County needs foster parents
WOODSTOCK – On Christmas morning, Julie and Jeff Randecker will be with all nine of their children in one house: four biological children, two adopted sons, and three foster children. But that’s the way they like it.
“Now that my daughters have moved away and bought their own homes, it’s like, ‘Wow, we need to get some kids in here,’ ” Julie Randecker said.
As foster parents, the Woodstock couple have taken care of about two dozen children in the past six years. They became certified when they were unsuccessful in having their own children. In addition to their adopted children, Jay, 5, and Shane, 3, they are expecting to take in three siblings in need of foster care in the next few days.
The Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network, a social service organization that places children with foster families in McHenry County and other collar counties, is seeking more foster families such as the Randeckers to care for children who need at least a temporary home.
Currently, UCAN has 21 foster families in McHenry County caring for 24 children, UCAN spokeswoman Jodi Doane said.
“It’s a fantastic growth opportunity, to give a young person hope and a family,” Doane said.
The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services places children as young as newborns and as old as 18 with foster parents when it is not feasible or safe for them to stay with someone in their own family, Doane said.
Some of the children have lost their parents to death, drug abuse, or disability. Others have been physically abused or have elderly caregivers who are not physically able to take care of them.
Sometimes the children stay with a foster family only overnight because a family member cannot pick them up right away. Other times, they stay for a year or more. And sometimes, foster parents adopt their foster children.
That’s what happened with the Randeckers’ first foster child, Jay. The boy came to them when he was 5 weeks old. They adopted him three years later.
Wendy and Scott Elman of Prairie Grove have been foster parents since early 2007.
Like the Randeckers, they had tried unsuccessfully to have their own children. Their first foster child, an infant, stayed with them for only a few days. In January 2008, the Elmans got a call from UCAN saying that a 3-week old girl needed a foster home.
The girl, whose name Wendy Elman did not provide to protect her privacy, had a mother with a drug problem, and no father was listed on her birth certificate, Elman said.
“We fell madly in love with this little girl; there just was something about her,” Elman said.
The Elmans called her their angel.
“We were trying and trying to expand our family, and nothing was really working out,” Wendy Elman said. “[Their foster daughter] came at the end of January, and at the beginning of March, we found out I was pregnant.”
The girl now is living with her father, but she visits her former foster parents regularly. The Elmans’ son, Matthew, was born in October.
Often the hardest part about being foster parents is saying goodbye to children you have come to love, Elman and Randecker said.
“Even though you know going in your job is to take the best possible care of them until they can be reunited with their parents, it’s emotionally difficult to see them go,” Elman said.
Each foster family receives a monthly stipend to help pay for the cost of caring for each child, and caseworkers are available to answer questions and offer support.
“It’s a hard job, but I can’t think of anything more rewarding really than giving to an innocent child,” Elman said. “These kids didn’t ask to be in the situations they’re in.”
Even though she stayed with the family for only a year, Elman considers her foster daughter her first baby.
“I can’t imagine that I will love my own child more than I loved her,” she said. “I don’t think your heart can tell the difference. The love of a child is the love of a child.”
Is foster parenting for you? To learn about becoming a foster parent, call the Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network at 847-362-2111 and ask for the intake person.