Earlier this month, a Glendale lawmaker’s family doubled in size, as a healthy boy and a healthy girl were added to the ranks of the Murphy clan. These additions weren’t courtesy of the stork, though: Rep. Rick Murphy and his wife Penny are adopting the siblings, an eight-year-old and a 10-year old.

“We both really wanted to help kids that didn’t have a good home,” the District 9 Republican said. “They really need that permanent loving family to be as good as they can be.”

The Murphys are technically the children’s foster parents, Mr. Murphy said, but will obtain legal guardianship in the coming weeks as the adoption process draws to a close.

Now that he has seen firsthand how the system works to place kids in permanent homes, Mr. Murphy said he is likely to do whatever he can at the Capitol to increase adoptions and attract more potential parents. One of the problems with the system, he said, is that a lot of children end up bouncing from foster home to foster home for years because of a lack of interest in adopting. That instability creates problems for the kids later in life.

“When you know that you’re here temporarily…it makes it really hard for them to bond with those adults, and if that continues for too long,” he said, “when they get older, they have trouble bonding with anybody.

“Their experience is that relationships are temporary.”

Rep, Lopez And Her 47 Kids

If you ask her, Rep. Linda Lopez, D-29, will say that she was a parent to 47 kids. Three of them were her own flesh and blood, while she was a foster parent for 44 youngsters over a 10-year period.

She may not have been their mother —and, she says, it wasn’t her goal to replace their mothers — but she did the things a mom would do: cook dinners, do laundry, make trips to the dentist, take the kids to the doctor. Basically, anything they needed. All of this, Ms. Lopez said, to give the children the best chance possible in life.

“I always believed that my goal was to provide them with a stable environment in which they could learn the skills that they needed…[so] that they could be healthy, productive citizens when they turned 18,” she said.

Looking back on it, Ms. Lopez says it was probably unfair to her own children in a way, as many of the foster kids required extra attention. But she knows her own children benefited from interacting with kids from other cultures and learning about the world outside their family.

“Now they understand what goes on out there,” she said. “If they hadn’t had that, my kids would have been very sheltered.”

Both Lawmakers Want To See Kids Get Permanent Homes

Having seen the way the foster and adoption worlds work, both legislators say there are things that need to be done to move kids out of foster homes and the Child Protective Services system and into permanent homes as quickly as possible.

There are not enough foster homes available to temporarily place children, Ms. Lopez said. Because of that, many children are forced to live in group homes, where sometimes dozens of kids live and adults cycle in and out, acting more as babysitters than parents.

“That’s not a good place for young kids,” she said. “Actually, that’s not a good place for any kid.”

One of the problems the state faces in attracting new foster parents, Ms. Lopez said, is that people are given unrealistic expectations. Though she hasn’t been a foster parent for several years, she said prospective parents are probably still given an unrealistic idea of what to expect, much as she was.

“A more beautiful picture was painted of these kids than the reality was,” she said. “We need to be honest with prospective [foster] parents.”

Being upfront with the parents about what they can expect — often the children have suffered emotional, physical or sexual abuse — would also help the state retain more of the foster families. Additionally, Ms. Lopez said that setting up a mentor program, where experienced foster parents are a point of contact and support for new parents, would help prevent burnout.

Once kids are placed in foster care, there are only a few things that can happen. Ideally, CPS reunites them with their families, otherwise permanent homes will be found for the children via adoption. Some children also “age out” of the system by turning 18 while in foster care.

The process of adopting the children, which has taken nearly two years for the Murphys and won’t be finalized until sometime in April, is daunting for many. There are home inspections and financial audits that all prospective parents must go through before being approved.

“I just wonder if there isn’t a way to streamline the process a little bit so good families can become adoptive families,” Mr. Murphy said. “Because of my personal experience, I’m sure that on the legislative level, I’ll be more of an advocate for adoption and trying to improve the way Arizona handles the kids that are in state care.”

He said the underlying mission of CPS — which he said is to keep families together — needs to be changed to protect kids in a more aggressive manner, moving them to safe, permanent environments more quickly. The goal, Mr. Murphy said, ought to be to place any child that is removed from his or her family into a permanent home within one year, be it that of the biological parents or of an adoptive family. The child’s needs far outweigh the parents’ needs, he said.

“I don’t care about the parents’ rights nearly as much as I care about the child’s right to grow up in a safe, loving home,” he said.

Increasing Subsidies To Parents Is 1 Answer

In order to do that, more parents willing to adopt children would have to be found. Mr. Murphy said the best way to do that is to increase the amount of money given as subsidies to adoptive parents.

“I’d rather subsidize a solid couple that doesn’t have the means to add two kids to the household than subsidize a screwed up parent that doesn’t want to change,” he said.

Ms. Lopez reiterates her peer’s recognition that adoptive parents need help from the state to get the job done.

“We need to understand [the adopted children] need lots and lots of extra support,” she said, “and those families that take that leap and adopt them need to be supported as well.”

She suggested not only financial subsidies, but also support groups for families that choose adoption.

Regardless of what is done, both lawmakers said it is their job to make sure the focus is in the proper place. Mr. Murphy draws from an unexpected source, modifying a famous Clintonism to reinforce that thought.

“It’s about the kids, stupid.” —