Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 25, 1993 TAG: 9308250151
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JENNIFER DIXON ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
"This is the hardest thing I've ever done," she said. "I thought finding out I had HIV was hard. But it's nothing compared to this - looking at them every day and not knowing how much time I have with them, knowing they're going to be with someone else, not being able to watch them grow up."
With the help of an experimental program, she's looking for strangers who will open their hearts to her children, who'll give them the love they will need to grieve her death.
The 26-year-old mother agreed to talk about her search but insisted her identity be kept secret. She said she turned to Second Family, a project of Lutheran Social Services of Illinois, because her own mother is too frail to care for her 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son.
Neither child is infected with the HIV virus. But her son was born sickly, is slow in school and needs extra attention.
One brother refused to take them, she said, and another is too immature.
"I'm looking for someone I can feel comfortable with, who my children feel comfortable with. People who are caring and loving and will do the right thing by my kids," said the mother. "This organization is a godsend. You get to choose the people you want to be a parent."
Begun this spring, the Second Family demonstration project not only recruits adoptive families and guardians in Chicago for parents with AIDS who have no one to care for their children. The project, which gets part of its funding from the federal government, also helps establish legal arrangements for families who choose a friend or relative on their own.
So far, Second Family has helped several parents who already had chosen adoptive families and is trying to find new homes for about 40 children ranging in age from 2 to 15 from more than a dozen other families.
In the process, the agency must negotiate complicated and sometimes controversial questions of race, sex and drug abuse. That's a new role for Lutheran Social Services, a child welfare agency established during a cholera epidemic 125 years ago.
"They're pioneering," said David S. Liederman, executive director of the Child Welfare League of America. "We're in unknown territory."
At least 4,750 women in Chicago have the HIV virus and more than 80 percent of them have at least one child, according to the Families' and Children's AIDS Network, a Chicago-based organization.
Most of the women are single, black or Hispanic, and most of their 9,500 children are not thought to be infected with HIV.
Unless the course of the AIDS epidemic changes dramatically, the number of children and teens left motherless by the disease nationwide will exceed 80,000 and could reach 125,000, the Journal of the American Medical Association predicted in December.
The death of a parent is one of the most traumatic experiences any child can suffer. When that death is accompanied by the stigma and isolation of AIDS, the potential for trouble is magnified, the journal said.
The adopting families must be sensitive to the children's special needs. Phyllis Charles, a pediatric social worker and Second Family's supervisor, said many are angry, others are withdrawn and destructive.
Some have learning disabilities or a history of substance abuse.
"HIV is not the only problem they come with," said Charles.
Success is measured one child, one family at a time.
"If only we could convert the middle class and the upper-class families who are thirsting for babies . . . to open their homes to those who really need adoption," said Liederman.
"There are going to be thousands and thousands of kids desperately seeking good homes and it would be great if we could make the match."
by CNB