HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Being a foster parent doesn’t have to be your forever calling. It can be helping when you are able. It can also be providing a safe space for kids after yours have left home. It could even be taking care of children for a few days, through respite care, while their foster family takes a break.
That’s where Crossnore Communities for Children comes in. Crossnore, a non-profit child welfare agency that serves children across North Carolina, works to create a sanctuary of hope and healing for children and families.
“Our biggest recruitment tool is word of mouth, so that goes back into how we treat our foster parents,” Crossnore Foster Care Licensing Supervisor Holly Smith said. “If they’ve had a really good experience with us, they’re going to tell their friends, ‘Hey, you need to go to Crossnore and get licensed.’ That’s been our biggest recruitment tool. We do other things. But honestly, our best is just everybody finding out the secret that we treat our families like family, and everybody else wants to get on board with that.”
Crossnore Communities for Children
In 2018, Crossnore opened a one-person office in Hendersonville. The staff — now at 23 — has outgrown the building, and the nonprofit is set to move into a bigger space next year, Regional Director of External Relations Angela Bollo-Higgins said.
“Our hope is to be in there next June, and it’s been a long time coming for us,” Bollo-Higgins said. “We outgrew this office the day we moved into it.”
While they are waiting for renovations on their new building at 1410 Greenville Highway to be completed, it’s business as usual.
So, what exactly does Crossnore do? The nonprofit offers a continuum of care based on circumstances. The focus is on therapy services, family preservation, foster care and adoptions, and Youth Independent Living, a program to help young people age out of foster care successfully.
Department of Social Services agencies make referrals to Crossnore, which has three locations– Newland, Winston-Salem and Hendersonville. Crossnore’s referrals department goes through the requests.
“And then we work to see if we have a family that would be a good fit,” Permanency Planning Supervisor Lisa Melton said.
Although the referrals come from local DSS, they could come from any of the state’s 100 counties.
“We have the ability to have a lower caseload so we can pour into our families,” Melton said.
Crossnore has about 20 foster parents in the Henderson County area.
“The benefit to a private agency is that, because of those lower case loads, we can get in there and offer a bit more support,” Melton said of DSS. “Without the support they need, foster families can get burnt out.”
Therapy services
There are several options for children in foster care to get counseling. They may have sessions at the Crossnore facility or at school.
“The children living in Crossnore’s foster homes get priority for our therapy services,” Child and Family Therapy Supervisor Betsy Neill said. “School-based therapy is essentially for kids who have really high barriers to coming to the office because of school or parents’ work schedules,” Neill said.
Another benefit of Crossnore’s therapy services for children is Norm, the emotional support dog.
“Sometimes, if kids aren’t open to connecting with a person, they are willing to open their heart to a dog,” Neill said.
But therapy isn’t just for foster families or kids, support is there for Crossnore employees, too.
“You know you’re gonna have somebody who’s going to be checking in with you, and making sure you’re okay because they truly do care. So I think that is the difference. There’s not that dichotomy of ‘Well we care about these folks, but we don’t care about our staff.’ It really is whole encompassing. They care about all of us,” Smith said. “And that makes a huge difference in doing this work because this is challenging work.”
Being able to take a deep breath and not let the job creep into life at home is essential.
“I think for our workers the piece of longevity truly is being able to laugh in those moments. You’re working through it so you’re able to not take it home with you. You have to leave it at the door. And that’s really hard. That’s a really hard skill for our workers to learn because you are invested in these children and these families and these lives, but at the same time, you have to be able to turn it off and live your own life as well. That’s a really hard balance,” Smith said.
Burnout is the enemy. It creates turnover, which means children in foster care can struggle to establish a bond with those handling their case.
“For an agency to create an environment that is sustainable is an incredible thing,” Neill said.
Crossnore also provides support for foster parents.
“We had a family that was going through a crisis with one of their kiddos and we were providing them dinner and food,” Melton shared. “Dinner and gift cards for gas and anything that they really needed.”
Crossnore also offers foster parents free mental health sessions.
“It allows them that opportunity to have somebody to share their struggles with,” Melton said. “And we’ve had a lot of our foster parents take us up on that and use it.”
Bridging Families Professional Foster Care Model
Another part of foster care is reuniting families, whenever possible.
Crossnore has a professional foster parenting model in which the foster parents are Crossnore employees living with the children in Crossnore-licensed homes.
The Bridging Families program serves as a stepping stone for the children and their birth families. The children live in Crossnore’s care, but the biological family is collaborating with the Crossnore parents, working together to parent, keeping those connections, so the child can successfully transition back home.
“The Bridge Parents invite the birth parents to the house. Visits can take place in a home environment. Bio parents can be involved in care. They’ll make breakfast or dinner together. They’ll participate in bedtime routines. Both the Crossnore family and the bio family work together to help bridge the gap until the child can safely and successfully return home,” Andrea Garber, Bridging Families Supervisor said.
These are children who are transitioning from foster care back into the home after what may have been six months, one year, or even longer.
“How then do you relate to your child again? How do you rebuild that deep relationship?” Smith asked. “That’s really hard. So this is to bridge the gap, and the program has been extremely successful.”
Crossnore has three Bridging Families homes in this area.
“We partner with organizations for those homes. In this region, we don’t own them,” Bollo-Higgins said. “These Bridge Homes house our employees and the children in our care who are in the program. They help eliminate the barriers for foster families to serve large sibling groups, because not everyone has room for 5 extra children in their home.”
Another way Crossnore helps families as they are reunited is with its Family Foundations program.
“We have a team of folks who go into the home to provide intensive in-home care. We provide therapy services, crisis and case management services, and other support the family might need to reestablish stability. Many times these services are provided for families who have just reunited after the child has spent time in foster care,” Smith said.
This is an extra piece aimed at making sure the children and parents are adapting.
“Essentially preventing them from going back into care,” Smith said.
There are many reasons people step up and become foster parents.
“They do it because they see a need in their community and they want to help. They want to support these children. They have a lot of love to give, and a lot of our parents want to be the stepping stone to reunification. They want to help build families back,” Melton said.
Foster care and adoptions
Being a foster parent isn’t easy.
“Foster care is signing up to have your heart broken,” Melton said. “In one way or another, whether it’s your heart broken because of what’s happened to the children, your heart broken because of flaws in the system, your heart broken because you thought you were going to adopt that child and a family member came along. I really try and tell folks that signing up is hard.”
There are many kinds of foster families. Some are couples, some are families and some are empty nesters. Then there are those who want to provide a respite for other foster families.
“Respite is caring for the children a couple days over the weekend. They’re not staying there permanently. It’s just to give the foster parents a break,” Bollo-Higgins said. “The licensing works the same way as a full-time foster parent would but you get to be the fun aunt or uncle for the weekend.”
In the years since COVID, there’s been a huge drop in the number of people who want to be foster parents.
“We used to have families that were lining up to get training and now, it literally is like pulling teeth to get anybody that wants to become foster parents,” Smith said. “I think people just got sort of complacent in their life, they got busy, things changed.”
Those interested in being a licensed foster parent have to attend 30 hours of training. They are also required to take first-aid and medication administration classes. They also go through a home assessment and an interview process to ensure children are going into safe and stable homes.
“We need quality foster homes, people that want to help these children either return back to their biological family or provide permanence in a different way, whether it be them transitioning to a family member or staying in the home that they’re in and being adopted. There’s just a huge need for foster parents,” Smith said.
Finding those parents is the focus of Crossnore.
“The need to help families and to help kids find permanence, whatever that may look like for them, was real for me,” said Melton, who worked for Buncombe County DSS for 18 years before transitioning to Crossnore. “I applied for this position, which was a little bit different because it was on the foster parents’ side. Our goal is to support our foster parents. The Foster Care Licensing department is here to recruit foster families, help them through the licensure process, and to support them once they have a placement.”
Youth independent living
Because not all children in foster care are adopted or reunited with family, Youth Independent Living is an option for young people from ages 18-21. The program helps them become more independent as they transition out of care. Those in the program still get Crossnore’s help and support, even if they’re no longer in DSS custody. They receive case management services, independent living skill building, housing, educational support, and access to therapy services. This service is not yet available in Hendersonville, but is offered by Crossnore’s other two locations.
Continuum of care
Crossnore’s continuum of care weaves together all aspects of whole-child care. This trauma-sensitive continuum ensures children and families can get the services they need to heal, connect, and grow.
“Your family gets licensed. They get a placement in their home. They work through their traumas with our therapists here. Or maybe children are able to be placed in a Bridging Families home with their siblings and get Crossnore’s support as they work to transition back home. Family Foundations is there to support their mental health needs and ensure that reunification is successful,” Smith said. “That is a relatively new idea in the child welfare world, to have the kind of wrap-around services Crossnore provides.”
This array of services ensures that children, and their families, get what they need to overcome trauma, heal, reunite, and find successful permanency. In a world where many have only known hurt and loss, Crossnore aspires to be a place of hope to help children regain a sense of home.
To find out more about their work and how you can get involved, visit crossnore.org.