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Northern Illinois University

NIU Office of Public Affairs


News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

August 17, 2004

NIU pilot program seeks
‘host families’ for state wards

DeKalb — Few – if any – people wonder or consider what happens when foster children become adults.

Like their peers who grew up with biological or adopted parents, many foster children go to college. NIU enrolls the state’s largest group, numbering around 45 last year.

But most of those “wards of the state” have lost the familial support system that helped them grow up in an environment as normal and as safe as possible. They have no place to go during the holidays. They have no one to phone for comfort. No one calls to see how they are. No one sends them care packages of cookies and new clothes.

A pilot project beginning this fall at Northern Illinois University seeks to change that.

Organizers of the Host Family Program for current and former state wards hope to find at least 15 DeKalb families willing to make these NIU students feel welcome in the campus community and encouraged in their academic endeavors.

If the experiment works, it will expand statewide. One hundred foster children on Illinois college campuses who responded to a recent survey indicated they would participate in such a program.

“For a lot of foster kids, after they come to the university, their foster families aren’t so receptive to them coming back,” said Jeremy, a 20-year-old NIU junior who grew up with a foster family in Mundelein.

“A couple years ago, I had no place to go for the holidays, and NIU gets pretty lonely during the holidays. I mean, there is no one here.”

Don Bramlett, director of retention programs at NIU, said the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services has found that many of its wards do begin college but never graduate.

“If they can go to college and complete college, they’ve got a good springboard for the rest of their lives. Family support is one of the best ways to do it,” Bramlett said. “We are interested in getting our students interested in school and having fun in school.”

Simply put, a host family welcomes the young person into their lives as a family member.

Together, the family and the young person do what families do for each other – provide a safe haven, a place to relax and talk over everyday occurrences, drama, successes and concerns and a place to retreat in times of trouble or illness.

Suggested activities include holiday festivities, family events, Sunday dinners, church worship services, sporting contests, cultural happenings and birthday parties.

Host families are not required to be licensed foster parents. However, each person interested in being a host family must complete an application, provide references and participate in an interview process as well as submit to mandatory background checks.

An orientation will be provided to host families and participating youth. The host family is asked to commit to its relationship with the young person for at least one full year, beginning in the fall and continuing through the end of summer break.

“For the future generations to succeed, we do need a little bit of help: someone out there rooting for the small guys,” Jeremy said. “That’s a really powerful thing.”

Jeremy, a history major with a minor in sociology and an emphasis in Spanish, and his three siblings were taken from their parents’ home in Chicago’s Robert Taylor Projects in 1988.

The 4-year-old Jeremy had been found wandering the streets of the city alone, prompting state authorities to charge his parents with neglect and terminate their custody. Jeremy and his sister grew up in one foster home while his two brothers grew up in another.

His story has taken bright turns since he entered “the system.”

He is the president of the DCFS Northern Region and serves on the Statewide Advisory Board. Locally, he is creating the Illinois State Wards Association at NIU that will help students who are products of the foster system to connect with each other and to learn more about their rights as wards of the state.

DCFS offers free tuition (up to six years if the student begins at a community college), free room and board (whether on campus or off), free medical and dental care, free books and even free furniture for those who choose apartment living.

“There are different issues between college youth and youth in high school. We’re making sure they’re getting everything they’re afforded,” said Jeremy, who already has taught friends at NIU about the tuition waiver after some had taken out student loans while helping one classmate obtain hundreds of dollars of past-due support from DCFS.

The organization, which still awaits official recognition from the Student Association, also will help “foster kids who have kids” to find daycare and point them to additional sources of financial aid. Jeremy himself is the recipient of an Illinois State Scholarship for Foster Children.

Jeremy also enhanced his resume over the summer with an internship on Capitol Hill, working as a legislative research aide for Sen. Timothy Johnson, D-S.D. One of only 14 interns chosen from hundreds of applicants to the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute program, he also helped to design Web sites.

He is driven by more than his desire to prove one-time detractors wrong.

“I feel I need to succeed,” he said, “because there are so many people in my situation.”

For more information, call Debra Whiteside at (815) 753-8525 (e-mail Dwhites1@niu.edu) or Diane DeLeonardo at (217) 524-2422 (e-mail ddeleona@idcfs.state.il.us).

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