BALTIMORE -- Laura Hutton has taken in everyone from a baby born weighing a pound and a half to a pregnant teenager, children whose needs ranged from feeding tubes to mental health therapy.

With a background as a special education teacher, Hutton, 55, has become something of a go-to foster parent for children whose medical, emotional or behavioral issues can sometimes make them hard to place after they’ve been removed from their own homes.

“It kind of just evolved,” said Hutton, who teaches at Harford Community College. “We didn’t go into this thinking we’d do it for 24 years. It’s just one child at a time.”

Foster parents like Hutton and her husband Mark, 56, who can accommodate children with extra challenges can be in short supply, say those who work in the field.

“When you have kids with intensive needs, that requires a lot of time,” said Rob Basler, associate vice president with Arrow Child & Family Ministries, among the groups licensed by the state to place youth with more complex medical and behavioral issues. “That’s really challenging if all the parents in the home are working.”

Arrow recently launched an effort to attract more families to provide what’s called treatment foster care, a higher level of caregiving for youth with more complicated needs. Through its Enhanced Treatment Foster Care program, Arrow will provide additional training and support, in-home sessions and on-call assistance, and the foster parents will receive a higher stipend of $5,193 a month, compared to the $2,013 that treatment foster care parents get.

Across the country, recruiting enough foster parents for children who have been removed from their own homes for reasons of abuse, neglect or any number of family crises became more difficult during the COVID pandemic years, according to those in the child services field. Taking in a non-related child at a time when businesses and schools were shutting down to prevent the disease’s spread became an even bigger ask than before, they said.

“I think the pandemic drove part of it,” Basler said. “We saw a drop-off in new families coming in. During the pandemic it was harder and more challenging.”

Basler said he’s seen the number of interested families recovering in the last year and a half, and the return of some who had stopped taking in children during the pandemic.

According to a nationwide comparison, the number of licensed foster homes in Maryland dropped from 3,267 in 2021 to 1,462 in 2023. The number of youth in foster care also dropped, the comparison showed, from 4,679 in 2022 to 4,340 the following year.

Currently, the state has about 3,600 children in foster care, according to Lillian Price, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of Human Services. Maryland has 1,027 licensed foster homes, with a total of 2,630 approved beds.

There are other placements for foster children, such as group homes, she said. And, in recent years, the department has sought to built a “kin first culture,” in which children removed from their homes are ideally placed with families or close friends, and in a foster home only if no kin is available, Price said.

“We always need more families to help children of all ages across Maryland,” she said. “While we have beds available, our focus is finding the right mix of families who are willing and able to care for children with complex medical or behavioral health needs.”

As elsewhere in the country, sometimes foster youth with the greatest challenges end up living in hotels with a caregiver, sleeping in social service office buildings or languishing in hospital emergency rooms waiting for a more appropriate placement to open up.

“It’s just been a struggle to ask people to open up their homes to a foster child,” said Steve Acerno, director of family and children supports for The Arc Northern Chesapeake Region. “There’s just not enough homes.”

Acerno, whose group is among those in the recruit, train and support children and parents in the system, said there are a lot of misconceptions about fostering that can hamper recruiting.

The biggest misconception, he and others in the field say, is that foster children are “bad” kids who have committed crimes and are under the supervision of Department of Juvenile Services or DJS.

“A lot of it is fear of the unknown,” Acerno said. “We try to break down misconceptions that kids in foster care are bad kids. I think some people equate foster care with DJS.”

Carl Price, now 51, was one of those foster kids growing up in Baltimore. Not only was he 14 years old when he was taken from his home because of neglect and already more difficult to place than a younger child, he said, he was also diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer.

“Being a teenager especially with a medical situation is difficult for placements,” he said. “Cancer treatments can lead to a lot of doctor appointments.”

It was “overwhelming” at times, he said, shuffling through one group home and then four foster homes, even as he dealt with exhausting chemotherapy and radiation treatments — and rejection of those who were supposed to care for him.

“One of the parents stated it was too much for them for me to be in their home,” he said.

Eventually, a principal of one of his schools took him in, and he went on to college and a stint in the Navy. He now is married, has a daughter in college and works as an infrastructure specialist in Virginia.

He said he tries to serve as a voice for foster children, and an example that not everything has to be “doom and gloom” for those whose childhoods may have involved trauma and displacement.

“They just need a home,” he said. “They just need hope.”

He volunteers with Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASA, which represents foster children and helps them access services.

Laura Edwards, executive director of CASA of Maryland, said there needs to be a broader awareness campaign because many aren’t aware of the need for more foster parents or think it’s something they wouldn’t be qualified to do or that their houses wouldn’t pass inspection.

There are resources in the community, said Edwards, herself a former foster parent, such as respite care to give overwhelmed foster parents a break.

Laura Hutton said she’s been grateful for the support from her agency, The Arc, and groups that will send over a meal or gifts for children to ease the adjustment when she has a new placement. She and her husband, both of whom work full time, have taken advantage of respite care, sometimes just to catch up on sleep.

“There are any number of ways you can be part of the village,” Hutton said.

Having grown up the daughter of a man who himself had been adopted as a boy, she knew she always wanted to adopt children as well.

“I just grew up knowing some children for whatever reason didn’t have a home,” Hutton said.

Luckily, when she told her high school sweetheart this, he was from a big family himself and on board with her dream. They married, had three biological children, became foster parents and adopted five kids. Over 24 years — with occasional breaks — Hutton thinks she and Mark have cared for more than 20 foster children.

Some were reunited with their families, some stayed and were adopted. The Huttons, who live in a big Victorian house in Havre de Grace, stay in touch with some, or at least hear updates about them through the Harford County grapevine. There’s one who has been accepted to attend college at Johns Hopkins, another who has a master’s degree.

“Those are the kinds of stories that are gratifying,” she said. “They’ve been able to make a life for themselves.”

Hutton, who currently has two foster children, said she hopes there will continue to be support, from greater government funding to community volunteers, for the child services system. She said caseworkers can be overburdened, and sometimes there are long waits to access things like therapy for foster children.

“It is hard work,” Hutton said. “But it’s a way to help your community.”

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