‘Batman' actor Christian Bale and a nonprofit entrepreneur are giving foster kids homes and hope

New York Post

a day ago

'I've been so blessed in coming to America, what it has given me,' British 'Batman' actor Christian Bale tells Key News Network. He knows plenty of others are far less fortunate.
When his now-adult daughter was 3 and his son was 9, Bale began to wonder what would happen if something terrible befell him and his wife, Sibi. Where would the kids go? Who would take care of them? 'I couldn't bear imagining if we weren't around and they would have to be split up.'
Up to three-quarters of kids who enter the foster-care system are not placed with their siblings. 'So when I learned that, I said, 'All right, we've got to do something.''
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4 Christian Bale and his wife, Sibi, break ground last year on their Palmdale, Calif., center — inspired by their concerns for their own kids.
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Seventeen years later, that something is about to get off the ground.
Together California, a community for Los Angeles County families caring for foster children, will open its doors next year in Palmdale. Each family will have one certified foster parent paid a stipend to look after the children full time. Each of its dozen homes will be licensed to take in up to six children, with the priority placed on sibling groups the county would otherwise have trouble keeping together.
The houses are being built to accommodate large groups — with industrial-sized washing machines and refrigerators, for instance. A community center will offer resources like parenting classes to other area folks as well and provide counseling and tutoring services the foster kids might otherwise have to travel to receive. The center also affords a venue for visits with their biological families.
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'When siblings reside in different homes,' a Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services spokeswoman tells The Post, 'parents may experience challenges planning family time with their children.'
Siblings aren't placed together for a variety of reasons, she says, such as 'half-siblings residing with non-offending parents; children from blended families residing with kin; and a need for specialized care for a single child in a sibling set.' But there are also cases where foster families simply cannot accommodate everyone.
4 Together California aims to keep siblings in the same foster family, which studies show makes children more likely to thrive.
Together California
Placing siblings together has clear benefits — including fewer behavioral problems and a higher chance they will both like and adapt to their foster homes and have better academic performance.
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But many foster parents don't have the capacity either in space or time to care for large sibling groups. Can a person with a full- or even part-time job take in a sibling group of four? Where will everyone sleep? How are parents going to meet every individual's needs? How will they get kids to all the different medical or therapeutic appointments they have across the county?
The department will license foster parents, but Together California will also give them a lot of additional training, including how to handle kids dealing with high levels of trauma.
Across the country and in Los Angeles there has been a large reduction in the number of kids being removed from their homes and placed in foster care, with greater efforts being put toward family preservation and reunification.
The kids who are coming in now are often the victims of a lifetime of abuse and neglect. Many are born with drugs or alcohol in their system. Scores have spent years with parents suffering from addiction or serious mental illness. Plenty have witnessed years of domestic violence. Some have experienced sexual abuse at the hands of their mother's boyfriends or other nonrelative males living in the home.
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Tim McCormick, Together California's executive director, tells The Post kids in foster care today have 'behavioral issues that are more complex' — the ones who do not 'would go to kinship placements.'
So Palmdale's children will need a more intensive level of care. He notes recruiting foster parents to work there is 'like getting people to work in an emergency room.'
4 Bale partnered with nonprofit veteran Tim McCormick (left) on the foster-care initiative.
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McCormick, who'd successfully launched three similar communities in Illinois when Bale approached him about replicating the model in California, says newer foster parents will have to shadow veteran parents to learn more about what the position is really like.
Foster parents must make a three-year commitment, which McCormick likens to the Peace Corps. He's looking for people who have a 'missionary spirit.' 'My criteria,' he says, 'is if I wouldn't put my own kids in that home I won't have them as foster parents.'
Together California is a nonsectarian organization, but it would hardly be surprising if a number of foster families end up being religious themselves. Some of the field's hardest and most effective work is being done by religious folks who not only feel called to the mission of foster care but have a lot of support from their faith communities to do it. (About half of foster parents quit within their first year on the job.)
Peppers Ranch opened outside Oklahoma City a few years ago. The community started as a group home for boys, but then its leadership started to notice the sisters of those boys had no place to go.
Though it has no religious affiliation, the residents I spoke with on a visit all cited their faith as guiding them into this work. All had been foster parents before coming to the ranch, and many had seen the terrible effects of splitting up siblings.
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As one mother told me, it's difficult for younger kids because they want to have at least one of the older people they look up to present in their lives. But people don't often realize the impact on older kids too. 'When it's an older child taking care of a younger child and then they are split,' she says, 'the older child was the caretaker and then they have no purpose.'
The DCFS spokeswoman notes, 'When they are separated, each child may feel very isolated and alone. The shared experience of siblings living in a family home — where they play together, confide in one another and participate in family activities — creates lasting memories and tight bonds.' She adds that 'separation of siblings is not ideal because children may experience more trauma when they are without their sisters and brothers.'
Having a dozen homes with people all caring for foster kids can seem a little artificial, but the parents say it can be an enormous help. 'You have [challenging] behaviors for a child, and you think that something is wrong with me as a parent,' one parent told me. 'You just feel judged, even in a church community.' But here, the other foster parents understand. They mentor each other.
4 McCormick helmed SOS Children's Villages Illinois for 18 years, setting up centers such as this one in Lockport.
One Family Illinois
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Together California will also have two apartments that youth transitioning out of foster care and trying to start their adult lives can occupy.
None of this comes cheap. 'We have set our campaign with a $30 million goal, with just over $25 million committed,' says McCormick. The funds will be used for everything from construction to furniture for the families. But they could always use more support.
McCormick says Bale has been very hands on in addition to financially backing the project, offering opinions on even the floor design. He's attended multiple county DCFS meetings — 'people didn't realize who it was,' says McCormick.
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The two men — McCormick says they've become very good friends over the years they've been working together — both seem very invested in the day-to-day work. But they're also deeply idealistic. McCormick says that 'when kids first come into care, the light is kind of diminished in their eyes. Our job is to rekindle that light.'
'When I'm closing my eyes for the last time,' Bale tells CBS News, 'I want to think about 'Did I do some good? Did I make any changes in the world that were useful?' And this will be one of the things that I'll be most proud of when I draw my last breath.'