Josh Katzenstein/ The Detroit News
For people who think foster parents take in children only for the money, Michael Bradley has a message: "If you want to make a small fortune in foster care, start with a large one," he said.The 56-year-old from Grand Blanc has had six foster children since 2008.
Bradley, a technical writer for University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, had no intention of being a foster parent when he replied to an ad from Lutheran Social Services of Michigan in 2007. The ad asked for people to watch 18-year-olds transitioning from foster care.
The Lutheran agency's office in Flint, nearest to Bradley, didn't offer the service at the time, so the group asked Bradley if he would take in a child.
Bradley, who is twice divorced, eventually agreed and welcomed an 8-year-old boy to his home in April 2008.
In 2008, Michigan had 12,789 children in foster care, according to a report by the State Department of Human Services. The Lutheran agency's Flint office is serving about 100 foster children this year in 78 homes, Director Cheryl Sibilsky said.
As a single man, Bradley is a rarity — just two of the Lutheran agency's homes are headed by a lone male. "A lot of the kids that come into foster care don't have a positive male role figure to look at, so from my view … that helps a lot," said Joe Richardson, Bradley's case manager.
While Bradley is relatively new to foster care, he has decades of experience caring for kids.
When he was an assistant scoutmaster for a Boy Scout troop in southwest Detroit about 30 years ago, he saw 10-year-old scout Malcom Deaton living in a troubled home and began acting as the boy's part-time guardian.
Four years later, Bradley moved to Ortonville but didn't want to leave Malcom behind, so he filed to become his legal guardian, which the boy's mother eventually allowed. Malcom later earned Eagle Scout status, and a few years later, he became the first member of his family to graduate from high school.
"He's going to give as much as he can," said Deaton, now 41, of Waterford, adding he still calls Bradley his dad. "His way of doing it now is to be a foster parent and help kids that need help."
Bradley has a son of his own and helped raise a stepson — both are 24 — with his ex-wife.
Besides the first foster child, who was reunited with his family after eight months, Bradley has fostered two sets of brothers. The first pair came to him at ages 3 and 6 in June 2008 and left in January 2009. Bradley most recently fostered three brothers — ages 15, 12 and 8 — starting in July 2009. The youngest, Komari Buggs, went home Wednesday.
The foster service gives Bradley about $400 a month per child to help pay for food and other necessities. But extras like a snow-tubing trip or a basketball league come out of pocket, and he gladly pays for them to be happy.
"I try to provide my kids the same sort of experience they would have if they were my kids," he said. "Maybe for them, their time in foster care would be when they just got treated like a regular kid."
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