"It means so much to them to have a home, to have some stability," says Margaret Quintana, surrounded by four of her five foster children.Posted on 05/28/2004 5:00:54 PM PDT by Coleus
Loving Hispanic woman is a state agency's ideal
| Thursday, May 13, 2004 |
| "It means so much to them to have a home, to have some stability," says Margaret Quintana, surrounded by four of her five foster children. |
Margaret Quintana's most prized possessions include the mementos of a typically proud mother: pictures of smiling children, and letters, cards, and poems from them that describe the difference that her love made in their lives.
They are not her biological children. They are the dozens of foster children, most of them Hispanic, whom Quintana has taken into her home during the last 16 years.
Quintana says that staying in a home that is culturally familiar helps foster children feel a sense of comfort and continuity.
"It definitely makes a difference," the Clifton woman said Wednesday.
The state child welfare agency takes the same view, but it notes that Quintana is a rarity in the Hispanic community.
Eighteen percent of the 65,000 foster children in New Jersey are Hispanic, but only 250 foster homes are bilingual and equipped to handle their needs, state officials say.
So the agency is starting an outreach program to recruit more Spanish-speaking foster parents by working with local Hispanic organizations to spread information about the foster program.
"We are facing a critical shortage of foster homes for Hispanic children," Human Services Commissioner James Davy said at a city of Passaic news conference Wednesday. "No child should lose their culture, their sense of identity when circumstances require they be removed from their home. We need to do a better job of recruiting foster families in the neighborhoods where children live."
Lorenzo Hernandez, executive director of the Passaic-based Hispanic Information Center, which helps place children in Hispanic homes, agreed.
"We do not want to traumatize a child a second time by placing him or her in a home that does not understand their culture or where there may a language barrier," he said.
A new advisory council - made up of members of Hispanic organizations from throughout the state - will monitor the effort to recruit Hispanic foster families and help the Human Services Department establish more effective programs for Hispanics.
The outreach effort is part of a larger plan to reform the child welfare system. Among the plan's goals are providing better drug treatment programs for biological-parents and providing incentives - such as higher payments - to foster families.
The new focus on Hispanic children also will include hiring more bilingual caseworkers, Davy said. Department spokesman Joe Delmar said the agency didn't know how many of its caseworkers are bilingual.
The agency is recruiting in predominantly Hispanic areas, such as Passaic and Hudson counties. But the Division of Youth and Family Services also plans to spend $150,000 to establish 15 additional foster homes for Hispanic children in Cumberland County, where 20 percent of the children in foster care are Hispanic.
Davy said recruiting foster families is a difficult undertaking.
"Fostering, while it has great rewards, in that you often get a lot from these children, is a daunting experience when you think about it," Davy said.
"But once you step into it, you wonder why you haven't done it before."
The Hispanic Information Center said that efforts to serve Hispanic children must include preventive measures, such as teaching families how to cope with stress and to communicate.
Many Hispanic families are overwhelmed by immigration problems, multiple jobs that leave little time to supervise children, and family separation, with one parent living here and the other staying behind in the native land.
"Parents get frustrated," said Sonia Lopez, deputy director at the center. "And sometimes kids get mistreated. There's a need to show them how to cope, how to communicate, and talk things over. We would like to strengthen families, help create unity, so that there's less frustration and children are less likely to be abused."
Quintana, who owns a beauty salon in Passaic and has two adult children of her own, plans to continue offering shelter, particularly to adolescents.
"I was a difficult teenager," she said. "I got pregnant at 15. But I had a lot of love. My parents didn't give up on me, and it made a difference. Many of these kids don't have that support.
"It means so much to them to have a home, to have some stability. They still come back to visit after they leave here, even after they get married and have their own homes. That means so much to me."
E-mail: llorente@northjersey.com
Contact Commissioner Davy Here
The Hispanic Information Center is part of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Paterson, they can be e-mailed here.
 |
'Rebuilding Broken Dreams' |
| May 27, 2003 -- Bishop Rodimer blesses Straight & Narrow's new 50-unit apartment complex before N.J. Catholic Pro-abortion Gov. Jim McGreevey cuts the symbolic opening ribbon. Executive Director Lorna Tangara, Catholic Pro-abortion Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr., mystified, and Mayor Torres look on. |
This article just tells me that Hispanics don't really care what happens to their orphaned and foster children; otherwise, there would be thousands of good Catholic Hispanic Parents waiting in line to protect "their" children and "their" culture and "their" language. 250 families in a state which has a very-large population of Hispanics residing in it is certainly a very sad and poor testament of the Hispanic community's dedication and resolve in this matter.
What are the goals and objectives for this new outreach program? To find parents to preserve a culture and foreign language or to find a loving and caring home for a child? Yea, let's get the dept. of Human Services involved so the children can be placed in homes where their teenaged clients are starved and weigh only 45lbs. when they reach 19 yrs. old and where children under their care are murdered and burried in basements.
And, now that we are going to place children according to culture and ethnicity, I guess we can't "traumatize" a Polish Child by placing him with a Greek or Italian family, could we? When will this nonsense ever stop?
Where is the foster father? Only single mothers need be praised? Where are the stories of the single hispanic father? Fatherhood must be verboten.
The same special interests that messed up adoption of black babies by white and mixed race families are at work here. I'm pretty sour against these groups because my mom was rejected by the state adoption agency because she was not a citizen (but really it was because my father was a white man).
These people must compare notes with the black social workers association. They sound JUST like them.
Are all of the children proven to be here legally? If not, they should either be deported, or the Mexican govt should be picking up the tab for their care.
YOu must realize that Spanish is the culture of force.. and also the language of force.. kids here in s california have no choice in either... it is spanish only.. their cultures, holidays and traditions.. language..
OK, but do we put a poor, black Dominican child from Paterson in the house of a wealthy, blonde Argentinean couple in Ridgewood?
A loving family is a loving family. The idiocy and racism of the left on the adoption issue never ceases to piss me off.
"Spanish" people are white Europeans from the country of Spain. I think you are referring to the racially and culturally mixed peoples of Latin America, which are distinct from "Spanish" people. Remember that Mexico is more culturally Amerindian than it is European Spanish in many ways.
Why do so many Americans refer to Latin Americans as "Spanish" because of the language they speak. It makes as much sense as calling a black Jamaican or Chinese Canadian "English." If you call this Polish/Italian American "English" I will get VERY pissed off! :-)
I spose it wont 'traumatize' them to take 'white folks' money for their projects programs
and other race baiting ripoffs and scams
Obviously, all other things being equal it's better to be placed with a white (or, any) foster parent than none at all, but I don't see why it's necessarily flawed to view being Hispanic as a potential advantage for a foster parent when placing a Hispanic kid.
Caveat: If we're talking about kids who are very young (or, grown up enough not to care anymore...), I'd guess that this factor kind of disappears, since how are they going to know either way? A two-year-old probably hasn't soaked up enough of his mother's "culture" to be "shocked" by another, or at least, to be shocked any more than he already is by being apart from his mother for whatever reason.
And I'm sure that at least some, perhaps most of the people pushing the "it's better for Hispanic kids to be placed with Hispanic foster parents" line would disagree with me about that, they'd say "no, even for two-year-olds, even for babies, they should have a Hispanic foster parent!!!". Otherwise they're "losing their culture"!!! In other words, I'm pretty sure a lot of the social-worker-type people who make these decisions, view "culture" in the usual lefty sort of way, as a race-determined absolute to be preserved for its own sake, especially if it's nonwhite (for all the usual multi-culti reasons). And, I certainly don't. On that I would part company with them, if that's what they're saying.
What about all the white people that go to China and bring back the little Chinese girls? I'm all for it. But, the same people that want only hispanics raising hispanic children will applaud the whites going to China.
What in the world are you talking about?
Especially those who would be so traumatized by American culture --- those need to be deported back to Mexico where the culture won't traumatize them.
Maybe the culture is the problem ?
Well ---- they'd both be "hispanic" so it must not be traumatizing. Culturally though they wouldn't be the same. Nor is a Mexican culturally the same as a Puerto-Rican etc.
Maybe if the politicians would stop pandering to illegals, there wouldn't be such an imbalance.
And it should be obvious that any culture which produces so many children in need of government assistance is superior. Heaven forbid we should remove anyone from it.
Western Civilization will be a thing of the past.
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