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After caring for more than 30 children as a foster mother, Erica Thompson has found it rewarding to be able to open her home and make a positive impact on children’s lives.

“I’ll give an example of a child that I had for almost a year last year,” Thompson said. “I saw him when he first got to my house. He was a very angry, emotional kid who did not know how to handle himself. Through being in my home and us working with him, talking with him, teaching him and then getting him with the right services, he turned from a troubled child to (being on) the A honor roll.”

Thompson received her training and foster care license from the South Carolina Youth Advocate Program, a private, nonprofit child-placing and family-serving organization. 

It’s a cohort of dedicated people who strive to meet a need where it resides. According to the South Carolina Department of Social Services, Greenville County has 422 children and teens in the foster care system — the highest in the state.

John Connery, special projects coordinator for SCYAP, said the organization provides regular foster care and therapeutic-level foster care for children and teens with complex needs including:

  • Emotional
  • Behavioral
  • Psychological
  • Developmental 
  • Medical

“So these kids have generally (had) more emotional, behavioral kind of issues to deal with. A lot of depression, sometimes acting out as a way to deal with whatever trauma that they’ve experienced,” Connery said. “Regular foster care kids generally don’t have the level of behavioral, emotional issues that the kids that go into therapeutic do. So it’s more of a challenge in therapeutic (foster care).”

Connery said about 15% of foster care needs in South Carolina are therapeutic.

In order to be licensed to provide therapeutic foster care, foster parents must complete special pre-service and ongoing training. Thompson explained that some of the courses she has taken to be therapeutically certified included learning how to handle medication and what to do when dealing with behavioral problems.

“We were looking at crisis prevention and de-escalation,” Thompson said. “A lot of the main ones were about interventions.”

SCYAP also provides a “treatment coordinator” for children in therapeutic foster care. Thompson said she has always been able to rely on SCYAP for family support. 

“(SCYAP) helps with teaching the families how to advocate for the youth and they do a lot of the legwork as far as connecting the family with people who can help the children, whether it’s through mental health or family services and different agencies in the community,” Thompson said. “Anytime that we want to call, we can call and it’s not just the on-call number. Our treatment coordinator has been available as well, and that level of support is awesome.”

Addressing an ongoing need

Connery said there is a ‘tremendous need” for more foster parents throughout South Carolina, specifically in Greenville County. 

“Part of my job is to make that need known to the broader community,” Connery said. “It’s in everybody’s backyard, so to speak. The need is everywhere. (There are) not enough families.”

Last year, there were only around 300 foster homes in Greenville County to meet the needs of the 422 children and teens in the system, Connery explained. 

“The other interesting part is that we have found it particularly difficult for as long as I’ve been doing this to recruit new families from Greenville County — that’s a real conundrum,” Connery said. “I’ve got almost as many families in Anderson County as I do in Greenville, and I’ve got twice as many families in Spartanburg as I do in Greenville County.”

The goal when placing a child with a foster family is to find one in the local community. This allows the child to be as close to their family of origin as possible and ideally not have to change schools, Connery said. 

“It’s a tall order given the number of kids and not enough families, but that’s what our goal is,” Connery said.

To help address this growing need for foster families, SCYAP works to spread awareness and information about foster care to local communities. 

“I say to people, ‘You got to have something in your heart about (fostering) that sort of gives you that motivation and calling to open your heart and your home to a child,’” Connery said. “That’s what I would say to Greenville — consider that, do some reflection about who you are, what your contribution to society is, and how you can make a difference in a child’s life by doing this.”

Around 80% of children in foster care have significant mental health issues, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

There are 3,755 children and teens in foster care in South Carolina, according to the South Carolina Department of Social Services.

Related Topics
  • foster care

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