Home, culture and comfort

Todos Los Niños helps Latino children waiting for a home

PHOENIX- Mi casa es su casa. It’s Spanish for “my home is your home,” but what happens when you don’t have a place to call home?
 
This is a reality for about 3,500 Latino foster-care children who do not have a permanent place to go home to. Many, ranging from newborn to 18 years old, make up almost a third of the 10,000 foster-care children looking for homes in Arizona.
 
“For every Anglo child that we are able to place in a home, foster or adopted, there are three Latinos who are waiting to be adopted,” says Eli Marez, director of Todos Los Niños (All the Children).
 
Todos Los Niños is a bilingual program started several years ago by the Aid to Adoption of Special Kids (AASK), a non-profit organization that helps in foster care, adoption and mentoring children. The program helps the growing number of Latino children in foster care to find homes with Latino families. Marez said this number is higher than other cultures for different reasons. One could be misconceptions about foster and adopted children in the community.
 
“It takes a different approach to reach a Latino family,” Marez says, “From a cultural side, especially among the first and some second generation Latinos, there is this barrier there to adopting or bringing in someone who is ‘No es tu sangre,’ meaning he or she is not your blood.”
 
Another reason might be many in the Latino community are simply not informed about the growing number of foster-care children waiting for a home.
 
“For whatever reason, there has been many challenges to get it (the message) out on the map,” Marez says.
 
“The information is not getting to the Latino community. Many think the process is difficult and not something worth pursuing. However, when they start they realize it is not that hard.” 
 
In the system, once a child turns 18, the government declares them an adult and they are graduate out of foster care. If they have not been adopted, often times they are left on their own, something that worries Marez. He believes if the child is not given a loving home and a good foundation, he or she will more likely affect the community in a negative way, something Marez is working against.
 
To help solve this problem, Todos Los Niños established their mission to finding “the Latino family for the Latino child.”
 
“I believe the child is better off with an identity they are familiar with as he or she grows. The can have a better understanding of the culture, understanding the forms of that culture, and the practices of that culture. The reality is when they are placed in another home of different ethnicity, the family may not know all the cultural practices and values.”
 
Culture is something Marez holds in great respect.
 
“It is important to our Latino community to preserve that which we value,” says  Marez. “The sites, the smells, the practices, the music, the food; all those things are so much a part of who we are. I think, in terms of a child growing up and understanding where their roots started and the journey that mom and dad or grandfather and grandmother experienced gives that child a sense of who she or he is. And the challenges that came with all the strengths, gives them a sense of well being. It is preserving what that culture is about.”
 
A former pastor, Marez practices what he preaches. He and his wife, after giving birth to their biological daughter, found out they could not have more children. Still wanting to raise additional children, they took their doctor’s suggestion to adopt. They are now parents of an adopted daughter now a senior in high school and a son who is a sophomore in high school.
 
Marez found it difficult at times to help his adopted children. His daughter is of African American and Anglo descent, while his son is part Mexican and part Cuban, which are cultures different from Marez’s Mexican American one.
 
 “We had to make intentional efforts to learn about everything about their culture because, as we experienced with our adopted daughter, they or their friends will start asking questions, and if we can’t answer it, it could harm her,” Marez says.
 
Although Marez does find the learning of other cultures important, he adds, “The problem is not every family will do that.”
 
Marez hopes to help solve this confusion, what he refers to as an “identity crisis,” by placing Latino children in homes of Latino families so they would be more comfortable in their new homes.
 
“They can learn in a natural way about their culture. It is one thing to lose your biological family, but it’s another thing to lose touch with your culture.”
 
On the other hand, he says, “We want what’s best for the child, and if we can’t find a Latino home, we will place it in a loving home.”
 
For more information about Todos Los Niños, AASK foster care, adoption or mentoring foster children, call AASK at (602) 930-4462, or visit www.aask-az.org.