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Jim FitzGerald, chief executive oicer of Intermountain, speaks to a group during a celebration at the future site of a therapeutic group home in the Flathead Valley in December.GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
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ike many social services, foster ing a visit to Kalispell. “It’s psychologi- she was 16 years old. There were homes years, irst encountered Lexi when she

care is evolving. One of the up- cally very damaging.”
in Evergreen and Kalispell, some of was a toddler, having just been removed
coming changes to the system Last month, Intermountain was which left lasting scars.
from her mother’s care. At 16, Lexi
is an efort to keep kids settled at one ready to train a whole new group of fos- She remembers one Kalispell home was back in the Flathead after spend-
placement, and training the foster fami- ter families to join the three who already as calm and safe, living with two adult ing more than a decade in the system,
ly to handle most issues that arise, along completed the program. But the train- sisters when she was 6 or 7. But it didn’t bouncing from one foster family to an-
with providing a staf of people to sup- ing was canceled when only one person last long; Lexi needed more psychologi- other like a pinball in constant motion.
port the child and the family.
showed up to orientation.
cal help than her foster moms could of- “I’ve watched Lexi for years bounce

In the Flathead, this new movement “When it comes to foster care and fer.
through the system,” Pat said last week.
is the focus of a pilot demonstration adoption, a lot of people think some- “I was just an angry, angry kid,” she “I just believe kids should have a family.”
project called Full Family Foster Care, body else has that covered,” Adam Mor- said.
On March 18, 2013, Pat came for Lexi
a collaboration between the state De- rissey, the family developer and care co- She was taken to a therapeutic group and took her out of the group home. Last
partment of Public Health and Human ordinator for Kalispell’s Intermountain home, where she lived for a year before Christmas Eve, she oicially adopted
Services (DPHHS) and Intermountain, branch, said. “But the problem is, they she was reunited with her mother. That, the teenager.
a statewide nonproit specializing in in- don’t.”
too, didn’t last, and Lexi went to the T
tegrated mental health services for chil- There aren’t nearly enough foster Watson’s Children Shelter in Missoula, here is a real need for more fos-

dren and their families, including foster families in the Flathead to serve the where she would spend the next several ter families in Montana, and in
care and adoption.
number of children who need place- years. When a placement with an aunt in the Flathead. At Youth Dynam-
This new program, the brainchild of ments. As a result, these children, Washington didn’t work, she came back ics Inc. in Kalispell, part of a statewide
Intermountain’s CEO Jim FitzGerald, through no fault of their own, can end up to the Flathead, spending three years in family-focused behavioral health treat-
is built around the foster family – train- somewhere else in the state, either at the Whiteish before another reunion with ment organization, Katherine Gerten,
ing and licensing them before they get a closest children’s shelter or with a foster her mother, this time in Butte. But when the licensing coordinator and case man-
child. The program also provides 24/7 family in an entirely new community.
her mom got into trouble again, Lexi ager, said there were about 20 kids she

services and support for their charges, “We need troops on the ground went back to Kalispell, to live in the Flat- couldn’t place with local foster families
who, despite not usually arriving with here,” Morrissey said. “We need people head Youth Home.
over a period of four to ive months.
many possessions, tend to come with to get involved at a much more personal Oftentimes, the moves from place to “There’s no place to put them,”
some emotional baggage.
level.”
place felt punitive.
Gerten said. “Kids will move all over the
It’s now understood that moving L“Moving kids, it makes it seem like state.”
children between homes is detrimental, exi was born in Whiteish, and it’s their fault,” Lexi said. “I thought it Gerten said Youth Dynamics also
causing nicks and cracks in their rapidly lived there until she was 3. After was my fault.”
has a therapeutic-focused foster care
developing psyches.
Lexi was taken from her mother,
Pat Sylvia, a Child Protective Ser- program, in which foster parents are

“(Multiple moves) are not good for who was a drug addict, she was placed in vices supervisor in the Flathead who trained and supported by case manag-
children,” FitzGerald said last week dur-
no fewer than 10 diferent homes before
has worked with the agency for about 20
ers, care managers, social workers, ther-