Foster-care program seeking Native families Long-term, stable homes sought for troubled youngsters.

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Margaret Roper learned about the foster-care system the hard way. She was sent to a white foster family at the age of 14 and promptly ran away.

"Their values -- everything -- were so alien to me," she says. "I thought, 'What am I doing here? I don't fit here. They only got me because they needed someone to clean the house."

Roper is now a social worker who wants to make the system better. She is involved in a program offered by the Calgary Indian Friendship Centre

that is recruiting and training Native families to become foster families.

"I firmly believe the healing has begun with our people. We're going to have to start taking care of our own," says Roper.

"And it's clear that Natives have not been taking care of their own. More than 50 per cent of all foster children are Aboriginal, but there

is a big shortage of Indian families who will take them. In Calgary

alone there are only 40 Aboriginal foster homes for 120 children who

need places to go.

"Many of those kids will end up in white homes. We certainly can

provide the same culture, the same background, the same identity." Roper says the long-term affects of Native children in white foster homes is devastating.

"I've seen the outcome of a lot of these kids, you know, who are really damaged," she says. "That doesn't have to happen."

It didn't happen to 51-year-old Joan Stober, who was raised by a white family because her Native parents gave her up for adoption at birth. Stober says her childhood was a good one, but she had no idea to what

band her birth family belonged and is only now learning about her

culture, and ultimately, herself.

Stober has just completed the centre's training program and expects to

get a foster child any day now. In fact, she'll take as many as can fit

into her house. She doesn't want kids, already crushed by leaving their parents, separated from their siblings too. Stober wants to give back

what she has received through the system.

"You're looking after the children while they're getting well, while

their parents develop healthy lifestyles."

Many parents have their kids taken away because of alcohol and drug abuse or simply because they can't cope with the job of raising children. The program teaches foster parents how kids are effected by living in dysfunctional homes, and what can be done to help them. "You need to understand where they come from and what kinds of problems they have endured," Roper says. The month-long program also provides information on Native history and building children's self-esteem.

"Make them proud of who they are and of where they come from," she says.

The Friendship Centre is looking for families in and around Calgary who want to provide long-term stability for kids. Gone are the days when foster children were moved every couple of years to prevent emotional attachments. Now social workers want safe places where hurt children can heal for a few months or many years.

"If (the kids) get the safety at the time they need it, who knows, they could be doctors, lawyers," says Stober.

But the goal is to eventually reunite kids with parents, no matter how long it takes. Roper believes that there is no replacement for the real thing.