17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Profiles of Caring Adults Providing Hope for the Unadopted, April 30, 2001
This review is from: Hope Meadows: Real Life Stories of Healing and Caring from an Inspiring Community (Hardcover)
I have always thought that good foster parents deserved to be viewed as heroines and heroes by our society. Those who do even more and help the children with the greatest needs perhaps qualify as saints. And if they do more than that, I'm afraid that my language skills fall short of being able to capture my full respect and admiration. Naturally, there are never enough of such wonderful people. Unfortunately, many children cannot get foster care and live in orphanages. Others are abused in foster care in various ways. Others live in homes where parents do not take good care of them.
Recently, I read Build Your Own Life Brand! and was drawn to the profile in there of Ms. Brenda Eheart's work in establishing Hope Meadows, a community for children who would never ordinarily be adopted. Nationally, over 20,000 children "age out" of state care each year without such adoptions. Having worked with such children had broken her heart, and she determined to do something about it. This book details her efforts and what has evolved from them.
Hope Meadows emerged from Ms. Eheart's dream of a new kind of community that would match willing foster parents with foster children who had special needs, but also supported by some part-time foster grandparents and some professionals. A closed air force base and her lobbying efforts led to a grant from the state legislature in Illinois to buy housing for the community. Operations began in 1994.
The idea is to put together a whole community of caring adults with the time and resources to give troubled children the extra time, care, love, and attention that they need to have more normal lives. Hope Meadows is supported by the legislature and private gifts. The foster family gets $19,000 in salary, plus free housing. The seniors get low-cost housing. Professionals are in the community to provide training and support. The annual cost for a child here is around $20,000. This is more than the $13,000 usually spent in Illinois on foster care, but less than the $28,000 that juvenile correctional facilities cost per inmate. Most would agree that the extra expense for these children with the most difficult problems is well worth it.
The book mostly details the volunteers who live here, the children they have adopted or assist, and the challenges they have all faced together. Despite very difficult problems, so far around 90 percent of the children placed here have remained.
The volunteers were sometimes foster children or lived in orphanages themselves. Some of the children tell how they want to become foster parents when they grow up. Most of the seniors and adoptive parents have something missing in their lives that the community offers. In some cases it is the chance to have children, and in other cases it is the need to be needed. Many are idealistic people who want to help children, and are working at the limits of their capacity to do so. Single moms with education in this area are raising five and six children with special needs.
The stories are heartwarming, because they show the potential for love and caring to make a difference. You will be astonished, if you are like me, by all the wonderful things that people do. The challenges are enormous. There are crack babies to be weaned, children who are violent and need to be calmed, and young people whose nights are filled with horrible nightmares based on real events.
The book has wonderful photographs of the families that help make the stories come alive.
Do not read this book assuming this approach will sweep the world. As the author makes clear, the continuation of this award-winning program is far from assured. It gets its money annually from the state, and could be cut off at any time. Although there is interest in expanding the program, not much has been done. A second one has been launched in Cleveland with the initial help of McDonald's.
My favorite story in the book is about the six year-old boy who learns that his foster grandmother lives alone, and decides to move in with her so he can be the man of the house and take care of her. I'm sure you will find many stories here that you will love, too.
There's heartbreak too. Some children aren't able to improve. Some are taken away by the courts after family members contest for the children. In one sad section, a foster father who had been a foster child himself dies suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving his family with more to cope with.
Whether this subject interests you or not, these stories will uplift your spirit. They will also tell you something important about our human impulses and needs.
Even if you cannot be a foster parent for some reason, how else could you help these unadopted children to have more normal lives?
May all be loved . . . and feel loved!
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautifully written, heartfelt truelife stories, April 19, 2001
This review is from: Hope Meadows: Real Life Stories of Healing and Caring from an Inspiring Community (Hardcover)
A beautifully written book by a talented author about an inspirational community started by a remarkable woman! Wes Smith's writing brings to life the story of Brenda Eheart's noble efforts to build a successful innovative alternative to foster care and adoption. As Smith so eloquently describes "It is a deceptively simple approach crafted by an improbable advocate in a most unlikely place." I couldn't put the book down! The brown-toned portraits collaged on the inside covers initially caught my eye because of their beauty, but by the end I could look at those same pictures and feel like I knew those faces, those smiles. I find myself wishing that I did know them or that I might meet them someday. Smith writes each chapter focusing on a single family/resident of Hope Meadows. Each chapter is an intriguing story in its own right, yet the stories interweave the lives of other residents as well, just as all the lives interweave at Hope Meadows to create the success of this inter-generational, inter-racial community. Smith writes in his introduction "In a world that often seems self-absorbed and hard-hearted beyond belief, it restores your faith in humanity to find that there are still people who believe they can make things better by reaching out and giving of their talents and their time." You will come away inspired by the human spirit and grateful that you had the opportunity to read this book.
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