Charleston native Rose Bankston has been fostering children for 29 years. It’s important to her, particularly during the holiday season as the area’s 600 children who are in foster care are looking for a permanent home.
“When I was younger I had a pretty tumultuous childhood,” said Bankston, who asked not to be photographed for this story. “It was a lot different back then. I’m almost 70-years-old at this point. I was pretty much on my own by about 11- or 12-years-old. And there was a lady who helped me, a home health nurse at one of the clinics that I went to.
“She talked to me and encouraged me and made me feel like I was important. That I was someone. I said from that point on, when I got older, I wanted to become a foster parent.”
Since 1990, the S.C. Youth Advocacy Program (SCYAP) has specialized in the care of foster children in need of mainstream or therapeutic placement. Its mission statement is straightforward. First, it believes all children deserve a permanent home and family. Second, it says children should be served in the most normal, least restrictive environment possible.
As SCYAP’s special projects director, John Connery calls on those with the means to open their homes to children in need.
“Well, you really have to make a commitment,” he told the Charleston City Paper. “We call it a ‘heartfelt calling.’ That’s a phrase that’s used throughout this whole group of organizations like us.”
Connery has staked his career on such purpose-driven mandates: After a decades-long tenure at the S.C. Department of Mental Health, he came out of retirement to work with the foster care program, where he has now been for nearly 13 years.
Answering the call
Fostering children for nearly three decades may seem like a daunting commitment, especially when you have children of your own, as Bankston does. But she said her motivation is simple.
“I think about myself — I could’ve gone on a whole different path because I had nobody to love me, nobody to speak life into me,” she said. “Until that one lady said to me ‘You are important, and you can do anything you want in life.’”
When asked if she had any encouraging words for those who were considering becoming foster parents, Bankston had only one piece of advice.
“When you decide to take in any child, that child becomes your family,” she said. “I wouldn’t call a social worker to come take my child to a doctor. So why would I call a social worker to come take a child who has been living in my home? [They] can’t tell that doctor how this child sleeps at night. That this child cries at night, that she doesn’t eat well.
“So I think it’s important that if you make the decision to become a foster parent, you become more than that. You become a parent to this child. Because this child is going to remember you. They may not remember the particulars about what brought them into care, but they’re going to remember whether you loved them or not.”
As of September, more than 1,800 children in S.C. are in need of temporary and/or permanent foster care placement, according to a report released by the South Carolina Department of Social Services. Charleston County alone accounts for 126 of those children looking for family-like care and support.
Connery explained that although potential foster parents go through a detailed vetting process, many adults are unaware that they even qualify. “You basically have to be 21 years of age or older,” he said. “You can be single, you can be married, you can have a life partner. There’s no bias around any of those kinds of issues.”
The S.C. Youth Advocacy Program offers round-the-clock resources for program families, including financial support, medical assistance and telehealth therapy.
Learn more about fostering: scyap.com.
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