Former DCS caseworker becomes a foster parent for a teen in need
For three years, Stacy Murphy was the only constant in a teen’s life.
Murphy, a former Indiana Department of Child Services family case manager, was there in 2012 when the 13-year-old girl entered the child welfare system. Murphy was there as the girl bounced from a traumatic moment in a hospital to a group home to foster care and back again. And it was Murphy who rolled out of bed at 3 a.m. when the girl needed her.
So when Murphy left DCS last summer to attend nursing school, she couldn’t let the teen go.
As a family case manager, Murphy had seen situations involving drug-addicted parents and children who were neglected or sexually abused. She saw horrific situations. But in every other case Murphy handled — every case but this teen's — the child had a "forever home."
But not this girl. “There was no one standing in line to adopt,” Murphy said. “No one who wanted to foster her.”
No one, that is, but Murphy.
‘It broke my heart’
DCS hired Murphy in 2012, when she was a fresh-faced 22-year-old straight out of college.
She met the teen soon afterward while investigating allegations relating to the safety of the girl’s brother. About four months later, DCS received a report that the girl had disclosed being abused. Murphy was assigned to the case.
IndyStar agreed not to name the teen or provide details of her situation because it could subject her to emotional trauma.
Over the next few years, the girl struggled to come to terms with the trauma she had suffered. Murphy said the teen’s parents, who had adopted her in another state and brought her here, told DCS they wanted to terminate their parental rights. The agency started the process of putting the girl into the Indiana Adoption Program.
“It broke my heart,” Murphy said. “She’d gone through all of these things, and I’d seen her go through them. I’d seen it.”
Murphy, who is nine years older than the teen, took on a mentor or older sister role in the girl’s life. She brought the teen to the beach or on fun outings when she visited as part of the ongoing DCS case.
“I wanted her to feel like she could be a normal kid,” Murphy said.
In 2015, Murphy decided to leave DCS to pursue a nursing degree. But she worried about the teen.
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‘I don’t think we should just live by what’s easy’
Murphy and her husband, Geoff, discussed the possibility of becoming the girl’s foster parents.
At first, Geoff Murphy expressed concern. The young couple had an infant daughter. And Geoff Murphy had never met the teen. He remembered his wife leaving their house at 3 a.m. after receiving a phone call because something had happened with the girl.
But the Murphys said they are guided by their faith in God. They said they believe in loving the kids in need, the orphan in need.
“We have the ability and the room in our home and the willingness,” Stacy Murphy said. “I don’t think we should just live by what’s easy. If you only live once, you should live serving others.”
Geoff Murphy agreed.
“To make a difference, it’s usually the scary, hard things — you’re afraid to do it or you don’t want to do it — that are the most worthwhile,” he said.
They decided to move forward with foster parenting, but Stacy Murphy couldn’t tell the teen. She didn’t want to give the girl false hope. Murphy wasn’t sure DCS would allow them to be foster parents and, if it did, whether the agency would place the teen with them.
The girl cried when she learned Stacy Murphy was leaving DCS.
"I was really sad," she told IndyStar. "It was kind of shocking. She was my case worker for like three years."
The teen spewed anger and, as Murphy described it, “went through all the stages of grief in five minutes” when she was introduced to another DCS family case manager.
But the new family case manager was reassuring, Murphy said. He knew what she intended to do.
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‘You didn't leave’
Murphy left the agency Aug. 1, state records show. When she went back to the local office to start the process of becoming a foster parent, Murphy said her effort stalled.
It is rare, though not unheard of, for a former DCS employee to become a foster parent. Murphy said agency officials were worried about the potential conflict of interest. They warned her she would not be able to work for DCS again if she took in the teen.
That’s OK, Murphy said. She told them she was pursuing a nursing career. She reached out to DCS’ central office and the state’s ethics director for guidance.
Both recommended Murphy seek a formal advisory opinion from the State Ethics Commission.
On Nov. 19, the commission unanimously determined that Murphy’s service as a foster parent would not be a job and, thus, would not violate the Indiana law that requires a one-year “cooling-off period” before a state employee may perform certain work. The commission members also said it was DCS’ responsibility to decide whether placing the teen with the Murphys was in the girl’s best interest.
Three weeks later, the teen moved into the Murphys’ home.
"I was excited," the girl recalled. "I was like, 'yeah, you didn’t leave.'"
The bubbly, blunt 16-year-old finally has a strong support system. She also has a job and boyfriend.
“It’s gone really well,” Stacy Murphy said. “We’ve had ups and downs, for sure.”
Murphy said children in the system experience trauma, but they still want to be “normal kids.” They hate you and want to leave one day after saying they love you, she added.
The Murphys plan to keep the teen with them until she ages out of the child welfare system.
“We try to help her feel the weight of reality as much as we can but help her succeed,” Stacy Murphy said.
She said foster parents need to take children in the foster system where they are and try to push them a bit further, not mold them into what a parent thinks they should be.
“You can’t fix them,” Geoff Murphy said. “That’s not what we do. We try to provide an environment where they can heal.”
The teen said she feels like she has a home for the first time in years.
"It’s pretty chill," she said. "I feel like I’ve lived here forever. They just feel like family."
Call IndyStar reporter Marisa Kwiatkowski at (317) 444-6135. Follow her on Twitter: @IndyMarisaK.
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