Fostering Care

Written by TYLER CHILDRESS

Jeff and Gay Gordon had been licensed as foster parents for less than a month when they got the call about a little girl who had just been removed from her home. Rosita* was charged with supervising her younger siblings as they played outside when her 3-year-old brother was struck and killed by a passing car. She was 5 years old, spoke no English, and was sitting in the backseat of a car as the call was made that would determine whether she would have a home or go to an emergency shelter. “That’s pretty much all we hear,” says Jeff, “and we have to say yes or no while [she’s] in the car.” And that night, Rosita found a home.

Rosita was the first of more than 20 girls the Gordons would foster over the past 12 years, when their youngest daughter, Rayna, became the only child after the couple’s oldest three kids left home. The Gordons saw a chance to finally let Rayna be a big sister—while giving back to the community.

When Rosita arrived at their house, she had little more than the clothes on her back. She had lived in Florida her whole life and had never seen the ocean, never eaten at a restaurant or even been to a movie. She spent a year and a half with the Gordons, where she was able to experience so many firsts that are second nature to most kids.“She saw what it’s like to have a parent who cares,” says Jeff. And the experiences they give to their foster children are no different than the ones they gave to their “bio” kids.

“These kids are innocent; they’ve done nothing wrong,” says Gay.“They’ve been born into a sad circumstance, so every one of these children deserve what our children got.” It all starts with a bath, says Gay.“From the first time I give them a bath, which is usually the first night, I feel like they’re my child.”

From there, they introduce the kids to their bedroom, an idyllic space with book-stocked shelves, a closet stuffed full of toys and a collage on the wall with pictures of every child the Gordons have fostered. The next step is enrolling the kids in school and signing them up for local sports. The Gordons have received a lot of help from the Boca community, from teachers to coaches. And all have the same question: how do they let them go?

“You have to think about it from a different mindset,” says Gay.“It’s so hard for the children to leave; it’s not about you. We really went into it saying that no matter how many days we have had them, we are making a difference in their lives.” But parting isn’t always easy.“We had one child who was very abused, who didn’t know how to sit at a table and eat,” says Gay.“It took us so long to get her comfortable with school and our house that we did resist having her removed.”

Acclimating the children to their new environment can be a particular challenge for children with behavioral issues. Jeff recalls a child who came from a food-insecure home; she would take bananas and hide them under her bed. The biggest challenge, says Gay, is navigating the foster system itself. While Jeff’s background as an attorney removes the anxiety from court appearances, adhering to the strict rules of foster care can prove difficult. From making it to court-mandated appointments and managing the strict requirements for travel, to occasionally being harassed by the kids’biological parents, navigating the system is an exercise in patience—and, at times, futility. But overall, the Gordons believe the struggles are worth it. “I think we’ve gotten out of it more than we’ve given,”says Jeff.

The Gordons still keep in touch with many of the kids whose lives they’ve fostered, including Rosita, who found a loving home with a relative and is now a successful high school student. Whenever a child leaves their house, Gay gives them a photo album with their phone numbers and emails written in. No matter how long the kids stay with them or where their next home is, the Gordons want them to remember they have one there, too.

Lately, the Gordons have taken a slight step back from fostering kids to focus more on their work with foster youth organizations, including Champions Empowering Champions, a nonprofit that provides assistance to foster kids that go to college; Jeff is the chairman of its board. Gay also recently became a guardian ad litem, representing the best interests of children during court proceedings But with their youngest daughter now out of the house, the Gordons hope to soon start fostering teens, the demographic most difficult to place in the foster system. Whether through nonprofits or by offering their home to foster kids in need, the case for helping children in the foster care system is unequivocally clear.

“Every child deserves love,”says Gay.“They’re so easy to love, it doesn’t matter what they look like or what their background is. They’re just really easy and deserv-ing of love.”