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It Takes a Neighborhood
A professor's nationally acclaimed foster and adoptive community offers children hope and a home.
Families and surrogate grandparents make up the foster and adoptive community called Hope Meadows, which was started by LAS sociologist Brenda Eheart, a specialist in child development.
In 1989 Brenda Krause Eheart had had enough.
A 10-year study of the nation's foster care system that she and a colleague had just completed was leaving her sleepless. It wasn't just the stories of abuse and neglect that were keeping her awake. What sent her over the top was the warehousing of children.
At the time this sociology professor was conducting her study, 406,000 children were in the nation's foster care system. Some 700 were entering each day. Of those, she learned, one-third would never leave. Instead, they would bounce from one home to another until they "aged out" of the system at 18. Only 46 percent would have finished high school; only 38 percent would have held a job. A disturbing proportion would wind up in prison, in mental health centers, or attempt suicide.
These were the "throw-away kids" that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich referred to when he and other legislators called for the resurrection of orphanages.
"I nearly hit the roof," says Eheart, recalling her reaction to the legislators' proposal. "I throw away my trash; I don't throw away my children. I had to do something."
That something has turned out to be Hope Meadows, a nationally acclaimed foster and adoptive community of parents and seniors dedicated to providing a loving, permanent environment for otherwise unwanted children. It isn't foster care, says Eheart. It isn't an orphanage.
"I started off with the idea of creating the kind of place I'd want for my own children, should anything happen to me and my husband," says Eheart. "And when you think of these children as your own, this is the kind of place you get."
Located 18 miles north of the University of Illinois campus, the three-block neighborhood called Hope Meadows is a place for children who otherwise may never have a home. The tree-lined subdivision was once military family housing on the former Chanute Air Force Base. In 1992, Eheart—and a band of supporters—won a $1 million grant from the State of Illinois to purchase the 22-acre site from the Pentagon for $215,000 and to remodel 14 duplexes into single-family homes for licensed foster families. Another 12 fourplexes went to seniors, who would serve as neighbors, tutors, and surrogate grandparents.
Today, 12 foster parents, 35 foster children, 15 birth children, and 65 seniors call Hope Meadows home. The foster families, some with single parents, live there rent-free and with health care and a $19,000 yearly stipend in exchange for agreeing to adopt up to four hard-to-place children.
The 78 children who have come to Hope Meadows since it opened in 1994—referred by the Illinois Depart-ment of Children and Family Services—have histories of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Chronic medical ailments range from cerebral palsy to fetal alcohol syndrome.
One child was abandoned in a hospital restroom by his drug-addicted mother. Another had lived in an automobile.
A 7-year-old girl had nightmares from having been raised in a cult. A 10-year-old boy bore the scars of having been burned by a clothes iron.
"The things these children have gone through would break your heart," says Bill Biederman, 64, a retired army officer and diesel mechanic who moved with his wife to Hope Meadows in 1995. He and the 64 other seniors who reside at Hope Meadows are part of the community's informal support network that operates like an extended family—an idea inspired by Eheart's memories of her own rural childhood with her grandfather living next door. In exchange for reduced rent, the seniors dish out hugs, help with homework, or offer a few hours of worry-free babysitting so that parents can run errands or attend the weekly parenting classes run by the program's therapists and psychological counselors, who are available round-the-clock.
Although all Hope families are interviewed extensively and trained before they are accepted into the program, this ongoing support is essential. During Eheart's 10-year study, she remembers the adoptions she saw fail because parents were simply overwhelmed by the needs of these chronically ill or deeply troubled children. "Five years of watching your mother get beaten doesn't leave you quickly," says Eheart. "These children harbor intense anger that manifests itself in behavior that even the best-intentioned parents can't handle alone."
Whether a caring neighborhood can make the difference is the big unknown. Child psychologists know that children prosper when they are given love, security, and nurturing during the developmentally crucial first three years of life. That doesn't apply to Hope children, 70 percent of whom arrive in the community between the ages of four and eight. No one is certain what these children need to thrive. But the staff, the teams of sociology graduate students who work at Hope Meadows, and others affiliated with the policy research program Eheart runs through the University's Institute of Government and Public Affairs are trying to learn.
The caring community concept seems to be working. The girl who once was so traumatized she could not speak now chats unstoppably. The boy diagnosed as learning disabled was recently promoted to his own grade level. Biederman will tell you about the little boy who used to crawl into his lap and bite him but now shadows his "grandpa." He'll also remind you of how good that makes him feel, because the caring at Hope Meadows goes two ways.
The program's fit within the child welfare system is not as snug. Its success in placing 90 percent of its children in permanent homes—either with Hope families or their own relatives—is undermining its financial stability. The approximately $150,000 in state recurring funds apply only to foster care, forcing Eheart to seek private funds to keep the community intact.
The cross-generational nature of Hope Meadows may provide a model for combating isolation among the nation's aging population. Former Vice President Al Gore and current Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert are intrigued by how the tightly knit community offers seniors a safe home and sense of purpose.
Requests to replicate the program have poured in from every state. Eheart is considering the idea, both to acquire more data and to prove that Hope Meadow's success isn't a byproduct of her strong personality. She is a stubborn extrovert with a gift for winning friends.
Those qualities will buoy her this next year as she embarks on a $20 million fundraising campaign to endow the existing program and replicate it elsewhere. These traits have already helped her ride the ups and downs of her self-described "true calling."
"This isn't Utopia," Eheart says of Hope Meadows. "People have problems. Seniors get depressed; some have died. Families leave. But we have helped some 80 children feel nurtured and accepted. We have seniors alive today who six years ago were told that they only had six months to live. We have made a difference. And no one can take that away."
By Holly Korab
Fall 2001