Neighborhoods for
Kids
keep foster children local
By Christy
Scott
The Alpine Sun
ALPINE — A group of local educators and foster parents were
honored last Thursday morning, at the quarterly all-staff
meeting of the county’s Child Protective Services, East Region,
workers. Alpine Elementary employees Corinne Lewis and Penny
Garza and Jan Ironside-Durrill, as well as local foster parent
Dan Weinberg were commended for their work with local foster
children.
“Our story begins with two siblings,” said placement
ubnit supervisor for East County Dana Parrino, also an Alpine
resident, as she presented the awards. “In late August 2006,
right before school in Alpine was getting ready to start, the
mother in this situation took a vacation in North County during
the summer, and while there she was arrested. Her two children,
a boy and a girl, ages 8 and 10, were taken by Child Protection
in North County and put into two different foster homes in that
area.”
Parrino’s East County office was given the case, as the
last known address for the mother was in Alpine.
“One of the first things we looked at was where did
these kids last go to school, and we found it was Alpine
Elementary,” said Dana Parrino. “The next morning I decided to
stop into the office at the school, where I met Corinne Lewis
and Jan, and we instantly got our wheels turning to figure out
who might be able to take these kids.”
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| Corinne
Lewis, Penny Garza (with son Dominic), and Dan Weinberg
pose for a picture after receiving their awards. |
After brainstorming with the women in the office, Lewis said
that she would contact a teacher from AES, Penny Garza, who had
been the girl’s teacher the previous year. According to Parrino,
by the time she got back to her own office, there was a
voice-mail from Garza, saying that she was interested in
bringing the siblings into her own home.
“It took us about 24 hours to get Penny’s home approved
and get the children back together,” Parrino said. “Penny had
never fostered a child before, but she had lots of support from
Child Protection Services, as well as her co-workers and friends
in Alpine.”
According to Parrino, the birth mother was elated, and
very relieved that her children were back together and back in
Alpine.
“Penny also worked very closely with the birth mother
to make sure she did what she was supposed to; helped her,
guided her, got firm with her when need be.”
Now, about 10 months later, the children have
successfully reunited with their birth mother, Parrino said.
She continued with the second part of her story, when
just about two months ago there was a foster placement failing,
just two weeks prior to the end of school.
“A local eighth-grader needed a place to go, had a
school play to perform in and an eighth-grade trip, but
placement fell through… This foster child was also only a few
weeks from going home,” Parrino said.
The girl’s brother was also in a local foster home,
that of Dan Weinberg. His foster home, however, is for boys
only.
Parrino brainstormed, and decided to once again contact
Garza, who again agreed to take the girl into her home. Garza
worked closely with Weinberg to ensure sibling visits and
interaction.
“What happened here, because of the great support of
our Neighborhood for Kids,” is that these siblings got to have
their world stay intact,” Parrino said.
“A just to think, if I hadn’t visited the school, and
sat down with Corinne and Jan, then I never would have
discovered Penny Garza,” Parrino said. “These kids lives have
been changed because of things that you did.”
Neighborhoods for Kids is a new way of looking at child
welfare and the foster care system in the county, to find
alternative ways for children in the system to remain in their
own communities.
“When we’re working on finding these placements, we
really have to be detectives,” said manager of Child Welfare
Services for the East Region, Karen Martin. “I mean everyone has
someone in their life that cares about them, even if they don’t
really know it, and we just have to identify that person.”
Martin manages the Neighborhoods for Kids program,
which strives to keep foster kids in their home communities and
schools.
In the past, children taken by Child Protective
Services were placed in the first available bed countywide,
which often meant far away from home. Neighborhoods for Kids
tries to look outside of the available foster care homes to the
child’s extended family, or community, to keep them in a
familiar area with familiar faces.
“To a child, his or her neighborhood is their world,”
Parrino said. “That’s how we started talking about this program
and how to keep these kids in a familiar environment. And we
simply can’t do this in isolation; it takes the entire community
and people like this to achieve these goals.”
Using this program, workers look at the child’s
extended family, school, church, neighbors and friends, to see
if there are any suitable homes that would be willing to take
him or her in. This program allows local people to open their
homes to local kids to help them remain in a safe and familiar
environment.
The program allows for a one-day approval process,
including finger-printing, background check and a home check, to
make sure that the foster child can get back to their own
community as quickly as possible.
If you would like to learn more, or would like to
become a local foster parent, please contact Dana Parrino at
(619) 401-3800.
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the Editor
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