Oliver and Chelsea bring Love to Foster Children
Recently Ollie Nunn, The Salvation Army Orange County's Volunteer and Events Coordinator, and his wife Chelsea brought two foster children into their home. This is the beginning of their long-time goal of adopting children.
Since he and his wife were dating, they always spoke about adopting.
Preparing to become parents
After Chelsea finished her schooling she began working full-time as an Occupational Therapy Assistant. They then moved from a rented room in a house into a condo.
Next, they investigated the steps to adoption but quickly found out it is costly and a long process. As they were ready to bring a child (or children) into their lives, they decided to foster, which involves taking in children that have been removed from their parents due to it being unsafe for the kids.
What is fostering in California?
Fostering is temporary and in California reunification with birth parents is the goal. Birth parents will have requirements that they would need to fulfill in order for them to get their children back, these could be:
· Complete a drug rehabilitation program (such as our Adult Rehabilitation Center in Anaheim),
· Find housing, or
· Demonstrate that they can meet personal milestones showing that they can safely care for their children.
The children
Recently, they brought a boy (age 4) and a girl (age 2) into their home. The children were with Ollie and Chelsea for three weeks after which they were reunited with their Mom.
Immediately the couple became true parents. Right away when the young boy saw he could reach the fruit bowl and began devouring the mandarin oranges. When they tried to tell him he had had enough he would cry.
So what did they do? Just what all parents do: They went to the web to see how many Mandarins a child could eat before getting sick.
Biggest challenge
The biggest challenge was that neither of the children were speaking yet and neither would nod or shake their heads when asked questions.
There were some areas they were more advanced than a baby or toddler such as walking and moving about, but they were both very delayed and wouldn't respond to their names. This made it difficult taking them to the park or even giving them instructions.
It was also difficult going from having no children to two overnight. The fostering process itself is difficult. There is a lot of required paperwork and updates needed for the children. We were required to schedule both dentist and doctors visits within the first month of them being with us which meant having to navigate the health insurance coverage they had. The logistics were actually more difficult than caring for the children.
Three weeks later, the children went back to their mom. Ollie and Chelsea had met the kids’ Mom and Dad and were confident that when they were reunited with their mom that they were going into a safe a loving environment.
Ollie told us, “We truly enjoyed having both Henry and Belen in our home for the time that we did have them and will look forward to any other children that enter our home.”
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14