Shoes represent youth in need in Butler County foster care

Counties put focus on need for many more foster homes
Ellis, Amber. Cincinnati Enquirer, May 6, 2008.

HAMILTON - More than 400 pairs of shoes, of all styles and sizes, were on display here Monday to represent the number of Butler County children in foster care at any given time last year.

A rally with this sneaker- and sandal-lined backdrop was the first of several efforts to thank dedicated foster parents and let others know their help is needed, said Children Services Director Mike Fox. It was the local launch event for National Foster Care Month.

One of those shoe sets represents 17-year-old Shawntel.

A victim of abuse, she was placed in the foster-care system at 14. There, she was bumped around from home to home until she found the Plancks. For Shawntel, the fourth match was the one she says saved her life.

She found a place where she felt secure, a family who took her in as one of their own. Shawntel shifted her focus to church and school. This fall, she'll start her freshman year at the University of Cincinnati-Clermont as a pre-med major - a feat that seemed impossible a few years ago.

"Before I came into foster care, my goal was to just stay alive each day. ... But the first thing I noticed (with them) was that I was safe. I didn't have to be an adult at 14 anymore," Shawntel said Monday after urging a small group in downtown Hamilton to become foster parents. "They are my parents. To me, they're just Mom and Dad."

Paula and Terry Planck of New Richmond are just Mom and Dad to eight other children, five of whom came to them the same way. "We love each one of them like our own," said Terry Planck of his children, ages 15 months to 17.

"It's a job, it really is," said Paula Planck, still emotional after hearing Shawntel speak to the group.

"But the reward is worth everything you go through," Terry Planck said, urging others to seek the same sense of fulfillment he's gotten from his foster children.

Throughout the month, a recruitment blitz will include television ads, mailers to churches and e-mails to businesses.

In Butler County, more than 70 percent of foster children are placed outside the county - a move that is costly for the agency and the children who are separated from family, friends and familiar surroundings.

"We have children who are hurting, who need someone to lift them up," Fox said. "Foster families help heal the hurt that these children feel because they have been beaten, battered, abused and their lives have been turned upside down. These families give them a safe home, stability and love."

For more information on becoming a foster parent, call 1-800-325-2685.