The people who took you from her helped you stuff your few meager possessions into a black plastic garbage bag so you could take them with you. (When you look back on this later, as an adult, you’re going to think that this garbage bag is a perfect symbol for your life at this time.)

Can it get worse?

It doesn’t have to. However, for more than half of the 146 children in foster care from Wicomico County, it can and it does. Eighty-five of the Wicomico youngsters in the foster care system have to cope not only with losing their birthmother, but also with being moved out of the county. Many of them end up across the Bridge.

That means that they’re suddenly removed from all the people and places that they had ties with. They’re away from their school friends, away from their neighbors, away from their neighborhood house of worship and away from where they were accustomed to play.

As mentioned a moment ago, it doesn’t need to be this way. If you were the eight year old being removed from your birthmother, you might, if you’re lucky, become a part of the Family to Family program. This is a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation that helps children in foster care remain in their neighborhoods.

As Carol Ann Mumma, Director of the Wicomico County Department of Social Services says, “It’s really a new way of doing business in child welfare. The goal is to find foster families in the child’s neighborhood or community. We also want to work with the birth family to remediate the problems that caused the child to be in foster care in the first place.”

This last is a large component of the program. The foster families become mentors for the birth families, helping to teach them parenting skills and life skills so that the birth parent can be reunited with the child as soon as possible.

When the birth parent and the foster parent are in the same neighborhood, it becomes practical for the birth parent and the foster parent and the child all to spend time together. For example, the foster parents often invite the birth parent to be part of birthdays and other celebrations. Or the foster parent will invite the birth parent to be part of something as simple as being present when the child gets a haircut.

Mumma would love to see more Wicomico families become foster parents. The Family to Family program can only work when there are foster families available locally to help meet the local need.

What’s it like being a foster parent? Sydney Geesaman feels that her experience with little Alana (whom she hopes to adopt) has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of her life. “If people have enough room in their hearts for another child or two,” she says, “I hope they’ll do it. The benefits for both the foster parent and the child will last a lifetime.”

For more information, call Tysha Chambliss at 410 543 6900.