When The Journal spoke with Elise Schuster, she was bustling around Walmart, filling her shopping cart with enough holiday ingredients to feed her 10 children for Thanksgiving.
Two of them were her birth children, but the other eight — not accounting for one who couldn’t make it to the holiday celebration — were her adopted children.
Her two birth children are in their early 30s, and her adopted children are 23 and younger, three of whom still live with her.
Schuster believes her house to be a cocoon of sorts, having enveloped the 49 fostered children who have inhabited it with love and guidance.
Situated on a hill in Cortez, the house is the namesake for Schuster’s new book, Kokoon on a Hill.
“As a cocoon would be, you help them mold, you help them grow,” she said. “You teach them ways you understand them.”
In her publication, she explores the ups and downs of navigating the foster care and adoption systems and urges others to consider fostering children of their own.
“I want people to realize that regardless of what we go through as foster parents, the children are worth it,” she said.
The book’s release comes amid a shortage of foster families in Montezuma County, which has sparked a recent push by the Montezuma County Social Services Department to recruit more willing families.
On Dec. 8, Social Services hosted an informational meeting about becoming a foster parent.
Currently, 34 children are in foster homes in Montezuma County, and four are in homes outside the county.
Schuster held a foster care license for 26 years.
During that time, she and her husband, Ropati, shared alternating night shifts at the hospital to care for their children.
The pair adopted nine of the almost 50 children who found solace within the walls of their six-bedroom home.
Fostering isn’t akin to babysitting, Schuster said.
She has experience caring for young children who had been faced with some of the darker aspects of life. For Schuster, this sometimes meant rehabilitating babies who were addicted to meth. Other times, it meant building trust with children who had experienced sexual abuse. On one occasion, it even meant learning the secret language a brother and sister had developed to communicate with each other.
Schuster’s license was revoked after a failed home study in 2017, the year before an investigation shook the department.
In April 2018, the Social Services director suddenly resigned, sparking an investigation from the 22nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office. No charges followed.
Subsequently, the department was cited with 67 state law and regulations violations when handling 21 referrals and assessments amid a nine-month investigation conducted by the Office of Colorado’s Child Protection Ombudsman.
“Everybody has settled down since then,” Schuster said. “And the absolute focus is to help the kids, help reform the foster care system so the kids get the services they need.”
Although Schuster discusses systemic friction in her book, she said she doesn’t want it to be the focus of her message to readers.
“This is not about the adults,” she said. “This is about the children. I'm not here to bash anyone. I'm not here to bash the system. I am here to say that the system sucks – we all know that. The kids need us regardless of what we go through.”
Despite her allusions to problems within the foster system, Schuster said her book is lighthearted.
“These are stories in my heart,” she said. “I said, ‘People are going to think I’m crazy.’ They said, ‘Yeah, but nobody understands. Nobody gets what you’ve been through as a foster parent.’”
It was always important for her to involve the birth families in her adopted children’s lives when possible, she said.
“I'm no better,” she said. “None of us foster people are any better. We just made different choices.”
Her foster children have, in a way, remained her children for life, despite the different paths they’ve taken.
Schuster said she’s heard from six local families who were inspired by her story and have an interest in fostering children of their own. She’s also heard from two families in Wisconsin and one on the East Coast.
“I am not going to stand there and say I did everything right,” she said. “I'm not going to stand there and say I’ve never made a mistake as a foster mom. But you know what? All parents make mistakes.”
