LANGLEY — Patti Carroll has an agenda and is proud of it when it comes to working with Island County children in foster care.

“I was an adopted kid, so I’m passionate about anything I can do,” she said.

Carroll is coordinator of the Island County Stanwood Community Network, an arm of the Washington State Family Policy Council. It’s task is to work at the local level, tight budgets or no tight budgets, to guarantee the best possible situations for the area’s children and youths in foster care.

Foster-care children are those who have been removed from their homes for any number of reasons, but mostly because of abuse or neglect.

“Neglect has a lifetime effect,” Carroll said. “It literally shapes the brain.”

The state places these children in other people’s homes for varying lengths of time. Foster children can remain in the program until age 18, but can extend that to age 21 if they are enrolled in school or vocational school.

As of last December, there were 84 Island County children in the care of the state. Of those, there were 16 who remained in their own homes, and 68 were placed in other people’s homes.

Of those 68, only 22 remained on Whidbey Island; 11 in regular foster care, seven in the homes of relatives and three in the homes of family friends. One was either in detention or on the run.

Social workers try to place the children in homes where they will be the most comfortable, so they won’t be constantly on the move. If such homes can’t be found on the island, officials look elsewhere.

Foster parents are by and large dedicated volunteers who receive a small stipend per child, barely enough to cover the food.

“They’re not in it for the money,” Carroll said. “That pittance is getting smaller all the time.”

“The need for foster parents is the same everywhere,” said Jim Miller, supervisor of the Island County office of Child Protective Services, a division of the state Department of Social and Health Services. “We never have enough homes.”

That’s a shortfall Carroll and the Island County Stanwood Community Network are trying to bridge.

For the past 3½ years, Carroll and her team have been beating the drum for additional foster parents and assistance for foster children through community outreach programs such as a recent one at Langley United Methodist Church.

The Langley team included Miller and longtime foster parent Christina Urtasun of Oak Harbor, a Community Network coordinator.

“The state of foster care is improving all the time in Island County,” Urtasun said. “There’s really been a change of mindset.”

She and her husband, Frank, have been foster parents for eight years. They’ve cared for 17 children younger than 5, for as little as a weekend to as long as three years.

The couple also have four biological sons.

“There were some dark times being foster parents, especially in the beginning,” Urtasun said. “Even a 2-year-old can have significant issues. But we decided to stick it out, and we’re glad we did.”

Miller, who has been in the child-protection business for 10 years, said experience shows children are the happiest in their own homes, even if circumstances are less than perfect.

The next best solution is the home of a family member, and then the home of a family friend, he said.

Officials are in particular need of foster homes that will accept siblings, and homes that will accept teenagers.

They are looking for people who will accept foster children in transition who need a place to stay for a night or a weekend. They also are looking for people who can provide a respite of a few hours or so for the primary caregivers.

“They need that time away,” Miller said.

He said foster children do best when they can hang on to something familiar: a stable home, a school, a community. The ideal is that each foster child not be placed more than twice, he said.

“Every move is harmful, but sometimes we’re left without a choice,” Miller said.

“Bottom line, what we want is safety for the kids,” he added. “But the more connections they can maintain, the better off they’re going to be in the long run.”

Miler said there are 53 licensed foster-care homes in Island County. He said foster families come in all sorts of configurations, including several retired couples in their 60s and older.

“We need families of every kind,” he said. “All ages, orientations and types.”

Miller said that when a foster pairing is successful, the connection remains far into adulthood. “It’s some place they can call home,” he said.

Carroll said that despite the “shrinking, shrinking dollars,” the Island County Stanwood Community Network is determined to promote programs to benefit foster children.

The latest is Kid’s Dream, designed to enlist members of the community to provide opportunities for foster children to develop their skills, talents and self-esteem.

The program arranges activities such as music lessons, sporting events and trips to summer camp. It also offers clothes, beds, toys, furniture, school supplies and grooming assistance such as haircuts.

It honors foster children who graduate from high school (only about 30 percent do, according to statistics), and offers essential household items when foster children head out on their own.

“They’re children — they’re resilient,” Carroll said. “We’re committed to filling in the gaps.”

Urtasun said that despite some difficult times, the foster-care experience has been rewarding for her and her family.

She said her adopted daughter Anna, now 6, came to the couple as a troubled 2-year-old. Her drug-using teenaged mother had abandoned her at an office building.

“She would cry and cry, and I would sit and cry with her,” she said. “But I couldn’t send her away. Now she’s the joy of our lives.”

“I’m nobody special,” Urtasun added. “I just have a desire to help. I’m the one who’s blessed.”

The Island County Stanwood Community Network regularly hosts pre-service training for persons interested in becoming full- or part-time foster parents.

For information about taking part in the foster-care program or to donate, write to Patti Carroll, Island County Stanwood Community Network, PO Box 726, Langley WA 98260, call 331-5636 or e-mail her at agapeway@whidbey.com, or visit the Washington State Family Policy Council Web site at www.fpc.wa.gov.