On March 18, Gordon Mellott’s life completely changed.
Mellott, who spends most of his time working as a stylist at Essence Salon and planning events for the Moscow drag community, welcomed two young children into his family.
Now, Mellott’s average day, which once was absent of alarm clocks and frequent appointments, begins around 5:30 a.m. with a quick diaper change and some morning cartoons.
”I joke around because I’m a drag queen — now I’m the drag queen soccer mom,” Mellott said. “We are now contemplating a minivan.”
Mellott and his partner Rob Rhodes are now foster parents. Their family plans, however, did not always involve fostering children.
“About three years ago, my partner and I started talking about figuring out a way to have a family and we talked about all of the different options because we are a same-sex couple,” Mellott said.
Initially, Mellott said he and Rhodes were only interested in adoption. It was not until the Palouse Pride 2017 Park Festival he was introduced to the foster care system through Fostering Idaho and Fostering Washington, who set up a booth in East City Park that day.
These organizations serve to provide recruitment and retention support for foster homes throughout both Idaho and Washington, said Katie Stinson, recruitment coordinator for North Central Idaho and Southeast Washington.
Fostering Idaho and Washington help provide foster parents with peer mentors, support groups, training, coaching and more, Stinson said.
“Our goal is to find the homes and try to keep the homes,” Stinson said.
The main idea behind foster care is reunification with the child’s family of origin, Stinson said.
Children in foster care are rarely adopted outside of their family. Nearly 60 to 65 percent of children are likely to go home to either one or both parents and 5 to 8 percent are adopted by foster parents, Stinson said.
The Palouse is no different.
“It (Reunification) has got to be in your heart,” Mellott’s Resource Peer Mentor (RPM), Brandi Urie said. “Don’t come to foster with the idea to adopt, come to foster to reunify them with their family.”
However, Mellott’s foster care situation is what he calls “atypical.”
“We are a foster family with a concurrent plan, which means it could be, if and when, termination (with the biological parents) happens, we can become an option for adopting them,” Mellott said.
The process to become a licensed foster parent requires completion of six different steps — contact, orientation, application, pre-service training, home study and licensing, according to Fostering Idaho’s Foster Care and Adoption Family Guide.
These same steps apply to those looking to become licensed to adopt, Stinson said.
The pre-service training, also known as “PRIDE,” is a 27-hour course that teaches aspiring foster parents the essentials behind the court processes, childhood trauma and how to approach different behaviors in children, Stinson said.
“It’s kind of like foster parenting 101 — it’s 27 hours, so it is intense,” Stinson said. “But, it’s a wonderful training and there’s no cost to any of this.”
Mellott and Rhodes were formally licensed to become foster parents just a few months following their introduction to Fostering Idaho at Palouse Pride, and after completing the necessary steps. As soon as a person is licensed as a foster parent, Mellott said opening their homes to children who need it most is just a phone call away.
Mellott’s phone call came just three weeks after he and Rhodes received their license.
“When you get the phone call and you want to say yes, there is a feeling in your gut that you will never be able to describe to anybody until they actually have that moment and it was one of those — it’s a ping,” Mellott said. “You just feel like everything in you is like ‘This is it’ — when you know every fiber of your being feels like something is changing for good.”
Mellott felt that “ping” and now fosters a two-year-old and a six-year-old.
With close ties to Moscow and the local drag community, Mellott said he received an abundance of support and assistance from friends.
“A really good, strong connection to your social group is key,” Mellott said. “I don’t think we have any single friend of ours that doesn’t support us fully in this.”
Mellott also received assistance from his RPM, Urie.
Urie, who works for Fostering Idaho, is also an experienced foster parent who has housed more than 20 children since 2015.
Urie works as a recruiter and RPM, answering questions and assisting people interested in foster care through every aspect of the fostering process.
“I kind of help them understand what the department is looking for, help them get through the licensing process and then once they are licensed, I am here to help them make sure they are set up for the kids the right age,” Urie said. “I’m also there to help gear the foster parents towards support in the community.”
Once Mellott and Rhodes submitted their fostering application and were approved to complete PRIDE, Urie was assigned to their case as an RPM.
Toys and crayons lay across a table.
“I got in touch with them via email,” Urie said. “They were in the middle of their fostering classes when I contacted them for the first time and we’ve been texting and calling and emailing ever since. We even had our kids together for a playdate.”
Although Urie is there to support foster parents and help them prepare for the fostering lifestyle, Mellott said preparation for a foster child’s arrival is not always a simple step-by-step process and requires more than just childproofing a home.
“There is no preparing that you can ever do because every case is different,” Mellott said. “There are elements to every case that you will never be able to prepare for, but you kind of learn what type of person you are when you get into this situation. You will find you have a lot more resilience in you than you ever thought you had possible.”
Children in foster care all share one commonality — trauma.
Many of them have faced hardships throughout their lives. And, although the road from foster care to adoption is rough, Stinson said the journey along the way is beautiful.
“It’s all about what is best for these children,” Mellott said.
Moving forward through the fostering process, Mellott said he is excited about the future, despite some inevitable challenges.
“Honestly, we’re just ecstatic to have them here,” Mellott said. “There can be way more to family than just the people that share your DNA — you can find family anywhere.”