By Garrick A. Moritz, Gazette

Sue Christiansen has been a foster caregiver for 37 years and taken in somewhere around 150 kids, changing lives for the better. However, in her view, the kids did way more for her than she ever did for them. 

“I’ve always been a babysitter, even in high school,” she said. “I graduated from Garretson in 1967 and so this is my hometown. I married Jerry in 1970. Growing up, I was the second oldest in my family and Jerry was the youngest in his family. So we had nieces and nephews and family members all around us when we started dating. We never did anything without a bunch of kids around us, whenever we went camping or hiking or anything else, we’d always have groups of kids around us.”

“When I graduated high school, I went to Nettleton Commercial College because I knew I wanted to become a bookkeeper. Well, after working in bookkeeping for a few years, I knew I did not want to be a bookkeeper. About that time, it was 1971, Kelli [Christiansen Schleuter] was five months old and had lost her babysitter. Her mom Pat said to me, ‘Sue, I want you to watch her,’ and I thought it was the perfect opportunity for me start my own daycare, and so I did, in 1971 with Kelli as my first child.”

Sue said that she and Jerry started their home out in Renner, then Sioux Falls but decided to move back home to Garretson by 1976. By this time, they had adopted Cindi and Aaron, and wanted to move back to Garretson to raise them both here.

“Then lo and behold in 1982, I had a miracle and I got pregnant and we had Dena, so that moved it up to three children of our own, plus all the children I watched. So, we were happy and content.”

She didn’t know it then, but the pump had been primed for foster care. Sue said it came about first with LeRoy Austin, though he wasn’t part of the state’s foster program.

“Leroy was having major issues with his parents, and one of his sisters called one day and asked, “Aunt Sue and Uncle Jerry, can LeRoy come and live with you? He would have been a sophomore in high school at the time. So, he came and lived with us. Then we had [great-nephew] Willie, whom we later adopted. So, we got another call, ‘Can Willie come live with you?’ Legally, he didn’t have anybody, and he was six years old. Well, in order to keep Willie, we had to become foster parents. In a million years, I never dreamt I was going to become a foster parent. Alex, his sister, legally had a dad, but he was in jail. She was five months old, and once we adopted Willie, he let us adopt Alex.”

That was in 1988. In around '93 or '94, she got a call for her and Jerry to foster two little boys in need of a home, and she said she’s sorry to say that it was a failure.

“We simply weren’t prepared,” she said. “We had zero training, well, about three hours’ worth of training. Nothing that prepared us for the realities. Things were certainly different back then too. But we learned from our first failures, and adapted. We found out what works and what doesn’t. As we gathered more experience we got better. Thankfully the system got better too, though it’s not perfect. Never has been and never will be.”

Sue described the policies that shaped the state system, and they were harsh, to say the least. Foster parents were told not to get attached to children in any way, maintain a professional distance, and zero contact was allowed between children and living parents/relatives.

“Nowadays, we know that doesn’t work,” Sue said. “Children love their parents and their families, despite the circumstances, and we cultivate relationships and visitations from their actual families and parents if they are able. Doing that, we can hope that their parents or families can get themselves together well enough to get their kids back. But in those early days though, we had none of that. Often times, kids were dropped off with us with absolutely nothing in the world but the clothes on their backs, if that.”

Now, the focus is on safety, security, and relationship-building.

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