A Rocky Road

“There’s a kind of fairy tale notion that children coming into foster care can be transformed by good foster parenting,” says Derek Saker, the director of marketing and communications for OHEL. “The truth is, many of these children are very challenged. Not every one of them will turn into a success story. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need all the love and care we as a community can offer them!”

While non-Jewish children tend to come into the foster care system because of their parents’ substance abuse, the most common cause in the frum world is mental illness. “ACS [the Administration for Children’s Services] doesn’t take children out of the home easily,” Shelley Berger says. “So by the time children come into placement, they’re often older and have more issues from growing up with abuse or neglect. A few have inherited their parents’ tendency toward mental illness. They struggle! But when we can save a Jewish neshamah, it’s a tremendous nachas.”

While ACS tries to place children with reliable family members first, it’s not always an option. “We desperately need good foster families,” remarks Mr. Sakker. Children coming into care are often traumatized by being uprooted from their homes. “These children may be emotionally shut down,” Mrs. Berger points out. “They haven’t grown up with the normal give-and-take of family life. They have a harder time trusting adults, and many are convinced the foster family will eventually throw them out. So they’ll test — they’ll preempt rejection by acting out to incite it. You could call it finding a way to quit before you’re fired.”

In addition, after living for years in chaotic environments, many have to grow accustomed to the new structure in their lives (set mealtimes, bedtimes, etc.). Another adjustment factor: those from nonobservant homes may undergo the culture shock of adapting to an Orthodox lifestyle.

The agency provides therapists for the children, counseling for foster parents, and respite arrangements.

“Our social workers encourage the kids to figure themselves out and create a story in their heads they can make peace with,” explains Mrs. Berger. They talk to them about family relationships, marriage, and so on, giving the children the chance to develop personal strengths and robust mental health for the future. Nonetheless, as they approach adulthood, the typical angst about getting older is exacerbated for foster children. They don’t have the same sense of security as a child living at home who knows he can rely on his natural parents.

“As much as some of them gripe about OHEL, about being in foster care and having to go to their appointments, in the end they know we’re their main support,” Mrs. Berger says. “They’re often surprised by how hard it is for them to lose their OHEL connection when they age out, even though they know we’re still there for them! It’s at once a relief to leave foster care and a loss.”

Make Me a Match

Finding the right shidduch for a child who grows up in a “regular” home is hard enough; what happens to the child whose home is so nonnormative that he’s been placed in foster care?

“Often our foster children get married out of the foster homes, through foster parents or contacts from seminary or yeshivah,” Mrs. Berger says. “But natural parents are often involved as well. Most are not awful, abusive people. They just were unable to care for their children.”

Tzedakah organizations may help cover expenses of the wedding and setting up a new home; OHEL maintains a simchah fund for that reason. “My husband and I married off all of our foster children,” Mrs. Schickman says. “Their foster status only became an issue in one instance.”

Chanie Dinerman, who entered foster care at age 11, anticipated that her foster status would create problems for shidduchim in the chareidi world. So as a young adult, she decided to preempt them by making a strategic decision to affiliate with a more Modern Orthodox crowd. She met her husband, a physicist, at a Shabbos meal in Washington Heights.

“His family is more yeshivish than mine, and his mother was a little apprehensive about my background,” she says. “But we’re married six years now, and it works!”

In some cases, the matchmaking hand of Hashgachah pratis is readily apparent. One young woman in foster care had traveled to Monsey to spend Shabbos with a friend. At shul Shabbos morning, another woman, impressed by her refined, attractive appearance and the sincerity of her davening, thought she might be exactly what her son was looking for. “At first she was a little taken aback when she realized the girl was in foster care,” Mrs. Berger says, “but she looked into it further and decided to continue the shidduch. Today the girl is married to her son.”

As for making a marriage work, most foster children have learned everything they know about shalom bayis from watching their foster parents in action — even if the imprint isn’t obvious until much later.

“We had a boy at OHEL some years ago,” Mrs. Berger recounts, “who was so difficult he had to leave his foster home for a residence. Finally he took himself off to Israel, where he found his calling training guard dogs for the army. He later reconnected with his foster parents, who would occasionally visit and stay in touch via e-mail. Slowly, he straightened out his life.” The boy eventually became engaged to an American girl whose family had made aliyah, and he sent his foster parents pictures and video clips of his proposal.

“How did you know how to propose to her, how to speak to her?” the foster mother asked, amazed.“What do you mean?” the young man responded. “The whole time I was with you, I was watching you and Tatty all the time!”

Transitioning in the Holy Land

Outside the US, organized support for frum foster children may be harder to come by. In Israel, the system is still “15 years behind the US,” according to Kory Bardash. After he and his wife Yifat took in some foster children, they recognized the need for a program targeting children who age out of the system. While he claims that foster care in Israel is “pretty good,” he notes that it’s much more common for children to go into youth villages if their parents can’t care for them.

At Yifat’s initiative, the Bardashes began an organization called ATARA, which helps frum girls from foster families, youth villages, and other boarding situations transition into adult life after aging out of the system. The Bardashes believe that girls at this critical juncture are at the highest risk for falling fast.

“This is an age when boys become criminals and girls become victims of abusive men if nothing is done to intervene,” Bardash says. “Many of these girls are so desperate they’ll put up with anything to have a place to sleep and a hot meal. Typically, becoming a checkout girl at SuperSol is about the best outcome you can hope for.”

Government help dries up when a child turns 18. “These kids are just dumped into society,” Bardash maintains. “Secular youth go through the army or national service, as lone soldiers or volunteers. But that usually isn’t available for chareidi kids — the frum kids who are on the street fall under the radar. Often they don’t even have an address to receive a letter from the government.”

Approximately 4,000 young adults age out of the social welfare system every year in Israel. Only about 2 percent go on to higher education, and only 18 percent complete high school. The lack of qualifications, coupled with emotional fallout from their pasts, make it no surprise that 40 percent will be homeless within five years.

“The frum girls are especially at risk,” Yifat says, “because they’re so disconnected from their families and their communities. Some were thrown out of their homes for ‘off the derech’-type behaviors, but they have no skill sets for survival.”

The ATARA girls come from the entire spectrum of shomer Shabbos Jewry, from families suffering from abject poverty, to those marred by physical, emotional, and other forms of abuse. “Girls who have been abused are so vulnerable. They often misinterpret male attention as love,” Yifat says. “They don’t know how to identify a strong, committed, healthy relationship.”

The ATARA program began when the Bardashes began working with a young woman who’d been rescued by Yad L’Achim from an Arab village. The program grew to 20 women aging out of child welfare systems who live in a rented home in Jerusalem with a housemother.

As soon as they arrive, the girls are immediately enrolled in Shnat Chesed, a volunteer service program, where they work half a day. This is therapeutic in many ways: it gives them stability, a free bus pass with a small monthly stipend, and most importantly, work experience and on-the-job training. It puts them in a role of contributing to society rather than being on the receiving end, a crucial way to boost their self-esteem and change their self-image.

The second half of the girls’ day is devoted to the kind of life skills training usually provided by parents. Mrs. Bardash hires experts in a number of fields to teach practical life skills like opening a bank account, finding and keeping a job, running a home, shopping and preparing for Shabbos, getting medical care. Education is a pillar of the program, and high school teachers are available to tutor girls who never completed a high school diploma.

“Our program is a sort of boot camp,” Mr. Bardash says. “We make sure the girls come out with a diploma and some sort of skill, be it hairdressing or bookkeeping or health care.”

Rabbi Benayahu Dvir, who runs the Telem network of support programs for high school girls at risk and advises the ATARA program, notes that by age 18 these girls are more settled than their younger counterparts and ready to integrate back into frum society. But if they don’t find anywhere to go, or any supports, they’ll fall back onto the street, undoing all his devoted efforts.

“The makkah b’patish, the finishing touch, isn’t there,” he says. “If they can learn a career, they won’t have to depend on inappropriate men to support them. We want them to get married as a choice, not as an escape.”

The program has been so successful that four other cities have petitioned the Bardashes to open similar programs. The couple says Israel’s Ministry of Social Welfare is thrilled with their success, and within a few years they plan to approach the government and propose extending similar programs to the general population.

“This is a smart, cost-effective social investment,” Bardash says. “Research in the US shows that for every ex-foster child who integrates into society, it makes the difference between a person who contributes $300,000 to the tax base and one who takes $300,000 from it.”

So far, ATARA has relied on private funding to cover expenses, which include marrying off some of the girls. “Our girls are bright young women with no parents behind them,” Mr. Bardash says. “You see what they look like when they come in, but you have no idea what these girls are like on the inside. They’re holy neshamos who just didn’t get a chance.”

When a foster child becomes a successful adult, it breaks the cycle for the next generation.

Chanie Dinerman, one of OHEL’s success stories, became a physician after her ten years in foster care. One would hope every foster child would one day express feelings like hers: “I didn’t have a typical Brooklyn life, but I was fortunate to have had the right people to help,” she says. “My circumstances forced me to think critically about my life and my values. In the end, I think I’m stronger and more empowered.”

Voices from Foster Care

Two adults who grew up in foster care speak about the experience:

Chanie Dinerman:  My sister and I were placed in foster care around 20 years ago, at ages 9 and 11. While my parents weren’t able to care for us, we always felt they had an unconditional love for us, and that created a lot of stability that not all foster children have. They were also well-to-do enough so that we never lacked anything materially.

We spoke to them by phone every night and had visits with them — first in the agency, then outside with chaperones, and as we got older we were able to visit them in their home. We were also lucky that our foster parents didn’t live too far from our home, so after placement we continued in the same Jewish school we were in before.

Our foster parents were a young couple — only 23! — who had two other foster children in the home. (As time went on they’d have as many as six.) Because they were so young, it was easy to relate to them — they’d take us to the mall, or stay up late eating ice cream with us. As time went by, they had children of their own to add to the mix.

Each foster child had his own interesting situation, but we somehow congealed into a family. There was structure there — go to school, come home, eat and do homework, go to bed — that I’d never experienced before, and was very formative in my growing up. At first I was embarrassed to invite friends over, but then I saw it was such a well-kept home that I became more comfortable.

The support I got from OHEL is a large part of why I did so well. I went for therapy once a week with an amazing therapist who fostered my self-confidence and helped me create a sense of self. She taught me to get through my situation with my head held high, and helped me create a narrative for my life. She’d tell me, “You have a lot to be proud of, and a lot of kids from ‘normal’ families don’t have that!”

I attended Bruria High School, then Stern College and medical school at YU. (I’m currently a resident.) As I approached the aging-out point, nothing really changed; I didn’t feel I needed to run away. I could still go back to my foster parents for Shabbosim or holidays. (My parents still aren’t in a position to host us.)

My husband and I hope to have a family eventually, even though with my background I worry a bit about motherhood. But if you’re aware of your own vulnerabilities, and absorb from as many role models as possible, you can find your way.

It did feel like a relief to become an adult and have my own living space, and to not have to explain my life story all the time. Now, instead of being defined by my family’s story, I’m defined by my own accomplishments, and I’m in charge of my own destiny.

Daniel:

I’ve been in foster care since I was 12, and I’m now in my early 20s. I came in with a brother seven years younger than me. Unfortunately, both of my parents suffer from mental illness, and while I was never abused, there was enough neglect to necessitate placement. My parents were brought up Orthodox but had become much less observant, so when we were placed in foster homes in Crown Heights for the first two years, it was a bit of a culture shock.

After that, my brother and I were placed with a young family in Cedarhurst. The wife was expecting her first child, and they weren’t planning on the foster care to be a long-term thing. But we’ve now been with them for eight years, and they’re still home base for me. They really went above and beyond the call of duty for us, and it was a very good, loving situation. I was actually given the option to return to my parents’ house at age 16, but I chose to remain because I didn’t want to leave my brother, and I wanted to stay in the yeshivah system.

OHEL was amazing in helping me finance yeshivah study in Eretz Yisrael, and I got government help to enroll in Lander College, where I’m studying to become an occupational therapist. I usually go to my foster parents for chagim, or to another foster family we befriended. Shabbosim find me with friends or in Cedarhurst. Occasionally I’ll go to my parents’ home. They made the effort to kasher their kitchen to accommodate me.

I’m open about my ex-foster status with close friends, but I avoid the topic with people I meet casually. Sometimes I put my natural parents’ home address on official forms, just to make things simpler. Look, a lot of people feel anxiety as they move into adulthood and independence, and I’m no different. I know my natural parents will support me as best they can, and I have an uncle who is close to me, but my foster family in Cedarhurst remains home base for me. I realize my special circumstances may affect me when I start dating, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Under the circumstances, I had a very blessed experience. I try not to feel sorry for myself that I wasn’t able to grow up in my parents’ home, and focus on the good. My foster parents gave me a good upbringing and help me develop good character traits, and they’re my models of good parenting. I’m still looking to develop a strong relationship with a rav, and I’m still growing. I’m not afraid — I’ll figure it out.

(Originally Featured in Family First)