Living on the Edge

Foster care, the joys and dangers

Posted

Yves Laurore, a 60-year-old Freeporter and president of YLR Home Improvement, was forewarned by family and friends before becoming a foster parent. Their collective advice was the same: “Kids in the foster care system can’t be trusted. Sooner or later they’ll turn against you.” Laurore, however, was determined to open his home to Long Island children in the foster care system.

“My children are grown, and I had this big house all to myself,” said Laurore, who prides himself on doing the right thing. So he treated the well-intended warnings about the dangers of foster parenting as misconceptions that he needed to dispel.

Laurore became a foster parent in September 2007, when he opened his home to two boys, ages 11 and 12, whom he described as “rambunctious.”

Laurore said they were temporarily removed from their parents by a SCO Family of Services branch office in Suffolk County in early 2006, while they resolved issues that prevented them from being capable guardians. Formerly known as the St. Christopher-Ottilie Child and Family Services of New York, the nonprofit agency serves more than 60,000 New Yorkers, from homeless families and struggling teenagers to disabled adults.

“The SCO Family of Services helps vulnerable New Yorkers build a strong foundation for the future,” the agency’s website states. “We get young children off to a good start, launch youth into adulthood, stabilize and strengthen families, and unlock potential for children and adults with special needs.”

“They were a little wild,” said Laurore about the two little boys, who were brothers. “They ran all over the place, breaking things and making a mess, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.” When the SCO Family of Services returned the boys to their birth family about a year later, Laurore decided to continue caring for children in the vast foster care system. He had had a good experience.

Two years later, Laurore said he took in two teenagers –– Aaron and Miguel –– who turned on him, threatening him with violence, dealing drugs and, at one point, even holding up a Chinese food delivery man who brought an order to Laurore’s home.

Page 1 / 8