it. for example this article os about one hispanic lady that treats them like her own, but most of them take that situaion for granted.also if u live in anerica, speak fuckin english! i cant stress this enough. i know that this is a free country and blah blah blah. but if u are goin to live here, speak the fuckin language. i refuse to learn spanish for the sole person im not comforming to them. im not goin to meet their fuckin needs. they're meeting mine or get the fuck away. it just sickens me hoew we just let anyone in the U.S. we should have standards. or at least a fuckin class for them to learn fluent english.
By Stephanie Akin
Staff Writer
The little girls in Miriam Michel's home switch effortlessly between English and Spanish. One minute, they want to go to the "piscina" -- the oval-shaped swimming pool behind Michel's house in Lawrence.
The next minute, they are asking Michel in English to tell them who is her favorite baby.
Michel, a foster mother who has taken care of 20 children in the past three years and speaks limited English, said she loves them all like her own.
Theirs is a success story -- so much of one that Michel was honored at a recent banquet for being one of the state's exemplary foster mothers.
But it touches on what is becoming a major problem at the Lawrence Department of Social Services. The girls' biological parents speak English. But because there is a shortage of English-speaking foster families in the Merrimack Valley, they were placed with a family whose primary language is Spanish.
It sounds like a reality television plot line: a child from an English-speaking family spends a week in a Latino household and learns to like tortillas but doesn't understand bedtime stories. The child then returns to his or her parents.
But for foster children across the Merrimack Valley, the story is much more complicated. Generally, they come from families with drug problems or domestic abuse. When they arrive at their foster homes, they are disoriented and scared. Some never go back to their biological parents.
"It's hard enough to go into a stranger's home," said Laurie S. McNeil, area program manager for the Lawrence Department of Social Services. "But to go into a home where someone may love you and may really want to take care of you but then not to be able to communicate with them, that's really hard."
In other parts of the state, McNeil said, social workers struggle to find homes for children in linguistic minorities -- to place Spanish-speaking children in Spanish-speaking homes, for example. But in the Valley, it's the opposite. Partly because so many Hispanic families volunteer to take foster children -- an abundance for which McNeil is grateful -- and partly because so few Anglo families open their homes.
The Department of Social Services works with 65 foster parents in the area. Of those families, 11 speak only English and 13 are bilingual. The remaining 41 speak only Spanish. The Department of Social Services could not immediately provide statistics showing how many of its foster children are mismatched linguistically.
"Sometimes there's a perception that child welfare issues only occur in the minority community," McNeil said. "There is sometimes the perception that it doesn't happen in Methuen. It doesn't happen in Andover. It doesn't happen for Anglo kids. And you know, it certainly does."
When the Department of Social Services places children in homes where they do not speak the primary language, McNeil said they try to move the child to a friend of the family or relative as soon as possible. If it looks as if the child will have to stay in foster care and is having trouble adjusting, she said, the state will generally move the youngster to homes trained to take care of children with special needs. Even if the children do not have special needs, sometimes it's more important to have a linguistic match, she said.
Social workers at the Department of Social Services say there could be something else about Latino households that make them more willing to open their homes to strangers' children: a tradition of multigenerational families, a culture where relatives raise each other's children when there is a crisis in the family.
There is also the widely reported fact that poor families, like many in Lawrence, are much more likely to take in foster children than wealthier families in communities such as Andover or North Andover -- often because state stipends for foster children can supplement meager incomes. While Merrimack Valley social workers said that can happen here, too, they say it generally isn't the case. Foster families are required to have a stable income. They receive $6,669.50 every year for children under the age of 5. State stipends vary depending on the child's age, but top out at $7,913.35 a year for children 13 and over.
McNeil said a much likelier explanation is that Hispanic foster families are the agency's best recruiters.
That's what happened with Michel, who had never considered foster parenting until she moved to Lawrence from New Jersey four years ago. At the time, a close family friend was volunteering as a foster parent. She seemed to enjoy it so much that Michel's daughter Yahayra, now 25, convinced her mother to volunteer herself. Now Michel counts five other friends who are foster parents, and said she knows more who are interested.
After Michel made the decision, she said, the mothering came naturally. Michel always thought she would have a big family, at least six children, she said. But she only had two.
Her 26-year-old son is in California and just became a father. Yahayra, a magnetic resonance imaging technician at Holy Family Hospital, student and Army reservist, lives with Michel and took the Department of Social Services eight-week training course to help her mother care for the foster children. The Department of Social Services requires that foster families have a steady income. For the Michels, that's Yahayra's salary.
Yahayra Michel said the majority of the 20 children who have come through her mother's house have had at least a relative who speaks Spanish, so they have adjusted quickly.
"They just pick it up," she said. "They're sponges."
Yahayra added that her mother understands enough English to know what the children are saying.
This year, Michel is adopting two girls, a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old born to an English-speaking family. When the girls first came to Michel two years ago, the youngest was too young to speak much and the oldest child's language development was delayed, Yahayra said. Now the girls are bilingual.
Michel is also taking care of a 1-year-old who was so weak when she arrived this summer that Michel was up at 4 a.m. on most days to feed her with a medicine dropper.
The social workers who deal with Michel said one reason the children who live with her adjust to a bilingual lifestyle so well is because she is so dedicated.
"In my opinion, she just goes above and beyond the minimal requirements (for a foster parent,)" said Marisele C. Sigman, the family resource worker who follows Michel's case. "That tells us she's not doing it for the money. She's doing it because she wants to help the children and she has a heart for that."
Michel cares for children from infancy to 5 years old. When a new one arrives, her whole family comes to welcome it to her tidy two-story home.
The children in Michel's home wear clean white corduroy pants and crisp pink T-shirts. They watch television on a wide, flat screen. On warm days, they go in the swimming pool with Yahayra, and they are always trying to convince Michel that the day is warm enough.
"As soon as they come home from school, they say, 'Aye, Mami, es caliente (it's hot)!'" said Michel. "So I wait for the school bus with their swimming suits in my hand."
ok its great that they want to be foster parents but ok lets get real. the only reason they do it is for the money dss gives them. they dont spend half of it on the kids, they keep it. ok ok im not saying they all do it. for example this article os about one hispanic lady that treats them like her own, but most of them take that situaion for granted.also if u live in anerica, speak fuckin english! i cant stress this enough. i know that this is a free country and blah blah blah. but if u are goin to live here, speak the fuckin language. i refuse to learn spanish for the sole person im not comforming to them. im not goin to meet their fuckin needs. they're meeting mine or get the fuck away. it just sickens me hoew we just let anyone in the U.S. we should have standards. or at least a fuckin class for them to learn fluent english.