As a homefinder for Northern Rivers, Angela Moynihan helps recruit and retain foster parents. It’s a relatively new role, but one she feels almost destined to be in. That’s because Moynihan spent her own childhood in foster care. For National Foster Care Month, which begins today, Moynihan spoke with WAMC’s Andrew Waite about how her history informs her work — and how her job has changed her perspective.
Moynihan: I've used it to my advantage. It's been, you know, the last year, year and a half, has been slightly difficult, just healing big parts of me. But also...
Waite: Why do you say that?
Moynihan: Just from, like, learning what I went through as a kid, and, you know, the traumas and the, you know, not having a mom and a dad, and then, you know, when you move, it's just another solidification that you're unwanted, you're You're the problem. So I dealt with all of that growing up and many more things.
Waite: And there was something about being in this job that made you realize, like you maybe had it tougher than you had realized?
Moynihan: Oh, no. I've always known okay, my story. I just get to see it in a different angle now. So I use that as my motivation to do what I do. And I think that that's why, with this job, I have so much passion and heart into it. Because when I read these referrals of kids coming into care, I see myself,
Waite: You see you?
Moynihan: Yes. So when I'm out there doing my job, I know that I'm helping younger me, but also every kid that we have in care find a safe, secure and stable environment to live in.
Waite: When you were a kid, what do you think you needed in a foster parent?
Moynihan: I needed someone who understood trauma-informed care and what I was going through and what I didn't have. People can only do the best they can with the skills that they're provided, and I don't think that anyone that had me in their care was provided those skills, and that's not necessarily their fault, but I felt, or feel like, I could have done better if I had better emotional support and understanding of what I was going through where, oh, this child just moved from this house, and now she has this new set of family to adjust to, new rules, new family dynamics and personalities, but she also just lost this family. So I never to this day, I don't remember having a conversation about what I was going through, experiencing feeling a lot of the times I'd get compared to my biological family. So there's a lot of, you know, negative views towards some of my family versus other things.
So I think just what we teach for our parents and how to be understanding and that adjustments need to be made to each kid, because we all come from different backgrounds and different traumas and different insecurities and, you know, dynamics that you have to, you know that chronological and that developmental stage.
You have to really understand that and realize, okay, I might have an eight year old, but they're really performing at a five year old level. You can't fault them for that. You have to meet them where they are.
And I don't think that that was provided to me. And sometimes I do question, if it was, where would I be at age 33 would I already have my master's and not be starting it in the fall? Where would I be? But I also needed my timeline to be how it is right now, because I wouldn't be here doing this.
Waite: What about like changes to the system? Are there? Are there changes that you are hoping to be able to help implement through your role at Northern Rivers, with your experience as a kid coming up through the system that you feel like, that you are hoping to help manifest.
Moynihan: I think, giving the ability to speak on what foster children experience and what we feel going from home to home, what it's like to lose, you know, family members. And it's something that I still struggle with, is sharing this part of myself with my friends. And a big part of that is because, unfortunately, most of them, in fact, all of them, don't understand and can't understand what I've gone through, because they have their families. You know, not saying every family is great and beautiful, but that is a piece that is very hard to connect and relate to with other people. So I think being able to provide the lens of a foster child to agencies and to staff members and be like, give that approach and you know that dialect, I think that that would be my impact, is using my own personal story to enhance and spread that awareness as a foster child.
