Joan Schoon's desire to be a foster parent was born out of compassion and sympathy.
As a teenager, she remembers listening to her friends who were foster children complain about treatment they endured in some of their previous foster homes.
"They would tell me of some of the horrible places they had lived before they came to live with these two foster families in my church." Every since then, Schoon said she has been trying to provide a more positive experience for children in need.
"I really felt that God was calling me to do that," she said. "I wanted kids and I wanted to be a mom. I never had the desire to go out and do something else."
Schoon refused to let anyone interrupt her life goal of being a foster parent. She warned her husband, Jim Schoon, before they got married that she wanted to be a foster mom one day. Three decades later, the Schoons have four biological children of their own and have taken in 96 foster children.
Crisis
Although not limited to Indiana, the state's drug epidemic has driven a dramatic increase in the number of children in foster care, creating a desperate need for foster parents across the state, officials said.
"It's at a crisis level throughout the state in terms of needing foster homes," Julie Villarreal, Regional Director of The Villages, a child and family services agency, said. "The common denominator in a lot of these kids coming into care is they're coming out of homes where one or both parents use substances."
James Wide, Deputy Director of Communications for the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS), said substance abuse in Indiana ranges from opioids and heroin to methamphetamine and cocaine.
"Those particular substances are really powerful," he said. "So what we're finding is you'll see more children are neglected, not necessarily abused, because these parents' addictions supersedes their conscious to take care of their children.
According to the latest adoption and foster care report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), parental drug abuse was cited as a factor 32 percent of the 2015 cases in which a child was removed from the home.
The sharp increase in drug abuse coupled with the rising number of foster children in Indiana prompted Mary Bonaventura, DCS director, to ask Gov. Mike Pence for more funding to hire more family case managers to address the issue, Wide said. Over the past three years, DCS has hired more than 400 new family case managers, he said.
Indiana has experienced as increase in foster care population over the past three years steadily increasing from 12,382 in 2013 to 17,023 in 2015, according to statistics provided by HHS.
Wide said DCS is "constantly recruiting" new foster parents to address the issue but said the goal is to prevent children from entering the system.
"The goal is to help the kids before they get to foster care," he said. "That's why we work with other agencies because the only way to get a hold of it is on the front end."
Experiencing firsthand
As Indiana continues to wage its battle against a pervasive drug epidemic the Schoon's know firsthand the effects parental substance abuse has on a child.
Their second foster child was a "cocaine and fetal alcohol girl" who had health issues because her parents did cocaine and alcohol, Joan Schoon said. There was another foster child they received at 3 months old straight out of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) whose mother was a substance abuser, she said.
"He was born at 24 weeks and when I took him home he was severely handicapped, he was legally blind and missing a third of his brain," she said. Joan Schoon said the doctors told her he probably wouldn't make it to 3.
"He lived until a week before his 10th birthday," Joan said. "And we gave him the best life he could have."
Joan said she's seen up close and personal the devastating affects parental substance abuse has on children.
"It's disgusting," she said. "It's terrible but it isn't the kids' fault."
Despite the rigorous workload that comes with raising children and sometimes monthly visits to Riley's Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, the Schoons remain dedicated.
"Friends ask how long am I going to do this," Joan Schoon said. "And I say as long as I feel I'm helping these children and being relevant in their lives. If I ever feel like that's not happening then I'll feel like it is time for me to quit."