Warm Heart and Home
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- Created on Wednesday, 13 May 2015 17:09
- Written by Jessie Slater
LYNDONVILLE- May is Foster Care Awareness Month, but for Barb Hash, foster care awareness has been a priority of her’s everyday for decades. In the past twenty-seven years, Hash has been adopting and foster children.
She has fostered briefly but mostly just adopts her children. She has nine adopted children, only two of which were adopted as infants.
Hash says, “we adopted our first four children, they were a sibling group. It was good for my husband and I and it was good for the children, and then it just kept happening so we have five additional children at this point.”
Hash and her husband were struggling with infertility when they decided that adoption was the right path. They began looking into adoption agencies but realized the need for adoption in Vermont; they decided to adopt locally. “It’s important that people realize the need, it’s easy to think all those children in other countries need homes when we have so many children in this country that really need homes.”
It takes an exception kind of person to adopt children, “you need to go in with your eyes open, knowing that their will be special needs.” Hash is an older adoptive parent at this time and says that she has really become aware of the need for attachment and bonding.
“My children were older when I adopted them and I lost a lot of those early years when my husband and I could be bonding with them.”
Her children are all homeschooled and she see’s it as an opportunity to bond with them. “They enjoy a lot of other activities so it’s not like they aren’t getting the social skills they need it just gave us an opportunity to bond to give them more breaks when they needed them.” Those breaks allow Hash to work on some of the trauma that is often noticed in adoptive children.
Recently, Governor, Peter Shumlin, signed a proclamation at the State House urging the awareness of homeless children in Vermont.
“I think that Vermont is becoming more aware, we have all kinds of programs that are meant to provide awareness. I always have to ask have you considered adoption when I speaking with foster care parents. It’s really very rewarding for not only the parents but the children as well.”
The proclamation is meant to gain awareness in hopes that it will inspire parents to adopt or foster children.
“This is a much better time to be living it where we have the specialist, andtherapist and the information and we have the support going that we really need to help in challenging situations.”
Hash does not plan on adopting more children at this time but says that it’s not totally out of the question in the future.
“I think our children are well equipped to facing the future and just identifying who they are and who they are meant to be.”