They also discuss the challenges faced by foster parents, including feeling unheard and unsupported within the system. They emphasize the importance of community support and systemic changes to improve the foster care experience. The discussion also highlights the need for retention of foster families over recruitment, advocating for a more supportive environment. Practical advice is offered for both foster families and those who care about the issue, stressing the importance of asking for help and reassessing one’s situation.
TRANSCRIPT:
Brian (00:05.482)
Hello and welcome to the Foster Friendly podcast. I’m your host, Brian Mavis, along with my esteemed colleagues, Travis and Courtney. Travis and Courtney, we are recording this at the very beginning of 2025. And so our first, it almost feels like, I don’t know that it’s a new podcast season. I don’t know if we’re doing that yet, but it feels like a new season to me personally.
Courtney (00:10.744)
Crazy.
Brian (00:33.93)
We’re like, okay, here we go again, because we took a break from recording for a few weeks. wondering you two, did you do anything fun during the holiday breaks?
Travis (00:34.028)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (00:48.812)
Well, I did. Yeah. Thankfully, I had my whole family together for Christmas. So that was a great start to the break. We don’t.
Brian (00:55.292)
And that’s no small task there to have your whole family together.
Courtney (00:59.726)
Yeah, my whole family is in my immediate family. So missed out on the extended family for the first time ever, but had all nine of us, 11 of us, nine kids together, which was wonderful. And then my husband and I took a trip to Costa Rica to celebrate 20 years of marriage without any of those nine kids. So that was amazing.
Travis (00:59.774)
Right.
Brian (01:05.596)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (01:17.303)
Nice.
Brian (01:17.93)
What was the highlight from Costa Rica? Yeah, that’s fine. Yeah, I’ve done that. By the way, if you don’t want to have to travel across the country to go ziplining for a world-class ziplining experience, there’s a zipline outside of Colorado Springs that is spectacular. I’ve done the zipline in Costa Rica.
Courtney (01:21.194)
Zip lining, without a doubt. Yeah, did. Yeah.
Travis (01:23.02)
Haha
Brian (01:46.814)
The one cause of the route of springs is 10 times scarier.
Travis (01:51.116)
What?
Courtney (01:51.276)
Huh. We are the largest one in Costa Rica, so maybe you are the wrong one.
Brian (01:56.104)
No, the one I was at in Costa Rica took a couple hours. Like you were 500 feet above the ground, you know, and some of those in Costa Rica. So the one in Colorado, the exposure is insane. So you have to check that out sometime. You’re out, fear heights? Okay. Yeah.
Travis (02:07.287)
Okay.
Travis (02:17.408)
I’m out. I’m out, fear of heights.
Courtney (02:18.104)
We will, yeah.
Brian (02:23.314)
Yeah, I thought, so this is how it ends. so Travis, did you do anything fun?
Travis (02:26.594)
Yup.
Travis (02:31.982)
Well, we did our road trip, our annual Christmas road trip to St. Louis where we used to live. My wife’s parents are there. So Griswold family vacation, load up the minivan and yeah. In fact, no, yeah, Redneck. Well, actually, and on the, think they actually make a trip to, they go through St. Louis. So yeah, yep, that’s right. And no grandma was not strapped on top. She survived intact, was not part of the journey. We had a good time.
Brian (02:41.572)
you nice. Grandma strapped to the top.
Courtney (02:42.126)
Red deck.
Brian (02:51.436)
huh,
Brian (02:56.916)
Take care, bye.
Travis (03:01.966)
As we’re thinking about fun, I have a fun fact before we hear what you did, Brian, for fun. So fun fact for you guys, which country, okay, has its import is also so its biggest import is also its biggest export. Biggest export in, okay, I’m going to give you the country. Okay. So Australia is the country. It’s the only country and its biggest.
Brian (03:05.066)
Okay, uh-huh. fact.
Courtney (03:20.11)
Well, can you guys tell us what is that? What’s the thing?
Brian (03:21.099)
Brian (03:25.748)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (03:26.305)
Okay.
Travis (03:31.934)
Export is also its biggest import. So there’s a clue. So Australia, we know the country now. Only country in the world.
Brian (03:37.854)
Australia, Vietnamese people.
Travis (03:43.246)
That’s a great stab in the dark. I’m gonna say kangaroo meat. No, I’m not sure about it.
Courtney (03:55.214)
surfboards or vacationers? don’t know, vacationers.
Travis (03:56.526)
Okay, okay. Now you got close to a surf voice. Boomerang. The boomerang. Okay. We launch it. look it up. Okay. So there we go. Dad joke of the new year. All right. Yeah. Okay.
Brian (04:05.79)
wait, wait, okay. Ha ha, you leave, yeah, you get them out and they keep coming back. Got it. Kind of fun fact, dad joke. Mash up, all right. I did, for my Christmas present to my sons-in-law, I took them snowmobiling up in Wyoming in the area called the Snowy Range, which,
Courtney (04:12.728)
Yeah.
Wow.
Brian (04:34.236)
was all day we were on our own and you can get yourself in some serious trouble quickly up there. mean, it was like there were a couple of moments where it’s like, hmm, I hope we’re not stranded overnight in this snowstorm. It was because we’re lost currently. One of the snowmobiles is buried.
Travis (04:53.784)
I know.
Travis (04:57.601)
Okay
Brian (05:01.63)
Yeah, so it was a it was a fun time though. So it was a good good good bonding experience with my sons in law. It’s it’s interesting being a at my age and stage of life and trying to figure out how to parent adult kids and the ones that are married to your adult kids. And so and so we weren’t paying. I wasn’t parenting them, but it was like how do you? How do you be a good father in law? So was like, well, have some fun once in awhile so.
Travis (05:04.206)
harrowing.
Brian (05:31.038)
We did that. Yeah, yeah.
Travis (05:31.054)
That’s cool. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Courtney (05:31.63)
Nice, that’s great.
Brian (05:35.122)
Well, speaking of fun, we’re going to talk about foster parents quitting.
Courtney (05:39.885)
Yeah.
Travis (05:40.494)
Great segue.
Courtney (05:42.989)
Yeah.
Brian (05:43.37)
Thank you. I’m a master. Yes, yes. The fun topic of foster parents, getting, opening up their hearts real big, caring about these kids, saying, yes, we’re going to do this, getting brave, signing up, jumping in, getting a kid coming into their life. And then a year later, half of them quitting. And so.
Courtney (05:46.06)
Wow.
Travis (05:46.456)
Brilliant.
Courtney (05:49.982)
That’s good.
Brian (06:11.664)
And then the attrition rate continues on a slide down from there. So we’re talking about foster parent attrition today and why it matters. Like who cares if they’re quitting and also going to reveal some opportunities, solutions that anybody can help out with. And so if you’re like, I don’t think I’m going to be a foster parent, but I still would love to see how I can support them.
Travis (06:15.725)
Yep. Yep.
Brian (06:41.108)
There are ways and then the ways to help keep them staying in the game and getting better and feeling not like they’re just drained. So that’s our fun topic for the day. So Travis, how about you guide us a little bit? Travis.
Courtney (06:57.699)
Fun one.
Travis (06:58.83)
All right, well, here we go. yeah, great setup to this. really is. And I think actually the first way I would start is to talk about why it does matter to everybody. Because you might be listening. I think it’s easy to hear these types of things and go, yeah, well, maybe I don’t know much about foster care, but I can imagine it’s very hard. It’s the state’s issue or, you know, that must be terrible for, you know, whatever state you’re
Brian (07:13.514)
Yeah.
Travis (07:27.086)
It is all of our issue and it all matters and it should. I think the thing is, that when I look at it, so my other gig at America’s Kids Belong has been grant writing. So that’s led me to a lot of research on different things that we’re looking into or, you know, kind of statistics and all that. So I want to kind of paint a big picture and then we’ll talk more about it. But of the ways I think that impacts across the board and that it should impact everyone listening. So first of all, I think there are, um,
three buckets I would look at to describe that are all getting impacted by foster parents quitting. And I think also what we’re going to see is there’s sort of a systemic thing that happens like a domino effect that goes multi-directional. Like what impacts one also impacts the other and therefore makes that one worse. so anyway, it’s deeply in some ways complicated and otherwise extremely easy in some ways as far as looking at it.
The three buckets I’m going to say are first, let’s look at child welfare. It’s not a surprise then that, you know, they’re the ones tasked with primarily the recruitment in their states and training families and that. so when there’s like nationally, if around 400,000 kids are in the U S foster care system at any time, we kind of say nationally that we’re, we’re about half, half short of the foster parents needed. Some States are doing better than others and that can always change.
So what happens then is if after a year, 50 % of foster parents quit, and what you said, Brian, already is by year three, we’re below 20%. We can see that there’s a perpetual gap in recruitment. Continually being down those numbers mean child welfare is constantly tasked with recruiting new parents. So just the expense of retraining, retraining, retraining.
re investing money in that. And then also just the morale and burnout that child welfare experiences just because of that. I mean, it’s hard enough that the jobs of removal and just the stress of dealing with the space, but then to on top of that, always be facing like, you know, your, your company, everyone, everyone’s quitting in your company all the time, like just that alone. So there’s that part. And let’s move on to foster parents. Yeah. Just a lack of culture of success. You you think of a very difficult thing.
Brian (09:25.972)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (09:26.562)
Definitely.
Travis (09:48.972)
that you’re involved with that as people are great people aren’t making it, there’s not that culture of success. You’re losing potential mentors that would be great, but they’re not there long enough. And then of course, the kind of obvious, it hurts their recruitment efforts in their network. I if I have a bad experience as a foster parent, I’m probably not.
Brian (10:00.308)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (10:13.62)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Travis (10:15.086)
I’m probably doing the opposite message of recruiting. Yeah, exactly. Right. And the last one, and I want to hear your guys’ thoughts around this, is the kids themselves. And I think that’s what we really have to work, that’s at the core center of this, is placement instability. So every time, you know, a foster family quits for whatever reason it is, that means another removal into a new home.
Courtney (10:15.48)
Good. Not helping. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian (10:17.982)
Mm-hmm
Travis (10:40.192)
And then just again, the sort of loss of relational trust and building and growth there, uprooting from we’ve talked about this before, but about your community, losing your friends network, maybe you’re in a new school, new county. So now you’ve lost all of that. So there continues to be this disruption in the life of a kid in foster care that, you know, of course, when you’re trying to heal and get stability, awful situation for that. And then of course we can see them how these, you know, if
more child welfare as they’re quitting, it puts a different burden on foster parents, it goes the other direction. So anyway, that’s the big picture I think swirling around. Yeah, that I see.
Brian (11:20.99)
Yeah, and he said, they touch. there are three strands of a chord. And if one of those is affected, then it affects the other two. so I like to spend some time just thinking about its effect on kids when parents, foster parents quit at such a rate. So again, to our listeners, when
One way to think about this is let’s say 100 new foster parents are licensed today. A year from today, only 50 of those families would be left. Then three years out, Travis, you mentioned it’s fewer than 20%. It’s about 17 of those 100 families are left. And then go out another three years, there’s only five families left.
So you’ve recruited 100, six years later you’re down to five. Now some of those families, especially those ones later on, not the early ones, they might have quit because they’ve adopted and they’re like, we’re gonna close up things and focus on that. But certainly the ones in the first year, maybe in the first three years, those didn’t happen, those didn’t close because of something good, typically.
Now, how does that affect a kid? So I thinking through this. So you talked about placement and stability. And so just imagine being a child, are, you know, you’re in survival mode. You’re all your bodily systems are in the constant toxic stress, just trying to, and who knows where you’re, what your situation is as far as how far along you’ve been displaced and what you’ve been removed from.
But then this family who’s taking care of you says, we can’t do it anymore. And the kid, maybe they quit because they just are frustrated with the system, but the kid can’t help but think, I’m not worth caring about. Another family quit on me. And so that’s one of the first things is just the emotional relational impact that makes on a child when a family quits, because they feel like you quit on me.
Travis (13:36.238)
Hmm.
Brian (13:48.906)
Another impact is just delayed permanency. So if that goal is permanency and what we mean by that could be reunification or could mean adoption, the chances of that happening sooner than later goes out the window when a family quits. It increases the chances of a child staying in a temporary or institutionalized care.
And so, I mean, that’s huge. mean, the child just keeps delaying getting reunified, keeps delaying having that sense of belonging and permanency with an adoptive family, or is now put in an institutional care because there’s just not enough families to care for them. Then I think about disruption to education. So when…
a family quits and the child does have to be moved again because the family quit to another family or to a group home, there might be a good chance then they also have to change the schools. And so that’s another huge one. I’ve got a few more for you guys. What else comes to mind?
Courtney (15:12.546)
Just thinking about that, mean, those kids, typically, I’m going to make the assumption that the kiddos whose families are quitting mid-placement are hard to place kids already. They’re the kids that have some mental health issues, maybe typically older. And so now you’ve got this kiddo who’s already hard to place, likely has been in multiple homes already, and now they’re needing to find a new place for them. And the best place for them is a home that has experience.
Travis (15:39.447)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (15:40.066)
but they’re all eaten up by the other kids who have gone through this. And so they don’t have an experienced home left over is what I see a lot. The experienced homes are taken up quickly. And so now we have these kiddos going into another brand new home that doesn’t have experience at all fostering yet, more or less with a hard to place kiddo. And then they quit and it just happens again and again, right? This cycle just continues.
Travis (15:46.4)
Wow, hell. Hmm.
Brian (15:47.434)
Hmm
Travis (15:56.845)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (16:00.248)
Hmm. Yeah.
Brian (16:02.814)
Yeah, is, Travis, I’ve heard you talk about that, that loss of experience, the loss of mentorship, and so many families never even getting to that point where they could be mentors.
Travis (16:10.824)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Travis (16:20.942)
Totally, yeah. I often think of comparing it to marriage, know, sort of a, you know, something in the social realm that, you know, is, you know, being honest, it can be hard. It is hard. And we see a similar attrition rate of marriages, you know, plus probably 50 % of marriages. But in marriage, we have, there’s this culture of, we can think of like mentorship and all kinds of, know, sort of like you feel like there’s, there’s a culture there though, that’s there to also help more.
And it just feels like when you compare the two, in many ways, being a foster parent can be as hard, if not harder. And then the lack of that mentorship, just because there’s just not the structure of people around, I feel like.
Brian (17:03.624)
Yeah, it’s what you think, again, go back to this scenario of 100 new foster families are certified today and they’re like, we’d love to be matched up with a mentoring family. I mean, that’d be ideal. But the reality is, like, well, there’s maybe eight that qualify.
Travis (17:17.89)
Yeah. Right. Right.
Courtney (17:19.566)
And we can’t use them fall a hundred. Yeah, Yeah, it was hard. just, I mean, so many kids, can’t think of, I mean, we’ve had a few kids that are directly removed and then placed into our home, but most of the teenagers that have come into our home came from another foster family that either quit or just said, hey, this placement’s too hard. Almost all of them, the teenagers that have come into our home came from another foster family. And many of them, like I can think of one girl to say, this is my 14th home.
Travis (17:38.296)
Hmm.
Travis (17:49.312)
my gosh.
Courtney (17:49.422)
in the last few years, like 14 homes in the last few years. What that does to kids again, it’s heartbreaking.
Brian (17:56.724)
So Courtney, with that being your life experience.
What advice would you give to foster parents who don’t wanna quit, but they’re like, man, it is hard. And how is it that you’re able to not quit when all these other kids that you’re getting had families quit on them? I mean, and again, it might be hard to not pat yourself on the back, but if you could just be as objective as you can be of like, I think the difference is this versus that.
Courtney (18:32.142)
Yeah. And for us, we didn’t start with teenagers, right? So we started with, well, that’s not fully true, but for the most, for long-term placements, we didn’t start with teenagers. So we’d been in the foster realm for a while to understand a lot of the needs. And then it was, okay, can we really take this on? Cause our big thing when we take a placement is we do not want a placement to come and then say, they can’t stay here. Right? So we’ve really consider like, what are all the, what are all the things? What’s the stuff we’re getting into? And can we handle this right now in this situation, in our marriage, in our, family situation, our-
Brian (18:51.623)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (19:02.274)
Finances, all of it. And then say, can we say yes, or is this not right now, or this one doesn’t work for our family? And I think that’s right there. You have to be so honest about your current reality and whether or not, because it’s going to be hard. And if you take that in thinking, well, we’re going through this and this and this, but we think we’ll be OK. If you’ve got some of those red flags, I would say, you know what? This might not be the placement for you right now. And so we’ve been pretty open and honest about that.
Our desire is we do not want a kid to have to move on from our home into another home unless there was a, you know, a reason that we couldn’t control.
Brian (19:38.726)
Mm-hmm. So I like that. And again, going through some of those specific questions, can our marriage handle this? Can our kids handle this? Can our finances handle this? Can our calendar handle this? And to go through those set of questions and do a little reality therapy with yourself and say, well, yes, yes, no. Like, well, then that’s a problem. Is that no immovable?
Courtney (19:58.542)
Yeah.
Brian (20:06.952)
Is there something you can adjust to make that a yes? And if it’s not, then it’s better to say no before the child comes into your home than to say no a couple of months after.
Travis (20:16.141)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (20:20.218)
And almost every home I know has their non-negotiables. I know some people it is harm to animals. Like, hey, if this kid has a history of harm to animals, it is a no in our house no matter what. Or every family usually has their list of nos or we cannot. And it’s, again, being open and honest about that because most of the time if they’re older kids, the caseworkers know a little bit more about them. And they might not know everything, but they often know a little bit more. And if you’re saying no to a certain thing, but you’re not
Brian (20:26.409)
Ahem.
Brian (20:35.594)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Courtney (20:48.974)
telling the caseworker that, I mean, you’re just getting yourself again into this sticky situation. So I would be very upfront about what your absolutes are or where your drawing point is, drawing in line.
Travis (21:02.04)
And I was just going to add to, know we’re going to get into more of like some of the reasons that, you know, we’re kind of seeing and common reasons and preventable maybe ones, but also kind of big picture too. think that is important to kind of set this up as what we’re also not saying, cause there’s tension here between also recognizing when you actually do need to step out. Because I think there’s probably a lot of foster or some, you know, I don’t know to quantify, but maybe foster parents that are in it too long. And at some point,
what it’s doing to their marriage, their own family, their, you know, even the kids in their care that they’re not being healthy enough just because they’re, they need to maybe take a season to break or maybe they just need to close the home and support foster families. We’re also not kind of making this a martyr thing, you know, because you can go to the other extreme as well. So I think like there’s tension in there.
Brian (21:50.832)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Courtney (21:55.342)
Yeah, I’ll give you a very real example. We just had three hard teenage boys all about the age of 14 in a row. And we have a 14 year old boy in our home and it has been really hard on him. And the latest just today, we got a text saying we think he’s staying at home and we’re praising for that. We’ve been praying for that. We’ve been hoping for that. We’ve been helping. But we told our caseworker after these three, we really need a break from teenage boys for a little while. That’s not saying down the road, but right now.
our son that is at age, he needs a break and don’t even call me because I don’t want to be tempted. like do not call us unless you want to make us angry. Really. We had to we had to say that very directly.
Brian (22:27.53)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brian (22:39.594)
That’s really astute. And again, it’s not just you, it’s paying attention to your family dynamics. And it’s then saying, well, we’re not saying no to every kid, we’re just saying no to this category. Because we know that hypothetically Courtney would say a three-year-old comes in there.
you’re like, okay, that’s something we could talk about because it’s not going to impact our own 14-year-old like the other ones did. it does help to, yeah, instead of saying it’s all or nothing, we’re going to say yes to everything or we’re just out. It’s like, no, have some discernment on where your family can do well.
Travis (23:30.286)
That’s good.
Brian (23:33.204)
So I am curious, mean, know, families quitting, we fostered for five years officially and then have kind of unofficially fostered outside the system now for multiple years as well. Why are families quitting at such a higher rate? I mean, if this were a company and half your employees quit in the first year, Human Resources would have some…
figuring out and some explaining, some splaining to do as Ricky Ricardo would say to Lucy. Lucy? So, yeah, why? Why are they quitting?
Travis (24:04.254)
There’s some splayin’ I had to do.
Ha
Courtney (24:09.292)
Yeah. Yeah.
Travis (24:10.983)
Hahaha!
Courtney (24:17.036)
Yeah, I’ll take this over just a little bit of thinking. It’s also really hard to track, right? Because like in most states you have CPAs, which are private agencies and you have counties and sometimes you people that quit one and go together. And so don’t really know if there are really good stats to see if somebody quits. they continue elsewhere? Right? Because I see that a lot in, I was a recruiter foster care recruiter for years and through that I had a lot of meetings. We meetings on recruitment and retention and I sat in the state meetings every single month right out here.
whatever these reasons. And I would often hear, you know, they get mad at a certain county and there’s a big group of foster parents that’ll leave that county or that organization. And then a lot of them do go on fostering, but they go with somebody else. So there’s that reality of sometimes, you know, an organization, a county will make some rule that people just don’t like, right? The red tape behind fostering or the changes in the systems, new laws come out and people get mad. And like Travis, kind of said, you know, they…
They share, like one foster parent will share it on some social media platform or something else, and then other people hear it, and it starts just this domino effect of people leaving in groves. And I have seen that multiple times happen. And then, so not just the system side of it, but then there’s also the everyday foster parenting side of it. It is hard. It is emotional roller coaster for you, for your family, the ups and downs, and you don’t know where this case is going.
And it can just be a hard case. There are those cases. You might have a kiddo in your care who came to you at birth and now they’re four years old and you’re the only parenting figure they have. And now they’re moved across the states to somebody in Virginia, across the United States. And you’re like, how can that be best? And I see that too. Frostpairs, it’s hard. It’s hard to fully get on board with the case outcome sometimes. And so it leads to, I can’t do this again. I can’t put my heart through this again.
Brian (26:04.042)
Hmm.
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Courtney (26:10.016)
And then through that, another one is like feeling that their voice isn’t heard. You know, I, voiced this, we spoke up in court or we went down this path and attended all these meetings and my voice is not being heard. Like they’re not, they’re, don’t hear the foster parents voice. I’m not saying I’ve, I have probably felt that way a few times, but I’m not on that bandwagon right now, but I do know a lot of people that just feel like the foster parents voices aren’t heard enough in the whole team.
Travis (26:26.446)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (26:32.174)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (26:33.782)
sphere of things. And it’s hard because we don’t know. We don’t always, there’s things they can’t tell us. And so we don’t see all the behind the things, you know, situations and decisions and things that they’re taking into their consideration. We see it from our lens, of course, and that can sometimes just really sway our decision to keep on fostering or to quit.
Travis (26:48.398)
Thank
Brian (26:52.938)
So I want to make sure I heard you right, Courtney. I think there was like four things I want to distinguish there. One was that the child might be hard for your family. So that’s one. The second is the system itself could be frustrating. The third one is just kind of emotional heartache if a child’s outcome is one that
you don’t agree with or it just is a hard outcome. And then the fourth thing was just feeling unseen and unheard and that what I think, even though I care for this child 24-7, I’m the last person asked, I’m the last person considered. And so it’s those four.
Travis (27:45.603)
huh.
Brian (27:51.431)
Did I get that right?
Courtney (27:52.93)
Yeah, and really they can fall into the two main categories of being not supported or under-resourced, right? All those things that I mentioned can fall under that. Like, I’m not resourced to handle my emotions. I’m not resourced to handle my feelings in this. Or a hard situation, or understanding this situation. So being educated and being supported, I feel like are the two overarching things that those all fall underneath.
Travis (28:17.826)
Yeah.
Brian (28:18.42)
Travis, what have you found out as far as why people quit?
Travis (28:25.676)
Yeah, no, I think that it really doesn’t encompass about everything. think narrowing a little bit in, there was a study done that it was from the National Foster Parent Association that specifically some things stated were struggles dealing with stress and then difficulty processing grief and loss. So those are kind of sub things within like under resourced. But I do think like, I think a lot of that of just…
You know, and we’ve made a lot of gains in understanding the brain more and trauma. And so I think you’re seeing a lot more of those resources that are game changers in some ways. I think I just, I like to focus in on the, many people not adequately understanding or having that community around them or the know how to deal with the process and grief and loss because, know,
whether you had a placement that it was really in your eyes successful and everything went really well and it was really hard to say goodbye. mean, that’s a certain type of a loss you’ve encountered. Your kids, your spouse, you’ve all kind of been in that and you have to say goodbye. It’s heartbreaking. But also in cases where it was extremely difficult and there was relief that came out of maybe having that child leave and go into maybe a higher level of care or something, that’s another type of a loss. That’s a…
Brian (29:25.418)
.
Travis (29:45.774)
Maybe there was some shame in that, guilt, we could have done better or, or, know, maybe you have some hard feelings around, like, um, it felt like there was more damage that happened inside your home to you guys emotionally or whatever, because of that. And so that’s a certain type of, uh, you know, another thing to have to work through. And so I don’t know. It’s just like, these are the things I think that really is going to change changes. Um,
when we can sort of attack those things and resource those things and offer supports and, know, anyway, that can help those types of things that are, we would say preventable or have some solutions to work.
Brian (30:26.708)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (30:27.906)
Yeah, right now we’re fostering in a small community, right? We are a small county, small area, 20,000 people in our town. And so we have a lot of attention from the foster care community as far as supports. Our caseworker, I I talk to my caseworker almost every single day. When I was in a bigger community, that just was not reality. Right. So I look at these things and they’ve asked Bobby and I before, because my husband and I, we’ve said, this is the best place. We fostered in four different places now.
This is by far hands down the best. they’re like, well, tell us more. And it really does come down to that support. Like we feel more supported now. And I know that maybe you can’t always do that when you’re living in a big area, know, urban area, but it really needs, we need some system change in that systematic change because we feel the difference and we’re licensed 17 years foster home, right? Imagine a new home that doesn’t have what we have right now. I can’t imagine keep going without it. So yeah, there are some just definitely.
definitely some systematic changes that I think we could all rally for in getting foster families help, getting them support, getting them, you know, I don’t know that means more caseworkers to have their caseload of foster families that they’re focusing on, you fewer support groups, you name it, but.
Travis (31:40.462)
Yeah, but this is exactly what we’re talking about when we talk about the dominoes go bi-directionally because you’re talking about when, you know, some people are hanging in there because they’ve got such a great child welfare caseworker that is so supportive and in tune with their needs and constantly checking in. And then there’s others that, you know, that person quit because of they lost so many foster parents. And now you’ve lost some really good child welfare workers and new one comes in with a great heart, but no experience.
Courtney (31:45.474)
Yeah.
Courtney (31:59.404)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (32:08.108)
Now you’re navigating with that and that makes it harder for the foster family. And so it’s just like, man, I mean, it is, right?
Courtney (32:13.56)
Keeps going. Yeah.
Brian (32:18.024)
Yeah. Courtney, do want to, I wonder too though, if it’s not just because you’re in a small town, because I can picture some small towns of the same size where their child welfare is not going well. And foster families are like, I’m in a town of 20,000 and it’s a disaster and my experience is bad. So I think credit goes not just to the size of your town, but you must have some good leadership out there.
that are helping it make it go well. So yeah, if you’re in a small town and you’re doing it and it’s not going well, don’t be mystified. It always comes down to people. so now good people could be in a bad system. And I personally believe that that’s why we need more good people in it, because I think good people are the ones who can change the system, can improve a system.
Courtney (32:46.659)
video.
Courtney (33:16.482)
Yeah, one small thing that I think anybody, you can bring up ideas to your caseworkers, to your county, to your CPA. One thing that I found that they do really well is like after this placement, just hopefully, not hopefully, but we, we are hoping for the best for him and his mom to be getting along and being able to do this. Hoping he stays with her, right? Our case with him will be closed and they will have a follow-up meeting. They will sit Bobby and I down for one to two hours and ask us like, what went well, what did not go well? Did you feel supported? And they, they do this for every single placement.
And we’ve never had that before. So that’s one thing you could even suggest to your caseworkers, hey, can we have an exit meeting when their case is closed that we need as a foster family? And then they can hear you and hear what did you struggle through? How did we support you well? Where do you need more support? And that continues that system of the change.
Travis (33:48.376)
Hmm.
Brian (34:05.674)
Yeah, that’s a great idea.
Travis (34:06.862)
Yeah, think of it, just the whole support piece. think of the track analogy, if you ever ran track, like I think of that a lot of like where, like if you, especially, guess sprinters, you don’t put blocks in for the mile or whatever. But, but if you’re running a race where you need the blocks and looking at that as like foster families, when you come out of the blocks supported and you get that, you know, out of the gate, confidence, you know, you’re, gaining momentum.
learning from experience, you know, just come out strong versus it. You don’t have that set and you come out and you’re just your confidence is shot. You’re coming around that first turn way behind what feels like you should be at, you know, and it’s just like from there on it feels you just want to quit. You I just want to quit the race. So, you know, I just think of that analogy of blocks, the start, get these guys, get yourself started well. And yeah.
Courtney (34:54.328)
Yeah.
Brian (35:01.982)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s huge. Yeah. Almost on the other side of what Courtney was saying of having a good exit, have a good insurance. So good onboarding experience. Well, I want to shift gears a little bit. I’m still talking about attrition and retention and talk about how we can improve things. And specifically, I’m going to share a little bit about
where, what we’re doing, what AKB’s trying to do. And so, first of all, our, we began as a, essentially a recruitment organization. And a few years down the road, our emphasis of recruitment, we still are a recruitment organization, but we decided to really, in a sense, prioritize retention.
because we felt like, what’s the point of recruiting all these families if they’re just falling out of the, you know, putting in a bucket full of holes and they’re just falling right out? And so we used to have this little diagram where in the center was a hub and that was relationships. we, and for example, we would go to church and say, like, everything needs to be relational. And the first thing you need to do is research. go and find out who’s,
fostering your family, how they’re doing, go find out in your community how things are going, meet with the heads of child welfare in your community, those kinds of things. And then the next thing you’ll want to do is start recruiting families. And then after you recruit these families, then you’ll focus on retention. Well, after a couple of years of doing that, we said, we’ve got it out of order. The hub is right, the first step is right. But the first step that you’re going to find out is these
The families that are currently doing it are drowning and many of them feel like they’re about to quit. And so you don’t go into a recruitment mode. You go immediately into retention. You haven’t recruited one family yet. Don’t worry about it. Start with retaining the ones that are already in the game and don’t worry, focus on recruitment until you’ve got those families feeling like, okay, we’re feeling supported.
Brian (37:27.306)
We’re stronger, we can stay in the game. And Travis, to your point, you made earlier was, when families quit, they’re an anti-recruitment billboard. And when they stay, a lot of them are a light. They’re an inspiration to other families who say, we’ve been watching you for the past couple of years fostering, and it’s really made us want to step up and foster too. So my point is,
Travis (37:38.616)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (37:53.934)
Hmm.
Brian (37:56.33)
Retention is recruitment. And so if families are quitting, that is anti-recruitment. so this stat of families quitting from 100 to 50 down to five in a few years, that’s not just a stat, it’s a signal, something’s wrong. And so,
Travis (38:19.107)
Hmm.
Brian (38:22.748)
it’s got to get fixed. And so I would encourage all churches, all child welfare agencies, put more chips on the retention square and bet on that. So philosophically, that’s a conviction that we have.
Travis (38:38.616)
Hmm.
Travis (38:46.446)
I love that.
Courtney (38:47.33)
Yeah, completely agree.
Travis (38:50.861)
That’s the right.
Brian (38:52.801)
So with that in mind, and we were like, okay, so how do we do that? And that really, and I don’t intend this to be a commercial for the Foster Friendly Program, know, a little bit what this podcast was named after. And it’s a friendly language, it’s a program, it’s a point of view, we have an app, all those kinds of things. But the…
idea behind it was, I don’t know if a lot of our listeners probably aren’t familiar with some of the philosophies of social change and transformation. That’s something that I’ve been involved with for 20 years. And my role on church staff was community transformation. mean, we literally kind of wrote the book on it. And one of the philosophies that
I embrace and that we’re trying to implement with Foster Friendly is called ABCD. And that’s short for Asset Based Community Development. And the point of view is instead of looking at your town and saying, what are all the problems? What’s all the gaps? You look at your town and say, what are all our strengths that are just
Travis (40:15.246)
Hmm.
Brian (40:18.97)
not being utilized though, or aren’t being applied or repurposed towards this issue. And so with the Foster Friendly idea, the program, the app, everything is, can we get businesses and churches and other nonprofits and the civic organizations and special events and Kids Night Out and trauma trainings, all those things to say,
yeah, we’ll step into this issue. Or we have been involved in this issue and now you’re providing a platform for us to be elevated and to be more easily found and used. And so the community is the solution. And it’s again based on a conviction that I have is that I
I’m a contrarian to the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. I do not believe that. I believe it takes a family to raise a child. If a child had a village but no family, that’s not good. But if they have a family, that’s great. But it takes a village to support that family. And so I would love to see
Travis (41:21.454)
huh.
Hmm.
Travis (41:33.4)
Yeah.
Travis (41:42.414)
Hmm.
Brian (41:45.962)
these foster-friendly, the whole communities become foster-friendly and say, when you’re opening up not just your heart, but your home to these kids, we’re saying yes to you. We’ve got you. We’ve got your back and we’re gonna do it whether it has to do with material resources or emotional resources or time out or spiritual strength, all those kinds of things.
I’m just convinced in the power of that. And partly I’m convinced by it because the town takes ownership. They don’t feel like they’re being told what to do and being managed. And it’s like, well, this isn’t really our thing. No, they’re saying, we’ll figure it out.
Travis (42:19.81)
Hmm.
Travis (42:24.632)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (42:29.57)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (42:36.012)
Yeah. Because these are your kids. mean, that’s that I love that on a previous episode where Nanette was on here and talked about like, this is this one area where when you get involved, you bringing like you’re bringing this to your house. Few issues are like that where you go out and serve or whatever. But you’re or this is your community. It’s your backyard and you guys are going out to your kids.
Courtney (42:38.476)
Yeah.
Brian (42:39.102)
Yeah.
Brian (42:51.689)
Yes.
Brian (43:00.446)
Yeah, when you’re dealing with hunger or homelessness, you go to the shelter and you help serve food or you go to the shelter and you hand out jackets, those kinds of things. But you do foster care, you’re like opening up the door to your own home. It is a whole different game.
Courtney (43:21.006)
Thank
Travis (43:22.03)
Yeah. Yeah. it’s, it’s, I say this a lot, it’s foster care to me is the space that is extremely rare in 2025. It’s still this relevant thing where Americans actually need one another outside of, we’ve talked about this before, natural disasters. Where do we need one another in this day where we need that connection that we’ve lost many of us. So it gives us that opportunity.
Brian (43:48.66)
Yeah, kind of the shame of it is that we have a disaster virtually in every county, but we don’t see the cause of it. Like if a tornado went through and ripped up families, man, people would jump in. But when it’s addiction and mental health, it’s all hidden.
Travis (43:58.318)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Courtney (44:06.614)
obvious.
Travis (44:06.71)
Yep.
Brian (44:16.06)
And so people don’t know that there’s a disaster.
Travis (44:19.982)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It’s the haunting nature of it. It’s just this invisible crisis that lurks in the behind the white picket fences of America.
Brian (44:26.366)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brian (44:32.724)
So let’s talk to the families and I’m thinking of kind of closing in this way as far as giving help. Two part question and I’m gonna give it to both of you and you can point to each other however you wanna do this. What one piece of hopeful practical advice
Travis (44:57.55)
.
Brian (45:02.58)
would you give to the foster family right now who feels like, I don’t know if I can hang on? And what one piece of hopeful practical advice would you give to the person who is just not a foster family but cares about this issue? Maybe they work at a business, maybe they work at a church, maybe they’re in the government, but they’re not in child welfare.
Maybe they run another nonprofit. What advice would you give them? So let’s start with the family who’s currently fostering, who’s right now struggling to hang on.
Courtney (45:46.51)
I would say take a break. You don’t need to close your doors to take, but you can take a break, right? Like.
Brian (45:53.514)
I just heard a bunch of foster families breathe a huge sigh of relief. They exhaled for the first time in days when you with that answer.
Travis (45:54.798)
Mmm.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Courtney (45:59.246)
It’s okay to take a break, you know, and I feel like people feel like we’re again, like I feel like I’ve seen it time and time again. Again, it goes back to why I took the caseworker. Do not call me because I will be tempted to say yes, I know that I have an addictive personality to wanting to save these kids. I do. And I need to know my limits and I know that we need to our families and we need to say we need to dry this line.
Travis (46:10.187)
Thank
Travis (46:18.638)
Hmm. Yeah.
Courtney (46:28.824)
So don’t call me. And it’s OK to say that. It’s OK to say, we need a break right now. And also, in that, I’m going to actually kind of answer both your questions at once. If a foster family, if I go and ask some of my close friends who I love dearly, but they don’t fully understand what we do in our home, they’re going to look at this and be like, yeah, you guys have done enough. Just close your doors. That’s what they’re going to say to us. That’s going to be their advice to us. And sometimes that is the best advice. Again, we know ourselves better. We know our families better. We know.
Travis (46:38.03)
Whoa, there we go.
Brian (46:39.37)
No
Courtney (46:57.526)
If it’s time to say, really are done, we need to be done. But sometimes it is, we just need a break. And I would say, I’ll say, talk to other foster families, go to them first and just talk about what you’re going through, where your family’s at, what your needs are, because they’re going to be real with you. And they might say, you know what, take the break. Versus your other friends saying, draw the line in the sand. And so if you’re not a foster family and you’re listening to this, one thing you can do is just really hear them. Just stop and listen and be there to be a listening ear.
Travis (47:08.782)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (47:24.726)
And don’t try to give the advice that you don’t understand because you haven’t walked these shoes. So don’t hear, you know, this was a really hard placement and then just say, well, you know what? You’ve done enough. I would just, I would say you guys are done. That’s not always what these foster families need to hear in the moment. Sometimes we just need to voice our concerns and have somebody a listening ear. Somebody to go to coffee with and just be our friend without giving the unsolicited advice.
Travis (47:42.734)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Travis (47:48.894)
and often terrible advice. mean, yeah, you know, and a lot of people will say things like, well, this is what you signed up for. I’m just trying to lovingly speak into that. it’s like, would you say that if my child was sick? Would you say that if, you know, my I was struggling with my spouse, you signed up for marriage, you know, this anyway, but we can send another podcast. Bad advice and
Courtney (47:50.211)
Yeah.
Brian (47:50.858)
Hehehehehe
Brian (48:08.68)
I think, yeah, let’s, yeah, love that podcast called Good Question, Bad Advice.
Travis (48:14.67)
Yeah, with no compassion mixed in. That’s a, that’s just go all in. But I love those. That was, that was, I love what you said. I mean, as far as just adding to that, I love that because I do think when you set, when you get permission, we’ll be able to take a break. It also not just, can, for some people, it is literally just a breathe is probably your first step. And then to reassess things like,
Courtney (48:17.752)
Yeah.
Brian (48:21.034)
You
Travis (48:39.936)
Okay, let’s identify because sometimes if you don’t have that break where you can’t just breathe and actually make space to kind of take an assessment, you know, it’s in that time then that you can kind of ask one another and your kids and you know, what is let’s get a pulse of our family, the state of the union of our house, how are we doing and try to identify what are the type of things was it is it has it just been too long? Has it been hard placements?
Is it we’re not having enough support? Cause that’s a whole nother thing of like, you know, I think there’s a lot of foster families too, that can probably feel it’s hard to ask for help. And that’s a problem. I mean, you have got to be able to ask for help and build that support. we’re talking about resources and we’ll have links to some of this stuff, but to be able to know that you there, you know, is this a support issue? You know, kind of get to the heart of maybe what some of this is, and maybe you will discover it’s
It’s deeper than other things. We need some therapy ourselves and we need, maybe we don’t come back to this. Maybe we find a ways to support foster families, but maybe you do find some like tangible helps or whatever those things are that, okay, yeah, that’s exactly what it was. It was, you my husband, you know, in your case, Bobby, whatever, he’s not getting enough time with guys. Well, let’s build that in, you know, I mean, so these things that you can kind of find out what, those are. And I guess, yeah, just the message to other people are.
This is all of our issues. you care about the future of our country, kids that, you you care about academics and we’ll talk about this in future episodes, but going upstream into issues that affect everything from homelessness to trafficking and poverty, foster care is a feeder into that stuff. And it should matter to all of us that, you your role of supporting if you have a business and you can support, you maybe there’s, you find out more about foster care in your community and ways your business can support that or.
families and maybe your workplace. It matters and it should matter.
Courtney (50:41.944)
Yeah. And Travis, one thing just to add onto that, when you said to reassess, that reassessment might mean, hey, let’s just be a respite home for right now. Like, hey, we realized that long-term, this isn’t working for us in this season. Let’s be a respite home. Or the on-call family. On-call is needed. I hear that from a lot of caseworkers. We have trope walls finding on-call families being at very short term when the kid comes into care in the middle of the night. And just constantly that reassessment. I think that’s a great thing to leave with us. Like, we need to constantly be reassessing.
Travis (50:49.998)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (51:10.232)
where our heart is, where our home is, what we can offer and what we can’t do.
Brian (51:16.744)
this past Christmas, which again, with this recording was just a couple of weeks ago, I always use Christmas as an excuse to buy books for myself. so it’s like, I’ve been a good boy. I get to me, to me, I’ve been exceptional. So I get another book. And so one of the books I got for myself is
Travis (51:27.822)
I deserve this. Yeah.
Courtney (51:30.094)
According to who?
Travis (51:40.193)
You
Brian (51:45.63)
and I don’t know, it’s a very popular book. It’s called The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse. Have you guys heard of this book? Okay, you can read it in 10 minutes. And it’s a children’s book in a sense. And I have a few children’s books that are my favorites that I keep with me. So this is a new one, but it’s mostly adults who buy it and read it for themselves. And so it’s illustrated real compellingly. It’s just all pennant, you
Travis (51:52.128)
Mm-mm. Not.
Courtney (51:52.822)
Mmm.
Brian (52:15.146)
ink and so black and white. It’s about these four characters, the boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse. So there’s this one page and it’s one of the more popular pages. It goes like this. What is the bravest thing you ever said? Asked the boy. Help, said the horse. Asking for help isn’t giving up, said the horse. It’s refusing to give up.
And so I think if you are in a tough place, ask for help. It is a brave thing and it’s showing that you’re not giving up.
Brian (53:02.846)
So I just sold some books. I sold two for sure. Right now. So, well you guys, thank you for your hearts and brains, your insights, good questions and good advice, not bad advice. Well, that’s the different podcast.
Travis (53:03.086)
I love that so much,
Courtney (53:04.334)
Sold it to me, Amazon.
Travis (53:08.59)
You did? Yeah. Yeah. She’s clicking the link as we speak. No, that’s powerful. That’s really good.
Brian (53:32.507)
And so any help that people can get if they go to our website, any advice there?
Courtney (53:43.406)
I would go to the resources tab. mean, resources tab is loaded with stuff and use that. And if you are asking for help, send some of those things to your helpers. If it’s your family members, your friends, your close people to you, send them some of those links so that they can be a good help to you and not giving you the bad advice.
Travis (54:01.048)
Yeah. Good deal.
Brian (54:01.054)
That’s good. Awesome. All right. Thank you, everybody. Hope you too have, it’s a wintery here today where I’m living, but I hope you guys weather the storm. God bless you all. Bye.
Courtney (54:17.934)
Yeah.
Travis (54:19.308)
All right. See you. Bye.
Courtney (54:20.632)
See ya.
