Meet Latuana Hatcher, a Relative Placement Provider with Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries. Latuana takes care of her three biological children and four relative foster placements – she is a single mom to seven children.
When the children’s mom ended up with two black eyes, she was made aware of the need for a safe home for these children. Latuana is related to the father of three of her foster placements.
“The officer who was over at the house saw their mom had two black eyes. They realized they needed to go into the house to see what was going on,” said Latuana. “If it wasn’t for DSS going in and checking on the mom, they would have never found the children.”
One of the girls, younger than one year old, was lying there dying. They found the boys, both younger than six years old, inside their room with two gates locking them in. “I thank God every day that the caseworker went in there at that point in time,” said Latuana.
Latuana got a call at work asking if she could take in four kids as soon as possible. Three days later, they were at her house. They didn’t come with anything but the clothes on their back.
“When I first got the children, they were eating cat food, baby formula, getting into everything, and ripping out the center of their diapers and playing in them. One of the girls wasn’t even fed baby formula until she got to my house – and she was six months old,” said Latuana. “I can only imagine what they’ve been through.”
“Now they’re happy babies. They walk everywhere; they’re always smiling. The boys are very smart – they’re the youngest kids in their classes but the smartest kids in their classes,” she said. “They are such strong little kids – I don’t even know if I’m as strong as they are.”
Half of all foster placements are relative, but what people may not know is that you have 90 days to do paperwork for a relative placement, while you have six months to a year to do paperwork for a foster placement. It’s difficult to get this paperwork done while caring for children while also depending on government entities to get their paperwork done on time.
If you don’t get licensed in time, you don’t receive payments. But, Latuana was very clear when talking about payments: “Some people think that you’re just taking on the kids to get money. People don’t do this to make a living off of it. We do this because we love these kids.”
At Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries, we are grateful for the Relative Placement Providers who have given up so much to take care of the kids they’ve been given. They are incredible and have forever altered the lives of children in their homes.
“No child should ever have to go through as much as these children went through. And for them to still want to call me mom, and for them to still want to work on themselves every day is absolutely amazing,” Latuana said. “Seeing where they were when they came to me, and seeing how far they’ve come – that’s the reward.”
To learn more about the reality of foster care in the state of Missouri, visit: coyotehill.org/this-is-foster-care.
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