Maple and Janie Phillips of Edgefield County enjoy taking care of their two foster children. Although the couple is relatively new at foster parenting, both have loved children all their lives and had plenty of experience with their own children.

Janie Phillips has been taking care of children all her life so foster parenting just seemed the natural thing to do.

“I was six years older than my baby sister, so I practically took her to raise,” she said, sitting in her living room with her foster baby on her lap. “Then, my sister had a baby and I took care of him. I raised five kids (including four of my own and my sister’s child).”

Just last year, she and her husband Maple decided to try foster parenting.

“I was retired,” she said. “All the children were out of the house. My brother was sick and he had some grandkids he was trying to raise. We were trying to get where we could take care of them for him, but it didn’t work out. So, we went to foster care to see if we could help.”

Mrs. Phillips said she always loved children so it doesn’t seem like a chore to her. When she married her husband Maple, he accepted her nephew just like he was his own, she said, and the nephew calls him “Daddy’ to this day.

Their two foster children are brothers, one 2 ½ and the other almost 1.

“The oldest one was a problem at first,” she said. “But a child has to get used to you. You have to win them over. Then, too, you don’t know what all the children have been through. Some of them will hardly talk. Some may have an attitude.”

The children came with no shoes and hardly any clothes. Both of them eat real well, she said, but the monthly stipend barely takes care of the essentials.

“Some people think it’s the money,” she said. “But it’s not. You don’t get that much.”

For the remainder of this story, please see this week's print edition of The Citizen News.