 Good afternoon. Welcome to coronavirus and our mental health. Today is July 20th, 2022. I'm Ken Bernus and I'm coming to you from Alieva on the North Shore and the temperature is rising not only here but across the country. If we take a look at the temperature today it is 83 degrees and the trade winds are blowing in at 17 miles per hour. Now today is the first time that we will be showing this show a day late and you've probably seen the promos on this. So tomorrow you'll be watching this on Think Tech Hawaii same time, same station but on Thursday. And I have it on good faith from the Hawaii Weather Bureau that tomorrow the temperature will be 83 degrees and the trade winds will be blowing from 17 miles per hour. So hopefully Thursday is going to be as beautiful as it is today and that you are enjoying the day. Back around virus-wise the company not the company but the country is still going up as far as its case numbers go as far as hospitalizations. We're certainly not at the surging point that we were in January but we're significantly higher than we were in April. Now Hawaii on the other hand is coming down which sounds very good but we're still high because a month and a half ago we were the surgingest area in the country. We're down now considerably but we're still in the top third of the country so we can't let down. We have to keep mindful of the pandemic and if you're like me because of the surge you've probably had a close friend or a member of your family that's had COVID recently. I know I have and that's very difficult. It's difficult for them and it's difficult for us who want to reach out and help them. So this is something that we're going to have to deal with for quite a while. And one of the things that is worrying the experts is the fact that they're attributing this surge probably to the new variant the new Omicron variant B A5. A variant that's new and we still don't know a lot about and there's still a lot of questions as to how we deal with this. We're re-looking at our vaccination process. We're re-looking at our booster shots so it's going to take a while for us to catch up with this new variant and the new variants are coming in all the time. So please everybody out there be careful the understanding that we're still in a pandemic and there just still is a possibility of spreading this disease to other people. Now in these past programs we've been looking at positivity. Positivity because this whole pandemic and the two some years that we've been in it has really forced us into a negativity space. Not only from the coronavirus but from a lot of things that are happening in the country and in the world. We've got a war going on. We've got mass shootings at school and of course we've got climate change and that's why we're getting hotter as we go along. So all this how do we deal with it? How do we not fall into the space of saying gee I don't know what I can do. I don't know how to help. I'm out of control. I can't control my life anymore because things are just mounting up. And this of course is exacerbated by every time we turn on social media or the television we see a lot of negative stories. They make news and people watch them so what we try to do in this program is bring out a lot of positivity because the best way to deal with all this is to find the joy in life. To find positive things. By doing this we're better able to deal with the problems that we face today. So I'm very lucky today because I have my good friend Jamie McCuitt here with me and she's going to help us get very very positive. She's going to talk to us about the joy of fostering. Welcome to the show Jamie. It's great to have you here. It's wonderful to be here Ken. Thank you. Jamie is going to talk about fostering like I say and she's also going to talk specifically about fostering with care. So maybe that's a good place to start the program. Let me turn it over to Jamie to explain fostering and fostering with care. Okay. So most people have heard of foster parents. Actually the nomenclature that we use right now is resource caregivers but there's a move in Hawaii towards joining a resource caregiver so the foster parents of children who have been removed from their home from their birth parents or their biological family to have more interaction between birth families and foster parents. So in some cases that means supervising visits. In some cases that may mean inviting those birth parents who are working through their services whatever it is that they need to do to get their children back. Inviting them to school events or just participating as more of a family member as opposed to you know your children have been taken away from you. You have to do all of these services before you can get these children back. So it's bringing foster parents and birth parents together in such a way that that child benefits from having a much bigger healthy ohana as their basis for being raised. So in a nice positive environment. So fostering in general there's there's a couple of ways that you can get your foster license and you do have to be licensed through the state. It's through the child welfare services. So that's a part of health and human resources that department. And right now the subcontractor for doing the training for foster care is Catholic Charities Hawaii. So if you're interested at all you can go on to Catholic Charities Hawaii site and find out what you need to do to either get a general license. So I'm a general licensed foster parent which means that you take about a six week course. They come in and do a home study in your home to make sure that your home is safe and any other members of your family are okay to be around other children. And that gives you a general license. So as soon as someone comes up that is in your category. So the categories are usually under five maybe five 12 as far as age goes. And then youth which are probably 13 until they age out of foster care. So you can you can indicate which is your preference to be able to foster. So that's the first kind of license. The second kind of license is called a child specific license whereby you might be friends or indeed family of that biological child that needs to be placed. And then you are licensed specifically for that child only. It's not like you're going to take a lot of other foster kids in at any given time. Although a lot of people convert to doing that once they fostered one of their own. And so that's the second process. And I don't want to eliminate there's another sort of subcategory of people who have fostered who end up adopting so adoptive parents or guardianship parents which is another sort of technical term for almost adopting but there's still the ability for the birth family to come back in if you want. So you're legally responsible for that child. At the time that you're fostering the state is actually legally responsible for that child. So that's why you have to be licensed through the state in order to operate on the set of rules and regulations that guide foster care. So that's just the technical stuff. But I'm much more into the joy stuff. So where would you like me to go from here, Ken? Well, when Jamie and I talked before the show, Jamie is a woman of many talents and many different activities that are going on in her life and has had much experience. And when we talked about it, Jamie, you told me that you'd prefer to talk about fostering because this last year fostering had given you the most joy. So if you wouldn't mind sharing personally a little bit about that joy that fostering has given you in this last year. Okay, so I have a birth child. He's going to be eight at the end of the month. And I think like most only children, he has always longed for a sibling. And we had been foster parents previously. And once my son was born, we also did respite care. But previously we had always done under five. So actually, I think most of them were under three. So sometimes it was babies directly from the hospital. Sometimes it was toddlers. And there are all kinds of circumstances as to why someone becomes a foster child. So we won't go into the background of all of it, but there's either been neglect or abuse to some degree that it's felt that that child is not necessarily safe. So during the pandemic, I received about five calls from CWS. And the first person who called she was in the matcher. So a child comes into care and immediately they start looking through the list of who's available for this child to be placed with. And every one of those circumstances previous to the last one, so the four calls previous, it just wasn't the right time. So either we were going on vacation or my son was doing something that would not would prohibit me from being able to pay attention to another child at the time. And then one day I was hiking in Hualahia and I got a call at 9 30 in the morning and they said, we have a two day old baby that needs to be picked up at Kapi Elani today. Can you do it? So of course, consult with my husband first and we decided, yes, this is the right time. So the other thing about fostering is that you cannot reveal anything about a particular child. So I can't identify anybody that I'm going to be talking about. So some of these will be amalgamations of stories with different foster children that we've had. So like everybody who was going through the pandemic, I had my son doing online learning for the first year of school, which was his very first grade. So you know, that's awkward. Everybody socially isolated. You know, even when you do see friends and family, it's distance. This was at the very beginning of the pandemic. So I had a child who was just like itching to socialize. So then we're in year two of the pandemic. Now he's back in school. He's interacting with other kids, but still there's nobody at home when he comes home from school. And so we just thought that this would be a good opportunity to take this baby in. And I couldn't believe the transformation in our family. So basically, we were all on each other. We were just very tense all the time. I was constantly trying to, while working from home, constantly trying to think of things to entertain my child. But also he was just missing having other people his size and age around. So we took this baby in. And of course, I'm going to be 60 this year. And it was not as I remembered. So first of all, I was thinking, oh my goodness, what have we done? Like you don't sleep? There's all kinds of physical things that you just don't think you're capable of. But this child was such a joy that we all got on board on this journey and just rode it to the nth degree. So she was just the bright light in everybody's day. It was after the first month or so, my husband and I ended up getting a little bit more sleep because they wake up every two hours when they're first born. And from there, she was just totally integrated into our family, which is, I always call it, you've joined my circus. You've got to keep up to our speed. So that's how our family operates. So we just did everything that we could do to be outside and playing and socializing. And of course, once you're back in the fostering, because we had been out for the majority of the pandemic, back into the foster care system, you're connecting with other foster families as well. So we just got to experience this wonderful growth. And the difference, I think, is when I had my child, who I had very late in life, and I was monitoring everything, I'm into this. I'm going to chart every day of his life what's going on. But this time, I could really observe the growth of a child from basically birth. And in this case, she went to her forever family at nine and a half months. So the whole thing about fostering itself is the basis of it is reunification with the birth family. Because we all operate on the premise that all children, all parents love their children. They might be going through some drug addiction issues, they might be going through domestic violence issues. There are a lot of circumstances that land children in foster care that seem to be out of the control of the actual birth parent. And if they're trying to get reunified with their child, they're working very hard on whatever services the court has ordered them to perform in order to get that child back. So just keeping a connection with either the birth family, the biological family, or the prospective adoptive parents is another joy. Because again, you get this extended family. So in the case of our child, we knew that she was going to be adopted by a relative. And we established that relationship with the relative right away. So again, we just had this increased bigger family that was day to day, keeping in touch with each other and watching this child flourish. So that's where we got, or I personally, derived a lot of joy in the last year. And it seemed to, you know, I think it's like anything in life, if you're if you're depressed, or if you're feeling down or overwhelmed by the negativity in the world, my go to has always been get outside of yourself and help somebody else. So let's see what that looks like, right? So we were completely overwhelmed with what was going on, especially with schooling. And both my husband and I worked. So of course, it was juggling all that and still trying to give enough attention to the family itself so that we could maintain. And what ended up happening, by taking on this other duty or job, it ended up like all fading into the background. So that was no longer a duty or a job. It was this joy of just living family life and focusing on family life. Well, thank you for sharing that, Jamie. For those of you in the audience, the wonderful thing about this is that Jamie's husband, Jeremy, was on the last program. So if you were tuned in two weeks ago, you would have seen her husband, Jeremy, who's a chef and was talking about the joy of cooking. So it's just delightful to have both partners on this show. And these two are the busiest people that I know. They're involved in so many things and helping so many people that it is incredible. And this fits in totally with the whole stream of what the program is trying to do. And that is to remain positive. And by helping other people like Jamie is talking about, that is an incredible way to do it because you just get so narcissistic, so involved in oneself. And if we reach out to other people, we find out that they're going through difficulties as well as we are. And they're needing help just as well as we are. And if we can reach out and help them, that makes us feel incredibly better. It makes us feel like we can make a difference. So this is, I just really appreciate all this sharing, Jamie. Now, some of the people in the audience may be thinking to themselves, as you're describing this joyfulness, how can I do this? Now, I know you talked about how, where to get the contact and everything, and the technical part of that or how to do that. But what about the personal part? What about, how do I deal with some of these difficulties, which you've mentioned? And what am I in for? And you've described the joy very well that's going to come from that. And there's a joy in dealing with these difficulties. And maybe you can give us or give the audience some advice on how to deal with, once you're in, once you become licensed, and you have that child and you're holding it just like you were holding your daughter, your foster daughter. You know, how to deal with that. So I also work for a nonprofit called Family Huey, Hawaii. And the premise of Family Huey, Hawaii is that we're all in this together. So to eliminate those feelings of isolation during parenting period, doesn't matter what kind of parenting it is, birth parenting, foster parenting. And so one of the assets, I'd say, to fostering is joining this other family, this huge family of fostering. So there's approximately 1200 foster families across Hawaii at any given time. And I don't want to paint it all as roses because there's a lot of bureaucracy involved. And there's a lot of technical legal things that you have to abide by. And that can be the most difficult part. Also, most of these children arrive, and they've been through trauma. So they've either been through physical or mental trauma, or they've been the product of trauma from the birth parent. So a lot of these children might be drug affected at birth, or they might have fetal alcohol syndrome. And there's a lot of strain going through those kinds of things. So at one time, I ran a shelter for zero to three. It was an emergency shelter. So you can also do those kinds of things. You don't have to just be a foster parent. I'll talk about some other programs later on. But you can do respite care for other foster parents. So you're just taking, maybe they have one, maybe they have several siblings together, and they have to go to the mainland because somebody has to have surgery or something. Those kind of circumstances come up quite often. So you can also get your license. And then you're applicable to, I mean, you're available to offer respite care to other foster parents. So it's a little like, check it out for a couple of weeks or whatever the time limit would be on that. And the thing about trauma is now that all of us have been through this pandemic, my feeling is that all children have gone through trauma now, with the social isolation, with grandparents, parents passing away, the grief. Every child that I can think of now has gone through some kind of trauma. So it's more like taking this trauma informed care out into the world at large now. And so with trauma informed care, and you will get that training during your foster training, they keep you abreast of what all the latest science and medicine and psychology is behind trauma and children who have been through trauma. And basically, I mean, to simplify it, you just have to love on them. You have to love on them as fiercely as you can. So the hard part about fostering, and this is what I hear from most people when they say, Oh, I'd love to do it, but I could never give them back. I could never, you know, but you get to a point where you can because if you're really concerned with the health of that child, the health and longevity of resilience for that child, you want them in the best possible place. And the best possible place for the time that you have them is you. But for the time that they're going to go on to is their birth family, if they're being reunified, their biological family, if they're being adopted by a, you know, it could be, it could be tutu. I've known grand tutus. We have adopted their great grandchildren through fostering. It could be an auntie or an uncle. It could be an extended cousin, you know, like far removed from them. But the key is to keep them as part of that actual biological family core. Or whether they're going to be adopted by another family, you know, a completely different family that is looking to adopt, or in many cases, you as the foster parent after a certain time, if the parents, if the parental rights from the parents have been removed, so there's no way that reunification is going to happen with the biological family. You've already sheltered that child for maybe a year, maybe a two years. So you are their family in essence. And then you are able to adopt those children. So I don't want to give the impression that it's just all easy. And you'll get the ideal child that you want. There are a lot of rough spots. And the rough spots can include one lack of sleep. I mean, there's a reason that sleep deprivation is considered a torture, because it's like you cannot function if you're not getting enough sleep, right? So you have to be physically fit enough within yourself to be able to run on very little sleep. If you're if you're having younger children, of course that changes if, you know, they're above five, say. But so there's the physical aspect of it. There's the psychological aspect of it, because everybody is represented. So the state has its own lawyer that's making sure that everything is going according to plan. The child has their own lawyer, which is called a guardian item. And sometimes there are volunteer guardian items who are CASAs, they're called CASAs, who are representing or at least standing in court to represent the rights of the child in particular. The biological parents might have their own lawyer or court appointed lawyer, who's also looking after their interests. What's the quickest way that I can get my child back? I want to make sure that I can, you know, I can do this, that this is monitored. And then of course there's foster parents who don't have their own lawyers at all. We're just, you know, in there for the time that we're in there. So there's all that technical stuff. There is standards that you have to meet even while you have the child. So for instance, the foster reimbursement rate, it's not called a fee, it's not called an income, it is actually what it takes to maintain that child on a monthly basis. So that for 20 years, it stayed at the same rate, which was $529 a month for 20 years a day. And about 10 years ago, we did a lot of lobbying, which they had done every year in the 20 years prior, but it got risen. So I'm not going to get into the technical aspects of how much you get per child, because there are different, you know, age ranges are dependent on it. But there is, you know, a reimbursement that you get every month. There's also a clothing allowance that you get twice a year. There's for babies, there's a diaper allotment that you're given. So those kinds of things are taken care of. And those kinds of things can add up. So, yeah, let me jump in here, Jamie, because we're sort of coming to the end of the program. And I wanted to mention our sort of reinforce what you're saying. And that is that there is a lot of continuity of care that's going on. There's a lot of for the foster parents and the adoptive parents of the natural parents, that all this process is going on that you have information before the problem is dumped in your lap, so to speak. And that information continues. And that's something that's always been a problem with therapy is that all of a sudden a trauma is dumped in your lap and you sort of have to sort of wing it from that moment, whereas so many of these processes that you're talking about give people preparation time, give people continuity of care and allow people to interact for the benefit of the child. And that is marvelous. And I just wanted to add that to what you're saying. The other thing is, since we are running down, I wanted to check with you to see any final words of wisdom that you have for everybody that's listening to this program about fostering. Well, the most common response I get when I'm fostering or I'm talking about fostering to anybody who doesn't know anything about it is, oh, I'd really like to do that. But I don't know how you do it. Emotionally, I don't know how you do it. And I can't tell you how we do it, like each individual is going to do it differently. But I can tell you that if you made it an equation and the amount of love in is definitely compensated by the amount of love that comes back and sort of the heartbreak at giving up that particular child gets healed by that. And you transfer it onto the next child, like I'll never forget any of my foster children, they'll always be in my life in some and some I've never seen again. But I know that they went on to better things, you know, that they went on to a life and that you have the sense of satisfaction that you gave them the grounding that basis, you know, for however length of time, because all it takes is one adult to change the life of a child, any child. Wow. That is beautiful. And thank you for leaving us with that thought, because that's such a great thought. Thank you again, Jamie, for being on the program. It's been marvelous having you here. And I hope to see you again sometime in the near future so we could continue talking about ways we can help people and bring more positivity and joy in their life. Thank you. And I'd like to thank all the people at the channel up Think Tech Hawaii. I'd like to thank Jay and Haley and Michael and everybody who's assisted us. And I'd like to thank you all who've been watching most of all. Thank you and Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.