Darlington, other Pee Dee counties in need of foster homes

DARLINGTON — Each year, thousands of children enter the foster care system in South Carolina — a system that seeks to provide the best of circumstances for each child but is struggling because of a lack of foster homes.

The deficit in suitable homes is being felt acutely in Darlington County, where as many as 60 percent of the children in the system have to be placed in homes outside the county because of the shortage, said Ronald D. Krein, director of the Darlington County Department of Social Services.

“More than half of the children that come into foster care have to leave their county of origin, their school district — not just their family, everything. And that’s scary,” said Merri-Shannon Lunn, a Darlington County DSS child protective services worker.

There are 119 children — 59 boys and 60 girls — in the Darlington County foster care system.

Eighty-four are in foster homes, while others are classified as being in group, or pre-adoptive, homes.

The agency’s immediate goal is to have one foster home for every child in DSS care with an ultimate goal of licensing a new foster home each week and doubling the number of foster homes in Darlington County.

More homes means social workers can be more selective in their placement and match the children with the right foster parents, Lunn said.

Being uprooted from your home is traumatizing enough for the child, she said, so DSS agents try not to change other constants in a child’s life.

“We don’t like to move them,” Lunn said. “If we have to move them, it’s a last resort. But if we have to do that, we have to find a good fit where they will be comfortable with the foster parents ... and they’ll stay there until we can get them reunified or adopted.”

Florence residents Bill and Kelly Merchant have fostered more than 25 children during the past six years.

The pair have 4- and 7-year-old foster children, three adopted children and three biological children, two of whom live outside the home.

The pair recently renovated their back porch and made it an additional room to accommodate a request made by their 13-year-old adopted daughter, Claire,  Kelly Merchant said.

“Claire was here for a long time. The courts move at their own speed,” she said. “Two years later, her little brother (7-year-old Sam) came into the foster care system. He actually went to another foster home because we didn’t have a place for a boy. But she was so into wanting him to come here.”

The ideal result is to reunite children in foster care with their biological parents, but if that’s not possible, DSS officials try to keep sibling groups together and move on to other options, Krein said.

“The foster parents step up and say, ‘Well, if you can’t reunite, I’m interested.’ They do this because they’re caring people. They are giving people and they want to be able to help,” he said.

If a child has been in a foster home for more than six months and he or she becomes eligible for adoption, then that foster home is considered first, Lunn said.

Foster parenting was a given, Kelly Merchant said, but adoption wasn’t in the couple’s original plans. But the Merchants said they acted when they saw a need.

“The plan is always, always for them to go home, but there are way too many kids who don’t get to go home and age out of foster care,” Kelly Merchant said. “I don’t think anybody should have to live
their entire childhood saying, ‘I’m a foster child.’”

“Above anything, we wanted to give glory to God and glory to the Lord,” Bill Merchant said. “The good Lord placed it in (Kelly’s) heart first.”

The family includes 2-year-old Molly-Summer whose adoption was finalized in August, along with Claire and Sam’s.

Though the family has many joys, there are many challenges associated with parenting adopted and foster children — one of them being money. It’s truly a labor of love, Lunn said.

Foster parents are volunteers and only receive a stipend for their work. The amount of money they receive is equivalent to what someone would get if he or she had a child on food stamps, Krein said.

“It ain’t nothing you can get rich from, no, no, no. There’s a lot of other things you can do for a lot more money,” Kelly Merchant said. “People shouldn’t judge foster parents. People either think you’re
doing something really good or they think you’re doing it for money.”

Others may think it would be too difficult to let a foster child go when the time comes for him or her to return home, but Kelly Merchant said that isn’t true, either.

“You have to remember it’s not about you, it’s about what’s best for the child,” she said. “You never have time to miss them when they leave, because usually within 24 hours, they’ll call asking if we can take another one. It’s not like you don’t miss them, but you don’t have all day to sit around the house and cry because they are not here.”

Anyone interested in foster parenting can contact their local DSS office, Krein said. People can become certified for foster parenting and certified for adoption all in one step.

“It takes courage,” he said. “I think most people have a tender heart, but they don’t have the courage.

“If you have the courage to open up your home, your heart will follow,” he said.