By ERIN HARMEYER

According to a 2003 national survey conducted by the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, only 42 percent of respondents thought foster parents were becoming licensed solely out of concern for children. Nearly 30 percent of respondents thought foster parents were motivated solely by financial gain, and 24 percent thought it was a combination of both financial gain and concern for children motivating parents.

Foster parents are aware of that misconception in their communities. “I think people who see foster parents in public with many children may think they are taking on more than they can handle, and so they think foster parents must be doing it for the money,” Karen Anderson says. “Some people don’t understand that this is a way of giving back to society by doing something like taking in six kids, and providing them the stability they might not have received before. No amount of reimbursement could ever pay for the rewards in doing this, but foster parents deserve to have their expenses met.”

Foster parents admit that some may sign up to foster many children with the initial intent of earning cash without anticipating all the associated costs. “The idea that people are doing this for money is crazy,” Jones says. “There is no possible way you can even break even, and then make money on top of that. That may have been true 20 years ago, but I just don’t see how that’s possible today.”

With all of the factors stacked against foster parenting, supporting one another is of utmost importance, particularly when it comes to financial matters. Anderson, who serves as president of the Boone County Adoption and Foster Parent Support Group, says it’s important for parents to seek out support groups that allow parents to share resources.

“There is a close-knit group of foster parents here that call one another to share things,” Jones says. “We’ve been doing this for a while, and it makes it easier to just call someone and ask for help with things like transportation or if you need clothing or a dresser, things like that.”

Coping strategies for dealing with low reimbursement rates vary from one family to the next, but the common thread among foster families is making sacrifices when taking in foster children. Stoll said her children enjoy going to garage sales with her, and she takes advantage of end-of-season sales. Jones says she shops at Wal-Mart and Target.

“There’s a million examples of things you do without even thinking about it,” Ross says. “We clip coupons and shop at Aldi for groceries because it is cheaper. We take vacations to Lake of the Ozarks, not on fancy cruises.”

But foster parents in Missouri are hoping for change. The last rate increase was on July 1, 2007, the first they had seen in six years. Though it increased rates 16 to 19 percent, it still left Missouri at the bottom of the reimbursement scale nationwide.

In her 28 years foster parenting, Anderson has seen very few increases in pay, while the needs of children have increased significantly. “Many children today are being raised by parents who were raised in a permissive society,” she says. “Many kids are affected by things that happened to them prenatal. Their needs today are just so much more complicated than when we started.”

To reach the levels recommended in the MARC study, Missouri would need to increase its current rates by 120 to 131 percent, depending on the age group of the children. Farber recommends steep increases in Missouri to reach the needs of the nearly 10,000 children in the custody of the state. “Missouri needs to raise its rates so payments actually cover what it takes to take care of foster kids,” she says. “These children are in the custody of the state, and it is the state’s legal and also moral and ethical responsibility to meet the needs of their children.”

No foster parent would turn down an increase in reimbursement. Despite statistics showing foster parents leaving the system, those who remain are quick to say they will continue to care for foster children without it because their concern for the welfare of children comes without a price tag. “I do this because these kids could be my children,” Stoll says. “I would go to the ends of the earth for my kid, so why can’t it be the same for these kids? You can’t turn your back on them.”