ARK Makes It Easier for Foster Parents to Give : Advanced Resources for Foster Kids aids those trying to meet the needs of children in protective custody.

The 4-year-old had been playing quietly while the adults in her living room conversed, but she knew they were talking about her and she wasn’t missing a word.

At one point, Valerie looked up at Diane Marx with a pained look in her brown eyes and asked, “Are you going to put lotion on me?”

“Yes, but not right now,” Marx, the girl’s foster mother, said softly.

“It will hurt,” said Valerie, who is being treated for extensive burns.

“Yes, it will, but I’ll let you squeeze my finger really hard,” answered Marx, who massages Valerie’s wounds six times a day to prevent scarring.

Valerie, satisfied for the moment, returned to her paper and scissors while Marx went on discussing the latest instructions from the little girl’s doctor with Dolly Petersen.

Petersen had just brought Valerie home after watching her stoically endure an hour of painful treatment at the UC Irvine Medical Center Burn Unit.

“She’s certainly a brave little girl,” Petersen said, telling Marx that Valerie cried only when the tender wound on her neck had to be cleaned.

Valerie (not her real name) is a victim of child abuse who suffered burns on her hands, chest, neck and stomach and spent two weeks in the hospital under the protective custody of the county before going to a foster home. (Marx said confidentiality rules prevent her from giving any details about the incident.)

When Marx heard in November that Valerie needed a home, she was already caring for an infant victim of abuse who was partially paralyzed as a result of a head injury. Marx, who is studying to become a nurse, does physical therapy three times a week with the baby, who also needs regular at-home breathing treatments for asthma.

Still, Marx said she decided she could take in one more child--one who would require weeks of daily visits to the hospital burn unit followed by long-term home care--because she knew she’d have help from Advanced Resources for Foster Kids (ARK).

It was ARK that sent Petersen to Marx when she asked for someone to take Valerie to the burn unit for outpatient visits.

Petersen volunteered. But she offered Valerie much more than a ride from Marx’s Costa Mesa home to the burn unit in Orange. Using books and stuffed animals to break the ice, the Anaheim resident quickly developed a rapport with Valerie so she could also provide emotional support.

During a recent interview, Petersen downplayed her role in Valerie’s life and praised Marx for offering a physically and emotionally fragile child a safe, loving environment while authorities decide whether or not she’ll be able to return home.

But Marx insisted that every gesture of help from volunteers such as Petersen is vital to foster parents trying to meet the enormous needs of children placed in protective custody because they’ve been abused, neglected or abandoned by their parents--or because they’ve been born drug-addicted.

“Being a foster parent is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job--with no holidays off,” Marx said. “You can’t do it without help. It’s real easy to get burned out, because our hearts are way too big, and we don’t know how to say no.”

Liz Lafferty, founder of ARK, said she worked for years to establish a strong nonprofit support organization for foster parents because she didn’t want children such as Valerie to be victimized again by the system that was created to protect them.

She said she’s seen that happen far too often as foster children are bounced from one home to another, never staying in one place long enough to feel secure.

Lafferty began seeking donations to start ARK about 10 years ago after seeing one 2-year-old boy make 11 moves through the foster care system in 14 months.

Because one of his foster parents was a friend of Lafferty’s, she was able to get close enough to the boy to see how traumatic the frequent moves had been and how the resulting behavior problems made it increasingly difficult to place him.

The boy was eventually adopted, but Lafferty never forgot how he had suffered. Her empathy for him became the catalyst for her efforts to establish a program devoted to promoting stability in Orange County foster homes.

Lafferty, who has been a foster parent herself, continued to run her own business as a designer of educational toys while spending nearly seven years “knocking on doors” in search of support for her cause.

In 1988, ARK’s doors finally opened. And today, as the program’s full-time executive director, Lafferty oversees a variety of support programs for foster families, funded by donations and grants totaling about $150,000 a year.

Lafferty said she gained support for ARK by reminding anyone who would listen that the traumatized youngsters placed in protective custody are “the community’s children.”

“Dependent children have been seen as the responsibility of social services, but that’s a fallacy,” she said. “This is not a bureaucratic issue, it’s a community issue. I wanted to find a way for the community to get involved.”

She said she has found there’s no shortage of people willing to volunteer time to make life easier for foster parents and the children they care for. ARK now has about 150 volunteers, and many have made long-term commitments to provide continuity for the children, Lafferty noted.

She said children in protective custody spend an average of 29 days in the Orangewood shelter, then go into foster care for an average of 2 1/2 years. Fifty-six percent of them end up being returned to their parents or other relatives. The rest are adopted, placed in institutions or remain in long-term foster care, according to Lafferty.

She wants whatever time children spend in foster care to be affirmative. Her motto: “Let’s give them everything we can so when they go home, they’re more intact than when they left.”

With that goal in mind, she has created a multifaceted program that serves more than 600 foster families.

Lafferty guides visitors through the ARK center in Orange with the pride of an expectant mother showing off her nursery.

Just beyond the lobby is an area with couches and chairs where ARK’s trained volunteers oversee meetings between children and biological parents who, by court order, are allowed monitored visits only.

Without ARK’s help, foster parents end up “policing the biological parent,” Lafferty explained. And if the visit doesn’t go smoothly, the child may feel caught in the middle. So ARK gives foster parents the option of not being there at all. And, for the child’s sake, “we play the bad guy, so the foster parent can remain neutral.”

The ARK center is equipped with a playroom filled with toys where volunteers look after children so foster parents can take sorely needed breaks. On one recent afternoon, two babies were being cuddled and fed by volunteers Martha Wing, 70, of Los Alamitos, and Manette Naud, 57, of Santa Ana.

Both are retired and both said they volunteered because they wanted to do something to help abused children.

“I feel I’m getting a lot more out of this than I’m putting into it,” Wing said.

Said Naud: “It’s not all fun and games when they bring their kids here. But they say it really helps. They have confidence in us. They know when the kids are here they will be well taken care of.”

Foster parents are urged to used ARK’s child care service for two four-hour periods each month, providing them with precious time to meet friends, do errands, see a movie, or just read a book or take a nap.

The service is much in demand because foster parents may not leave children younger than 16 alone or use baby-sitters younger than 18. But for many foster parents, baby-sitters can’t help because the children are so sick. ARK offers them respite by bringing in volunteer nurses and doctors to provide medical supervision for their children on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month.

Lafferty said ARK’s services also include “Sunday Specials,” a monthly outing for foster children, and tutoring for those who are struggling with their school work. In addition, ARK trains foster parents in CPR and first aid and teaches them how to handle drug babies.

Another vital component of the ARK program--a counseling service for foster parents and children--is now being developed under a $20,000 grant from the Irvine Health Foundation, Lafferty said.

Meanwhile, volunteers in the “direct service” program are doing what they can to ease stress on families by helping with child care, transportation and other practical needs or becoming companions for foster children.

Lafferty said she has seen a number of stressed-out parents nearly give up, then renew their commitment to their foster children after receiving support from ARK.

Her hope is that all foster parents can feel the way Diane Marx does after caring for 27 children, most drug babies who weren’t easy to cuddle because they were often jittery and irritable and had to be connected to monitors and tubes to keep their vital signs stable.

“I wanted to make a difference in someone’s life,” Marx said, explaining why she became a foster parent. “I didn’t know it was going to be my life. The sense of fulfillment these children give me is incredible.”