Show Notes
On this episode of Nuance, Case is joined by Phil Hissom, foster parent and founder of the Polis Institute. They discuss the importance of foster care in providing a safe and nurturing environment for children who cannot live with their biological families. Phil shares his experience of becoming a foster parent to a sibling group of three teenagers, as well as systemic insight into the current state of the foster care system. Phil also addresses misconceptions about the foster system and children in the system, as well as resources for those who wish to become foster parents.
Episode Resources:
https://www.servingwithdignity.com/
https://growopportunity.org/
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website: https://collaborativeorlando.com/
Get to know Case: https://collaborativeorlando.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
On any given day, a public square is a lively and dynamic scene filled sometimes with the sound of playing children. Their laughter fills the air as they chase each other around, climb on a playground, share stories on benches. The innocence and exuberance of children highlights the beauty of a community and, for me at least, the simple pleasures of life. However, not all children are fortunate enough to experience such carefree moments. Many face challenges that disrupt their ability to play and to grow in a stable, loving environment. And friends, this is where the need for foster care becomes so evident. Foster care provides a vital service for children who, for various reasons, cannot live with their biological families.
It offers them a safe and a nurturing environment where they can receive the care and support they need. Foster care provides emotional stability, helping children of all ages heal from past traumas. Foster parents step in to offer the love, guidance, and consistency that all children need and these may have missed. This nurturing environment is essential for their development, enabling them to build self-esteem, learn trust, develop healthy relationships, and thrive in life. Moreover, foster care can serve as a bridge to a more permanent solution, whether it’s reunification with their families of origin, adoption, or independent living as they reach adulthood.
Well, today on Nuance, our focus is the foster care system because it is essential for any community to flourish. And I am glad and honored to have my friend Phil Hissom joining us today to talk about such a topic. Welcome, Phil.
Phil Hissom
Thank you, glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Case Thorp
Well, I appreciate you and your great wisdom. I mean, how far back do we go as friends?
Phil Hissom
Probably in the 2006/7 range, maybe something like that.
Case Thorp
Yeah, yeah, I came to Orlando in ‘05, so it’s been a while. And friends, I have loved watching Phil in his career journey. Just provides such great leadership in some key places in our city, but also to see him now serve as a mission pastor at Discovery Church and continue that work, but in a different kind of fashion. Well, to our viewers and friends, welcome again to Nuance, where we seek to be faithful in the public square. I’m Case Thorp, and I want to encourage you to please like, subscribe, share, leave a comment. It really helps us to grow our audience. Well, let me tell you a little bit about Phil. He spent his career designing solutions to complex social problems.
He began in the Chesapeake Bay area, focused on environmental issues, and more recently is addressing concentrated poverty, homelessness, and other affronts to human dignity. He received a Master’s Divinity degree from Reformed Theological Seminary in 2008, and after that time founded the Polis Institute to improve the quality of life in a hundred distressed neighborhoods in Metro Orlando.
And now Phil, you know, I think I say it wrong. It’s polis.
Phil Hissom
It depends. I think Polis is probably closest to the Greek, but we’re in Florida, so it’s Polis.
Case Thorp
Yeah, I think it’s closer to the Southern. I don’t know. Well, for instance, the Polis Institute is a fantastic organization. I describe it as sort of an urban think tank community organizer in a way. Phil, how would you describe it?
Phil Hissom
I think that’s pretty good. Yeah, it’s an applied research organization and so, well, that’s about right.
Case Thorp
Applied research, love that, much better. Well, and another thing that is remarkable is that Phil started and grew Polis Institute such that now it has continued even after him. And a lot of organizations get founder syndrome and they aren’t able to transition well, but he did a great job in transitioning that work. As then he moved on to Discovery Church to serve as their mission pastor. His family for generations has served the poor in the Charleston, West Virginia area. And so it’s in his blood. His immediate family includes his wife, Jenny, a children’s author, and Zach and Shauna, and Derek and Alyssa and their lovable mutt, Liberty.
Case Thorp
So Phil, what did I miss? What biographical thing do we need to know about you?
Phil Hissom
I think you hit the mark pretty well. I mean, think that polis, I think we failed to say it’s the Greek word for city, so we founded that institute just enamored with new heavens and new earth theology, trying to escape this, you know, we’re awaiting the Lord to come down from heaven and that there will be remnants who will remain. And so it was a different take on eschatology than I grew up hearing about, but I got to embrace that. And so it makes it more relevant that it matters what we do today, it matters what we’re trying to build. And so I think from a theological standpoint, that’s kind of an asterisk there, but otherwise I think you hit the mark.
Case Thorp
Now you used a good $10 word there, eschatology. What is that first? What did you grow up with? And then what sort of eschatology have you brought to founding Polis?
Phil Hissom
Well, I guess I kind of summarized it, I think it was more that the general belief that we’re sort of, we are like brought up into heaven and that nothing of the earth remains. It’s just burned up.
Case Thorp
At the end of time.
Phil Hissom
At the end of time when we see scripture describing vibrant new heavens and new earth like Isaiah 65 actually showing what it looks like, people enjoying the fruit of their labor and long and healthy lives, so it shows us that there’s still work on the other side of glory, there’s still houses and things that make life meaningful today will remain, they’ll just be absent of the barriers and obstacles of sin and that so heaven is gonna come to earth rather than us just escaping this, what will become a fireball with nothing left. So those are the basic differences, there’s labels for all that, but I just, and I embraced that and it made me think, well, we can compare what’s happening right now with what God promises us to look like, we can use those markers in Isaiah 65 to say, are people enjoying the fruit of their labors? Do they live long and healthy lives? You know, those kinds of things. And that really imbued the Institute with some purpose, even though I founded it as a civic organization, I was very open about the origin story coming from those texts. And I got to share that with a lot of different audiences that I might not otherwise have been able to share with.
Case Thorp
Well, and friends, I think that’s why Phil and I have overlapped and enjoyed so much ministry together over the years. I am deeply convicted with the same type of eschatology, end times theological perspective, and that is the new Jerusalem established in Revelation 21, 22, that we are headed that way. And Phil contrasted that with some other branches of Christianity that think, well, it’s all going to get burned up, so why care about it so much?
Phil Hissom
Why rearrange the chairs on the Titanic?
Case Thorp
Yep, there you go. And we want to arrange them because we’re called to flourish and to build rich community. Well, that’s good. That’s your $10 theological lesson for today. Well, Phil, I’ve invited you here to talk about foster care. And it is something that we don’t talk about much.
And I’ve appreciated the few conversations we’ve had about it and I wanted to lift it up today because you have shown me some of the depths and the impact and the difference that such work makes. So tell us your story, you and Jenny’s story about becoming foster parents.
Phil Hissom
Well Jenny and I got married in 2002. We came down to Orlando in 2005, originally for me to go to seminary and then she joined me there. We both ended up getting degrees. And throughout the first, you know, 10 or so years of our marriage, we tried to have biological kids. Jenny specifically felt called to motherhood when she was saved. And so there were several attempts that did not come to fruition, so it was very hard on us both, especially her. I think there were four pregnancies that didn’t make it.
But as she grieved over that, she began praying about what’s next and the Lord placed on her heart the biggest need in the foster care community, is kids that are in double digits, 10 to 17, not having placements. And the odds of them getting adopted or having a forever family, as people call it, go down to almost nothing. And so she approached me with that desire to bring teenagers into the home.
And I was, well, let’s put it lightly, was reluctant to get on board, having been a teenager myself and ran into a few acrobatic years. It seemed like a really high bar and I respect her faith and I did pray about it and eventually we got on the same page and began to pursue that. I think first we did pursue adopting infants through the system and other adoptions and those just kind of went to dead end. So we were left with this choice and so we came into the process which was to go through some classes and things like that and then you start telling the system like what you’re open to and as soon as you check the box you know you’re open to teenagers they they they warn you like you will get a placement within days of your being certified to do that and that’s how that’s how it started.
Case Thorp
Help us understand some of the mechanics here. When you say the system, you mean the state of Florida?
Phil Hissom
Well, I mean, I say system because there’s several moving parts to it. There’s the Department of Children and Families across the state. There’s even, you know, the federal system involved with some of the funding mechanisms. There’s local, what they call, community based care organizations that kind of manage that system. Department of Children and Families have local offices. Sheriff Department gets involved. There’s trainings. There’s different adoption agencies that the CBC’s used to actually do case management and then there’s welfare checks on families. There’s so many moving parts. So it’s definitely a coordinated system. in Florida, we were one of the worst in the country in the ‘90s in terms of placements and things like that. And over time we became, I mean, one of slogans for a while was worst to first. So it became one of the better states, but I think now we’re not quite up the top anymore, but we’re better than average.
Case Thorp
What were some of those changes that needed to happen to go from worst to first?
Phil Hissom
Well, semi-privatization so that there was more autonomy in some of the local organizations that had the immediate say. So a little bit of thinning the bureaucracy, a little bit and making that system a little more straightforward. I mean, I think that helps really trying hard to keep children in their family of origin. So providing care and resources as best as possible to the families who are in crisis and danger of losing their kids. So Florida made that a priority, keeping kids with their families and not just kind of having an immediate reaction. Certainly when kids’ welfare was endangered, they’d be removed, but really working hard from the beginning at reunification. So I think those two things, a little bit of a streamlining and making a stated goal of keeping kids in their family of origin.
Case Thorp
So then back to your story, I could imagine figuring all that landscape out is a bit of a climb.
Phil Hissom
Yeah, it is. It’s just, it takes everything takes longer than maybe it should. I think we went through the class twice, I believe, because then we timed out. We probably got our fingerprints like six or seven times. I was like, don’t these things last forever? Isn’t that the point? Why do we keep having to get our fingerprints taken again? Those kinds of things. So there was a lot of issues like that.
But the key is when you find those gems within the system who are really good at their job and really passionate and are living a calling, which we did, a caseworker, she just basically made a match with us. She had looked through all her different cases. They have these very awkward matching events where you go and meet kids and bunch of kids and there’s a bunch of adults and they’re just as awkward as like a middle school dance, of course. Because none of the kids wanna talk to any of adults and the adults are afraid but I mean it’s like people just trying to do their best here, how do you get people together, how do you introduce these kids, how do you do things at scale?
Case Thorp
My heart breaks though to hear you describe that because I could imagine aren’t there some kids in the room who are just desperate and hoping, will you pick me, will you pick me?
Phil Hissom
Yeah, you get the full range. Some are pretty good at showing their hand, but then a lot are just afraid and they’re presenting as if they don’t want to be adopted, but deep down they really do or just have someone to care about them. But a lot of them would prefer to get reconnected to their families. That’s really the main thing. Regardless of what’s happened, they’d rather be with their families, most of them.
Case Thorp
So, did it turn out to be true that you checked the box of willing to take teenagers and you had a quick placement?
Phil Hissom
We did, yes. Now we did, we went to one of those placement events and we identified a couple of children we were interested in learning more about, but our caseworker came to our home and said, look, I know you’ve identified these, but I want to show you these other kids that I think are a really good match for you. And then she had been bold enough to set up a meeting with them already and we met them at a pizza place in town here a few days later.
And you know, after that, it was just a matter of time where, I mean, actually it was maybe the next, a couple of days later, we got a call saying, can they move in today? Because they had a…it was a bit of an issue with the current caregiver.
Case Thorp
And so you say kids, plural, so it was siblings?
Phil Hissom
Yeah, it was a sibling group of three. The two that were placed with us were in another private home. And then the third, their brother was in a boys ranch. So he wasn’t placed with us, but we had, from the beginning, a desire to get him, visit him regularly and then get him to our house with his brother and sister as soon as we could.
Case Thorp
What were those first few days like?
Phil Hissom
Well, very strange. I mean, to be honest, I mean, the first night we were in our bed going, wow, there’s like kids that live with us and there’s no plan for them to leave. You know, and they were 12 and 14 and we had just met them, you know, two or three days earlier. Like it just was like, really, I mean, hard to describe. We were excited. I mean, I think a little nervous, but it was like, this is real. And so, maybe at that point a little more nervous than excited. Well, I’m sure they were too.
Case Thorp
What were some of the things in training that you learned to try to push through those awkward times?
Phil Hissom
Well, I don’t know. I mean, the training seemed to be really about trying to dissuade anyone that was not really committed to do it. I mean, I think our training started with 44 people and eight people graduated because they were just describing how hard it was going to be. They may have gone, I think that duo that we had, trainers, might have gone overboard because they were just giving us every horror story they could think of. So our minds were raised in terms of what the possibilities could be. But we just leaned on, we’re both friendly people and I’ve interacted with all kinds of different groups of people, so I feel called to a lot of different situations so we were just going to get to know them as best we could and just lean on some of our own social skills and experiences more than what they taught us, except for I think the things they taught us that were helpful. Yeah, don’t assume you know them just because,or their birth family, because they’re in this situation, just treat them like someone you’re getting to know and let them really reveal what they want to reveal, meet them where they are and at the same time try to create a sense of structure which they may buck, you know, they may not want the structure that they need, and provide that anyway, and they call they said that It was two words. It’s basically, you’re in charge, but you’re warm. You know like you’re warm and in control, so you’re affectionate but also just have clear boundaries.
Case Thorp
How’d that first year go?
Phil Hissom
I think it was a lot of fun the first year. I mean, for me especially, I played the fun parent. So we got season passes to a water park and we had a really like over the top Halloween party. And because they thought they wanted a Halloween party. So we just created this whole like haunted house thing and just went over the top.
Case Thorp
You came over and borrowed my metal detector, didn’t you?
Phil Hissom
I did it at one point, yeah. That was when I…no, it was I lost a ring in the yard. No, that was later, but yeah, we did that. But then I mean, towards some point in that year, my wife was like, wait a minute, I’m the only one to kind of do the parenting part here. So we had to adjust that and develop some parenting chops and then things got all rocky at times when we tried to hold some boundaries and they didn’t like that and we got into therapy and they aided that at first. So when we started trying to get into some of the reasons they were in care and some of the reality of their situation because they really stayed in contact with their birth family and wanted to be in their lives and really had a hard time addressing the reality of what had happened. And as they were exposed to that, then we had fireworks often.
Case Thorp
Now, you’ve used the phrase birth family, and then there’s the foster family. A minute ago, you used the phrase forever family. What is a forever family?
Phil Hissom
That’s a phrase that the people in this work use to describe when you’ve made a long -term commitment to each other like hey we’re going to be in a family together here so that’s adopting someone that’s in the system in the short version but sometimes you know for instance the younger two, Zach and Shawna that moved in with us first we eventually adopted them but the brother Derek by the time we got to adoption process he was already over 18 and just decided he didn’t want to be adopted but he was there at the adoption and we made that commitment to him before we went to see the judge like hey we don’t feel differently about you really and so we’re committed to you and we love you and so that’s become part of our forever family and really their birth family because they didn’t want to leave them to join us so we basically embraced you know our family just got a lot bigger as we tried to embrace best we could the whole family.
Case Thorp
I attended an adoption hearing about two months ago and Phil, it was one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever had. It was a family that we know from many years ago who have fostered as well. And they adopted a six-year-old little boy and the courtroom was filled with all of the family’s friends who were there to cheer and support.
The social workers were crying. It was such a beautiful experience. The judge was wonderful and very friendly. And after all the proceedings were done, he invited the young boy to come sit in the chair up front in the judge chair. And it was just a beautiful experience. Now, I know that not all of them are that way. But I thought, wow, I wish others could be in this room and experience this.
Phil Hissom
Yeah, ours was just amazing in terms of, I mean, there were multiple generations of caseworkers because our children’s mother had been in the system. And so there were many, many caseworkers in there cheering on the process. We were told when we first met them that they weren’t adoptable.
And I had a really amazing God experience that I can share briefly. We were having a really hard time getting the adoption over the finish line, which isn’t uncommon. And one day we had these regular checking calls with the case workers and the guardian ad litems, which are like a lawyer that’s overseeing the case. And we were getting an update and the judge was like, I really don’t understand why this is taking so long. And she asked me, she said, Mr. Hissom, can you spell your last name? And I’m like, what did do? I spelled my last name. And she said, so are you from West Virginia? And I said, I’m from Canaveral County. And she said, you know what, that’s my maiden name. And yes, no, I’m not, I’m not kidding. And, so anybody with the last name of Hissom, spelled the same way as ours, is definitely a relative. And so, and she said, well, I don’t want everybody to think that this is because we found out we’re related, but if I don’t have adoption papers in my hand by the end of the month, I’m going to hold you on contempt of court.
No, so I thought I was in trouble, like she just wanted to verify that, and then used it both as a comedic aside, but also she then ended up asserting because it just had gone months and months over what was really acceptable. And the issue was, and this is when it gets into this system thing there, we had caseworkers from Collier County where the kids are from and from Orange County where we live. And so the ones that were really dealing directly with the case were courtesy caseworkers. So the ones in Collier County had to do all the paperwork but they had less incentive now because they weren’t really involved, so it was just, we were caught in the middle and no one was really doing it. They needed the people that down there under her jurisdiction to get you know get a move on and just finish this process and they did and you know and then we had a date and then and then we actually were able to do our adoption on the National Adoption Day in November.
Case Thorp
Why November?
Phil Hissom
I think it’s just the date that’s been picked for that. I think foster care month is May, adoption day is in November. There were a lot of news cameras there was a big to-do because they do a lot of adoptions on that day.
Case Thorp
And so where are the kids today?
Phil Hissom
The kids are…our daughter is up in Georgia with her husband. He is a military guy. They live just outside of Fort Stewart, Georgia. Then my son Zach is down in LaBelle, Florida being a mechanic. And Derek is in Fort Myers with his girlfriend and their two young boys. And the person we haven’t mentioned is their lifelong friend of theirs named Alyssa. We got to know her when we met our kids and then she visited a few times and then moved in at some point as well. And she has two boys so that the family kept growing. She’s in Naples, Florida.
Case Thorp
Phil, what did this experience teach you about your faith?
Phil Hissom
Well, it taught me a lot about, I mean, as I was trying to parent and learn how to parent, I mean, it’s, you learn just about God and I learned about God’s compassion and tolerance of me and loving me besides my ability to kind of get it right. And I felt a lot of empathy for them that I think was really a grace empathy. It reminded me a lot of how I was not a happy kid when I was their age, so I developed a lot of self-compassion around some of the stuff I was struggling with and all of that drew me closer to God. So I think what it taught me about my faith was that my faith was probably pretty relatively low. I hadn’t really had to, you know, it had been kind of personal challenges and things like that, but to really try to help people that you can’t change them, you can’t force them to do stuff, you’re trying and relying on God to see things through and then seeing God do great things in the midst of that. And it didn’t make everything just instantly easy, but seeing progress with them and us and me become more patient and more mature. I was not…I’d opted out of a lot of just basic maturity steps that I didn’t need because I hadn’t been counted on in that way as a father figure.
Case Thorp
Yeah. Well, I have often used this parenting mantra for myself and with our kids that I’m not looking for perfection. I’m looking for progress. And your best next step will look different than your brothers or your sisters, but that’s a lesson I’ve had to learn and to recognize that, hey, Case isn’t perfect either. Is he progressing?
What have you and Jenny grown through this experience? Closer? Harder?
Phil Hissom
I think we, it was really clear, especially after that first season when I was kind of the happy-go-lucky parent and she was trying to really get down to some healing and growth and setting good boundaries. I think it’s drained us for a while, but then we were very much closer together. I think it was gonna go one way or the other. We very much got closer together. I think the few years before that, the marriage got really strained through the failed pregnancies and things like that. It just was super hard.
It ultimately brought us way closer together and well beyond where we were at that point in time and then in the early years of having the kids with us. And today our marriage is stronger than ever and it really got started about a year into this process with the kids.
Case Thorp
Tell me about some of the misconceptions that you’ve come across about the foster care system that you just know are not true.
Phil Hissom
Well, one is, know, the kids are there through no fault of their own. I think most people don’t blame the kids, but maybe you can treat them as if they are. The other is that their birth family almost, not always, but is still around, at least one parent. And that regardless of what they’ve experienced, they want to be back with them more than they want to be with you. That is one.
That’s the norm.
Case Thorp
The norm is they want to be with their birth family and you’re saying sometimes perception is that there’s closed and hermetically sealed interactions.
Phil Hissom
Yeah, something like that, and that the situation is bad enough where they wouldn’t want to go back, but that’s not true. I think the other perception, and that we ran into this a lot, is that they’re going to behave like other biological kids. So when you’re sharing stories, people really want to say quickly, well, that sounds like my kids. And it might very well sound like your kids.
But at the end of the day, they just have different experiences. Their trauma is almost surely on a different level. And the things that actually work in traditional parenting where you’ve been their parents since they were infants don’t work and will backfire.
You’ve got to learn how to parent differently and there’s tools for that. This trauma informed connection style, the trauma informed parenting is essential. It’s helpful if you’re parenting your biological kids and they’ve been through some trauma, but you can’t explain much with a kid that’s been traumatized the way you might want to with a biological kid. It will backfire.
You can’t lean on any reservoirs of trust that you might have had when they were infants and small kids, even if they’re looking at you like they want to wring your neck or something, but there’s nothing to lean into. And so there’s parenting styles that don’t work. And so you can start to feel alone in it. So that was probably the biggest one. This isn’t like normal parenting. You don’t want to exceptionalize yourself to say this is harder because it’s not like that. It’s just different. A different kind of situation requires different kinds of interventions in parenting.
Case Thorp
Well, and I would imagine if you have children at 12 and 14, you as parents have not been formed through infants and toddlers in elementary. Like you’re taking a big leap and stepping in when you haven’t grown through those stages.
Phil Hissom
I was really bad at it. I mean, I was like a horrible parent. I mean, horrible. That’s too much because I wasn’t bad to them. I just didn’t, I didn’t really have a clue. I had to learn those things because I wanted to explain things to them. Wax philosophical sometimes instead of just telling them what to do. That didn’t work.
Case Thorp
Yeah. Because I said so. Yeah. It didn’t work so well. Maybe it does need to. So talk to me about the foster care system in general. And one statistic you had shared with me recently was so shocking in terms of foster care children’s long-term success or not so much. Talk to us about that.
Phil Hissom
The foster care system, I think it’s largely good people trying their best to place kids. But once children are in the system for a long time, especially if they exhibit some kind of behaviors which are totally understandable given their life situation, but are hard to deal with for anybody, they start being not wanted. Then they’re…if you’re not wanted as a human being, it’s really like the worst thing that can happen to you. If you perceive that, I mean there people in your home that have grown up with their parents who feel unwanted, but when you have evidence that you’re not wanted and it’s reinforced by being, I mean we have, there’s at any given time, there’s probably 12 to 20 kids locally in the system here in central Florida that are not placeable and they’re not placed. So that means they’re living on couches. They’re sleeping one night in the caseworker’s office, next night in a hotel with some, you know, so they don’t have any kind of placement and their self-esteem is through the floor. And so their outcomes are going to, they’re going to start looking at all the wrong places. They’re so much more likely to get addicted. They’re so much more vulnerable to exploitation, someone who shows them the slightest bit of kindness turning on them and exploiting them in some way. And so it’s really, really bad.
Case Thorp
And to hear 12 to 20 with no exact place to go, that just shows how ignorant I am. There aren’t just basic facilities. I know that we don’t have the typical orphanages anymore, but there’s not a center that will just house children until they get placed, even in foster family.
Phil Hissom
Now, we have group homes, but the group homes are losing funding over the years because they just don’t show, they don’t work very well at all. What definitely works is having children in family style situations. And so the group homes don’t work and the ones that remain fill up. Or if a kid’s been kicked out of the group home for behaviors, and maybe not quite bad enough to be in juvenile detention center, but bad enough to not be in this home. And bad enough to where most prospective foster parents are like they don’t want a kid that’s gonna maybe start a fire in the house or you know, break something or just keep running away or something like that. It just, they have behaviors that make them…cause they’re trying to, they don’t want to get hurt again. So they’re trying to make sure that they’d rather not get taken and abandoned than just, and stay in that situation where they don’t have a place then go through that hurt again, feeling like they don’t want to.
Case Thorp
Talk to me about the experience of foster kids that age out at 18 and what their next 10, 15 years looks like.
Phil Hissom
Well, like I said, it’s bad. I mean, the stats tend to like dehumanize it a little bit. It’s just a bit like I said, they’re more likely to be incarcerated. They’re more likely to get hooked on drugs. They’re more likely to just find, try to find different ways of self-management and self-autonomous, you know, living. And then they even have a much higher instance of just being dead, you know, by the time they’re 25, than someone who’s had someone to say, yeah, I’m with you and I’m here for you.
So it’s never too late. Someone that ages out, I mean we have some in our church, a man started a ministry specifically for that group, people who’ve aged out and mentor them. It’s not too late. It’s just someone that shows up and is willing to kind of work through those few weeks or few months of someone being obnoxious and rude and trying to like push you away because they’re afraid you’re going to leave anyway. And you push through that and then they’ll bond with you over time.
Potentially, and not always, but usually. And so, yeah, those stats get pretty bleak, but are very, very remediated by even a single positive adult relationship.
Case Thorp
So the state doesn’t provide anything after 18.
Phil Hissom
No, that’s not true. The state will provide some funding. The state of Florida provides really good opportunities for college. You can go get some housing paid for. You’ll get grants. The problem is the interpersonal dynamic. No one can just, no one can, someone’s gotta choose to be in their life and choose to be, as an adult figure, being a positive role model in their life when the young person is almost invariably going to say, I don’t want you in my life, and might say that in very colorful ways. So you’re going to have to weed through that and say, well, I’m here. If you show up here next week, I’ll be here. And just persist in that.
It is worth it but it gets harder but there’s no one can do that for you and they may end up in a group home they may and they may get a great caseworker who’s still on their own voluntarily just tries to get some connections to some of those opportunities but someone’s got to choose to do that it’ll be outside the scope of someone’s job but there are nonprofits that focus on that. Our local foundation for foster children does a lot of meetups and things so there are organizations that try and help individuals, it’s just that the need sort of outpaces the availability and let me give you some let me put that in some perspective because 10 to 20 kids is not a lot of kids. I mean, at any given time, there’s about 175 that aren’t placed, but they tend to get, and most of them are in family homes, most of them in group homes. There’s some that are kind of falling between the cracks there, but you have several thousand churches here in central Florida with families, people, young adults, or people that could be stepping in the gap there. When you compare that to, we have a Christian brother who successfully got a million kids in an Asian country placed in Christian homes where it’s not even legal to be a Christian. The resources are there. So the resources within the body of Christ are absolutely there. There does not need to be any kids anywhere, not in a home, not having somewhere to lay their head, not even close. And I think it’s just an awareness issue and it’s people praying and asking God do you want me to step in this gap and then it’s not something you’d want to do without that kind of prompting and then moving forward, I mean the resources are there even just within the church I mean absolutely there’s no there’s no need for there to be a child anywhere that doesn’t have a place to call on.
Case Thorp
I know there’s a woman in our church, she and another friend are in the social work world already, but they have taken it on themselves to help a young man as he has turned 18 and is making his next steps and choices. And it’s quite a journey. It’s quite a challenge. But I just have the highest regard for people that adopt and for folks that foster, because my heart twinges at the thought of nobody wanting me or wanting you. The families who adopt in our church to me are just saints. Saints.
Tell us if somebody’s interested in foster care, what’s something to consider and think about, and then the next best step.
Phil Hissom
I mean I think there are trials in it but I think it could be some of, if not the most significant joys of your life and that’s certainly my case. We love our kids dearly and you know it’s the best decision we ever made so I think that’s true.
You know the warnings are well considered, you know, it’s a reality of situation that you’re getting in, but the flip side is I can almost guarantee I don’t know anybody that’s gone down this road that hasn’t grown personally and seen some tremendous joys in it as well.
In our part of the world here in central Florida, we have something called Family Partnerships. That is now the local community-based care organization. And so going onto their website and signing up for a class, they even have interest sessions where you can ask questions. If your church has, there’s a local organizational commission, 127, that partners with churches. And if your local church could get involved with them, that helps a lot.
You start by going around existing foster and adoptive families and it gives you a chance to see what it’s like. You can serve those foster families and pray prayerfully. Consider getting involved. It’s probably the best step for any church or any church person to just get involved with something like C127. So those are the things that you could do to start.
Case Thorp
Yeah, Commission 127, we love it. A lot of folks here at our church enjoy that work. And this adoption hearing that I went to, that family is at another church in town and it gave me such pastor pride when they said to me, thank you, do you know how many people at your church have helped us and loved us through this? And maybe it was a little sinful, but I had pastor pride, pastor pride. Wow, well Phil, thank you.
Thank you for loving those precious children and thank you for sharing today about foster work.
Phil Hissom
Absolutely, really a pleasure to be here with you today, Case.
Case Thorp
Well friends, I would encourage you to go look into some of the resources that Phil has created in his career that are quite substantive and effective. So you can go to servingwithdignity.com, servingwithdignity.com, a good way to learn about a faith -based approach to serving others. And then through his work at Polis Institute, you can go to growopportunity.org. to learn more about how to serve vulnerable communities at scale and the way in which the civic public square mechanisms work best in that regard. Well, thank you for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Remember, like, share, subscribe, leave a comment helps us get the word out. You can go to collaborativeorlando.com for all sorts of content. Sign up and we’ll send you for free a 31-day faith and work prompt journal, a journal that you can use for a month and helps you think deeply about your faith and work integration. Also, look for us across the various social media platforms. We want to thank our sponsor for today, The Stein Foundation. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
