BaptistLIFE Online

By Tim Durkin, Baptist Family & Children’s Services

COLUMBIA, Md.—Standing in line, waiting to clear the metal detectors, gives you time to orient yourself to the Juvenile Justice Center on Gay Street in Baltimore. It is a democratizing experience: everyone in line is equal. Social workers, teachers, young men and women summoned to hearings, public- and privately-funded defenders, we all enter the building the same way.

For many (if not most), a trip to the Juvenile Justice Center is no happy occasion. The building hosts court hearings for young men and women charged with crimes, a booking facility for the Baltimore City Police, and 144 beds for delinquent youths requiring detention.

But once a month, one of the Center’s courtrooms is the site of unalloyed joy.

On May 5, 2010, about 75 men, women, and children filled a third-floor courtroom. More than 15 children and their adoptive mothers and fathers gathered to forge new families in the eyes of the law.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a Baltimore City Sheriff announced before the ceremony got underway, “please make as much room as possible for people to sit on the benches. Everybody get close! Today is a good day.”

So all of Baltimore, it seemed, packed into the tiny courtroom, squeezed together to accommodate each other and await the presence of the judge. The clerk of the court rose to say how different the rules for this courtroom were from the usual. “Please,” he said, “make as much noise as you like. Let the children roam around the room if they want to. Normally, we would ask that everyone keep still and quiet when court is in session. But not today. Today is your day.”

Two social workers from Baltimore City’s Department of Social Service worked the room, checking in with parents and letting them know where to sit and stand when called forward by the judge.

The hearing that these families gathered to attend is a ceremonial capstone to a long legal process. All of the hard work has been done well ahead of time, the family assessments done and reviewed, the child’s legal relationship to their birth parents ended. A social relationship with those original parents may continue, at the discretion of the adoptive parents.

More minutes ticked by as people waited for the judge to arrive. Those assembled chatted and watched the younger children explore the courtroom, crawling under the benches and the tables placed at the head of the room. Families took pictures, the older children looking bashful and preening by turns. The youngest adoptee in the room was probably three years old, and the oldest on this particular day was around twelve.

It seemed that everyone old enough to know how to spell typed text messages into their cell phones.

People rose to their feet as the judge, a thin, white-haired man in large black robes, entered the room. He carried with him a stuffed animal: a yellow lab-type dog. He asked everyone to sit, introduced himself as Robert Kershaw, and let the assembled know that the dog’s name was “Spot.”

The judge began calling families before him, one at a time. Each family member was asked to state their name for the record, including the children about to be adopted.

Families of all kinds and configurations came forward. There were single moms, single dads and married couples. The courtroom held Caucasian families, African American families and interracial ones. Children were accompanied by tattooed parents in cutoff jeans, while one father wore an impeccable blue Navy uniform heavy with ribbons.

The families were all backed by a support staff of social workers, attorneys and photographers, not to mention aunts, uncles, cousins and friends.

Each family’s time before the judge was basically similar. The judge looked through the child’s case file and declared that the proper procedures had been followed. He made a formal declaration that the adoption was official, congratulated the child on his or her new family, and elicited a round of applause from the rest of the courtroom. Older children thanked him as they turned to leave. The youngest smiled at the applause, trying to figure out what all the commotion was about. One wide-eyed little girl asked her mother “what did he just say?” as if she had been taken by surprise.

Baptist Family’s CHOSEN Treatment Foster Care program celebrated two adoptions, as T.J. and Tina Terra adopted two young men. Jayson Barksdale and Thomas Rampley became Brett and Bryce Terra. The boys applauded along with the rest of the courtroom as their new family became official, and smiled during pictures taken with the judge.

Overall, seven CHOSEN children have been adopted into new families in the last twelve months.

Foster care is a good first step on the path to adoption. If you are thinking about adoption, consider beginning that journey as a foster parent.

To learn more, contact Baptist Family’s Parent Recruitment Office at (800) 621-8834, ext. 101, or visit www.baptistfamily.org/chosen.

By Tim Durkin, Baptist Family & Children’s Services

Ask any group of Americans what exactly comprises the American Dream and you’re likely to hear a variety of answers. But, if you boil those answers down to their essence, you might just find a common theme of freedom, prosperity and security.

The decade past may have taken the glow off of the American Dream for most of this country’s people. But, curiously enough, the American Dream is not just the property of Americans. Worldwide, especially in some of the globe’s most troubled countries, hundreds of millions of men and women lay heads on pillows each night and dream in American.

In the fall of 2009, Baptist Family began working with a group of African refugees living in the Belair-Edison neighborhood of Baltimore City. Nine large families (totaling around 60 people) were relocated from camps in the Congo by an international nonprofit organization called the International Rescue Committee.

These men, women, and children came to America to escape crushing poverty and illness. A rolling conflict called “Africa’s World War” has devastated massive swaths of the Congo and Rwanda and left millions homeless. Even refugee camps have become targets, and hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or left homeless a second time after military strikes.

Those whose camps survive intact face food and water shortages and a lack of basic sanitation.

In the middle of this nightmare, the power of the American Dream is undeniable. And a very few people are given a chance to make the dream a reality in their lives.

Baltimore’s refugees live in neatly kept apartments and row homes. IRC provides their housing for eight months while they begin to acclimate to their new country.

The refugees speak Swahili and some French (a leftover of French colonial involvement in the Congo). They immediately reached out to Salem Gospel Ministries, a BCM/D church that has a strong French-speaking African population. Salem Gospel Ministries began to minister to and advocate for the refugees, who needed significant help in adjusting to a new way of life.

The parents and children, while well housed and out of immediate danger, needed major amounts of material assistance. Clothing and shoes were in short supply, and Baltimore’s cold weather months were coming on. Baptist Family donors and friends from University Church saw to it that the refugees would not suffer the winter’s cold.

The children were enrolled full-time at a Baltimore City public school with limited “English As A Second Language” resources. So Baptist Family staff and other volunteers began after-school English language classes for the refugee children. Bright and energetic, the children have taken to their studies and are making great progress with the language and culture of their new homeland.

Lessons begin with a scripture verse, and the refugees’ spiritual well-being is taken very seriously. Some are Christians and others not, but all are shown the compassionate love of Christ.

Adults are also learning a new language through English classes held after Sunday services at Salem Gospel Ministries. Salem meets regularly at Patterson Park Church in Baltimore.

Along with the great opportunity they have been offered, the adults face a great challenge: adjusting to a new language and culture and finding gainful employment in the current economy. Their rescue from the Congo comes at a bit of a price. They are expected to work to repay transportation costs for their family’s flight to America.

For some of these large families–with as many as eight children–this debt is large and looming.

Their needs are great, indeed, and the country they have left behind is the home of many painful memories. But the men and women afforded their own chance at the American Dream are working hard to heal their families’ trauma and to make a new start in what must still be called the Land of Opportunity.

By Tim Durkin, Baptist Family & Children’s Services

COLUMBIA, Md.—The staff, trustees, donors and clients of Baptist Family are very grateful to Maryland/Delaware Baptists for your generous and continuing support.

Thanks to your prayers and donations, 2008 was a banner year for Baptist Family. Our programs served more people than ever before, and we were able to add significant capacity, improving the quality of our care in equal measure to the increase in quantity. We are pleased to report the following progress:

Record-breaking material assistance. As in years past, Baptist Family headed efforts to provide poverty-stricken families with support at back-to-school time and Christmas. Funds and supplies were raised from a variety of sources, including individual donors and Baptist churches in Maryland and Delaware. Four thousand three hundred one kids were served in these combined events, up 60 percent from 2007. A year of strong fund raising was critical to this effort, as it allowed us to upgrade the staff person responsible for these two projects from part-time to full-time. Her extra hours returned extremely good results.
Families have told us many times that without our assistance they would not have been able to provide anything for their kids at back-to-school and Christmas. We have been blessed by strong partnerships with local churches that care deeply about their communities.

Record-breaking information and referral. Strong fund raising also allowed Baptist Family to hire a part-time staffer to man our information and referral hotline. Families in all kinds of crises (financial, psychological, medical) call Baptist Family for help. To assist families whose needs for help are beyond the scope of our programs, we have long maintained a directory of local organizations whose services complement our own. In 2008, we focused on updating and improving the quality of that directory and increasing the number of hours staff were available to answer calls for help live, rather than responding to a message left on voicemail.

These efforts paid off, as GSN staff responded to 411 calls for help in 2008, an increase of 64 percent over 2007. God has given us many opportunities to provide clients with a listening ear, encouragement, and prayer. One caller prayed with Baptist Family staff and even accepted Jesus as Savior and Lord.

New opportunities in transitional housing. In 2008, we also saw GSN’s acquisition and lease of two new single-family homes that the program will use to provide transitional housing services to homeless families. One home, in the Pen Lucy neighborhood of Baltimore City, is already in use. The other, in Baltimore’s Brooklyn neighborhood and a partnership with the First Baptist Church of Brooklyn, is currently being outfitted with furniture and supplies.

The impact of this program is massive. The family in our Baltimore City house is a young married couple with an infant. We have been blessed to help them grow and mature, and to raise a healthy child while working and going through school.

Foster care goal well met. Our CHOSEN Treatment Foster Care program met its 2008 goal, caring for 70 children. CHOSEN receives children via referrals from county-level Departments of Social Services. It then matches referred kids with trained treatment foster parents. CHOSEN kids are treated by individual families in individual–not group–homes. The child’s treatment is implemented by our foster parents and overseen by skilled Family Treatment managers employed by CHOSEN.

Major success was accomplished in transforming foster families into adoptive ones. Of the 70 children in our care in the past year, 12 have been adopted by their foster parents or are in the final stages of their adoption. This is a fantastic result, which shows that we have matched our foster kids with the best possible foster families.

Two of our foster children are preparing for baptism into the churches of their foster parents. Please pray for them and for all of our kids.

In all, we at Baptist Family are proud of the work we accomplished in 2008. We took major steps in the service of our mission, and laid solid foundations for future work.

Baptist Family & Children’s Services, 800-621-8834, baptistfamily@baptistfamily.org, www.baptistfamily.org