The Children’s Double Hurt

It was just about a year ago that a baby boy, later named Jeffrey by nurses who cared for him, was found abandoned in a trash bin in Fountain Valley. He had been dumped there about an hour after he was born.

The news of his cruel abandonment prompted a flood of calls from all over the state, from compassionate people offering him a home. He got one.

There was another flood of compassionate phone calls last Tuesday from people offering their homes to infants being cared for at Orange County’s Albert Sitton Home for abandoned and abused children. The calls came in response to a news story about a court order requiring the home to find shelter elsewhere, and immediately, for four of the 10 infants in its overcrowded nursery. They got homes, too. The shortage of space at the Sitton home has been a problem for years. But it will be corrected within the next few months when a new nursery opens at Orangewood, the new shelter being built to replace Sitton.

The real problem facing Orange county is finding enough foster parents for the children of all ages who are now under county care. Well-publicized incidents, such as Baby Jeffrey’s abandonment and last week’s court order, never fail to bring about a heavy response. People react to such specific incidents and flood the Social Services Agency at 834-2168. But those heartfelt but sporadic reactions don’t begin to dent the urgent need.

Now, when they are needed most, fewer people are becoming foster parents.

There are reasons for the shortage of foster homes. The caseload of abused, battered and abandoned children has been skyrocketing, so there are more youngsters, especially under the age of 5, who need foster care. In many families both husbands and wives work. And some people just can’t take a child in while knowing that it’s not an adoption but only a temporary arrangement.

Whatever the reasons, the shame is that there aren’t enough people in a community the size of Orange County who are willing and able to open their hearts and their homes to youngsters whom others have abused and abandoned. The victims are the children who are suffering the double hurt of not being wanted by their own families or anyone else’s.