A town in Utah (South Jordan) is proposing a new city ordinance that could become costly to foster parents. They want to limit the number of free emergency calls to foster parents to three a year. A foster family would be given three free calls to police or fire annually. After the foster family’s three free calls , they would be charged a $100.00 fee for each additional. They also would be required to register with the police department, so they could be monitored by the police.

My first concern would be, does this also include ambulances for foster families. There are children in foster care that are medical fragile, how does this affect them?

In foster care training you are told that you can’t keep them from leaving your house by blocking their exit. Which means if your foster child chooses to runaway or leaves without permission, you are to call the police and report them. I know a few children that repeatedly runaway. That could be a costly problem in Utah.

I had to call the police twice, and an ambulance once, in one day. I had an eight year old foster daughter flip out breaking furniture, pulling closet doors down, trying to hurt my other children and threatening them. I knew she had a lot of problems when I accepted the placement. I was told that she was coming out of a psychiatric hospital to stabilize her medication. The small fact, they forgot to tell me was, that she had attacked another foster sibling in her prior placement. The police were called, she stated screaming at the officers and hitting them. It took four police officers to wrestle her into the police car and then she kicked out their window. I found this out after she was taken by ambulance to a children’s psychiatric hospital. The doctors shared the information and police statement from her prior hospitalization before coming to me. The point is that when you work with difficult children for the state, you should not penalized for it. You should be receiving help, not have someone working against you.

Foster parenting is something you can’t do alone. It is hard enough without others working against you. The foster parents are a great , much needed resource for the state in their quest to protect children. Someone needs to protect the rights of a foster family.

“It takes a whole village to raise a child.”
African Proverb