Behind the Curtain: Honest Conversations about Foster Care and Adoption
Each episode will feature a conversation between host Rebecca Harvin and foster/adoptive caregivers or members of the community who support foster care and adoption.
Behind the Curtain: Honest Conversations about Foster Care and Adoption
Safe Families: Preventing Foster Care Through Community Support
Tammy Pulsifer, Director of Community Engagement at Safe Families for Children in Tallahassee, shares how their organization prevents children from entering foster care by supporting families in crisis through community intervention and radical hospitality.
• Born to missionary parents and raised internationally in Guam, Saipan, Korea, Hawaii, and England before settling in Tallahassee
• Found purpose through local philanthropy work before joining Safe Families in 2021
• Safe Families creates "circles of support" around families experiencing temporary crises like housing instability, job loss, and mental health challenges
• The organization focuses on strengthening the entire family unit rather than separating children from parents
• Volunteers provide practical support including respite care, mentoring, and resource connection
• Personal suffering creates deeper compassion and empathy when supporting vulnerable families
• Churches can better support foster families through practical help like childcare, house cleaning, and emotional support
• One success story involves helping a single mother of seven transition from crisis to becoming a teacher and approaching homeownership
Hey guys, thanks so much for joining us today on Behind the Curtain. I'm your host, rebecca Harvin, and this is where we have honest conversations about foster care and adoption. I'm really excited to share my guest on the show with you today. Her name is Tammy Pulsifer and she is the Director of Community Engagement at Safe Families for Children in Tallahassee. Tammy is the youngest of three girls to a foreign missionary. She was born in Guam, lived in Saipan, Guam, korea, hawaii and England. She went to Bible college in Tennessee and then moved to Tallahassee in 98 to teach and ended up meeting her husband now of 23 years. They have two girls One is currently doing an internship at Disney and another daughter who is at home in her senior year of high school.
Speaker 1:On the show, tammy talks about what it was like getting to Safe Families, what Safe Families does and how you can be a part in helping children avoid going into foster care. Tammy and I had a great conversation. It was so good, in fact, that we are going to split it and go over two podcasts. So today here is part one of my conversation with Tammy. Enjoy the conversation. Hi, tammy. Thank you so much for joining me today and being a guest here on Behind the Curtain. I'm really excited to have you because I'm always looking for ways that we can share the spotlight with people who are doing really good things in our community. And so, with that, welcome to the show, and can you tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about Safe Families?
Speaker 2:Sure. So again, my name is Tammy Pulsifer. I live over here in Tallahassee, florida. So kind of a crazy long story, so I'll shorten it for who I was as a person.
Speaker 2:Growing up, my parents were actually foreign missionaries. I was born in Tumuling Guam and my dad was a church planter and he was also really great with languages. So he would move into a new country and he would establish a church and work with the locals, and then he would stay until a local pastor came up and was able to take on the church. And so we were in Saipan Guam Korea church. And so we were in Saipan Guam, korea. We had a short stint in Hawaii while he gave a pastor there a mental health break because he was having a hard time, and so he was there covering his church until he got back. And then after that we moved to England and we were in England the longest amount of time, which was my favorite place to live, because I lived there from age. Right before my 11th birthday we moved there and then I didn't officially move home until I was 19. And so getting to be there during that time my teenage years was so much fun. I have some of the best memories and I love England and it's been a while since I've been back.
Speaker 2:Anyways, I moved to Tennessee where I went to Bible college. I actually wanted to study missions. I thought I'd become a foreign missionary myself, but it was really evident by the time I graduated college in 98 that I was very immature still and I ended up taking a job here in Tallahassee, florida, and I thought, oh, it'll just be a fun thing to do for a couple of years and then I'll figure I want to go after that. But little did I know that this is where I'd find my husband. So I met my husband in 2001. Actually, I met my husband in 2000. And we got married in 2002. And then we've been here. I've been here ever since. So because he was born and raised, he had a family business. We weren't going anywhere. So that was how I got here to Tallahassee.
Speaker 2:I was a school teacher for eight years before I became a stay-at-home mom with my first daughter, who was actually born July 4th in 2006. So she was my. My dad called her his firecracker baby. She was the first grandchild on my side of the family. I stayed home and I thought at some point you know, around kindergarten I would go back to teaching because I actually really loved teaching and I was really actually pretty good at teaching, um. But after I had Anna, I also had gotten really involved with the drug sales business during that those first years as a new mom, and it was really successful at it. So I stayed home, I got really involved with this. This company actually stayed with them for 18 years, actually just stopped working with them in December, and so that was kind of my way of being able to stay home and financially help with the family. But it was actually that direct sales business that got me involved with local philanthropy.
Speaker 2:So kind of fast forward to around 2010, I think it was around 2010,. 11, 2011 ish my one of my best friends from high school lost her son at the about two weeks before his fourth birthday, lost him to cancer, and so I went into my local Ronald McDonald house and said, hey, it wasn't the house that he stayed at, but I wanted to serve our local Ronald McDonald house because of the great work they did with little Josh's life during his last year of his life, and so that was my first stepping into that philanthropy world and kind of serving and not for profits and I ended up serving on their board for a few years, but that was my connection through my direct sales business. I also served on a national council and that was when my eyes really opened up to what not-for-profits were doing all over the United States, and so I think that was the first bug that I got where I was just like I really like serving, but I also like working with not-for-profits and I love that culture and the people and these big-ed people that are doing amazing things behind the scenes that most cities don't even know is happening, kind of like what you guys do. And so then just kind of fast forward to 2020. I I knew that serving and my mental health were very much linked. My mom was the same way. Serving kind of gives us this ability to kind of look outside of our own things that are bothering us and look at the world and love them, and you kind of forget about your own worries when you're serving the least of these.
Speaker 2:So in 2020, when all of these great charities and ministries I was serving with shut down, I got really depressed, like very quickly. And so in 20, toward the end of 2020, a friend of mine invited me. She said I want you to come to a Safe Families for Children banquet with me. I'd heard of Safe Families but hadn't gotten involved because I was already so involved with so many things that I just couldn't. I just really didn't have the capacity for anything else and I was like, well, I might as well, I'm not doing anything. I was literally, that was my answer I'm not doing anything. I was literally that was my answer I'm not doing anything. So I went to the banquet in January of 2021.
Speaker 2:And I was hooked when I heard the ministry, I heard the mission, which I'll say in just a second. But when I heard the mission, I was like, sign me up. They actually had fingerprinters there that night and I went straight and got fingerprinted and find it filled in my application. And so that was January and I think by March I was fully vetted and ready to be paired with my first mom and I knew right away this is, this was what I was designed for. Like, this was everything I felt like every charity I'd worked with my years on the council, with the direct sales business, I was all of it just kind of came together for this, this type of service, and so, um, I did that I had. I worked with two moms through that first year and then at the end of that year, chicago, which is where our head um offices called my now director and said hey, we need someone with like a sales mentality, which was me, you know 18 years in sales.
Speaker 2:And so, um, I was brought on staff uh, just a few hours a week in 2021. Yeah, 2021. Um, no, sorry, the end of 2021. So 2022,. I was brought on on staff, um, and I just haven't looked back and so, um, those few hours grew and now I'm pretty I still paid part-time and I'm pretty much full-time because I love it so much, so I do things way outside my parameter. It just feels like it doesn't feel like work.
Speaker 2:So all that to say, what Safe Families does our main mission is is radical hospitality and just basically going into our community and serving families who are in a crisis, with the goal of kind of going way upstream. Before foster care, intervention has to take place. If there's something we can do to bridge a gap and strengthen the family unit, that's our goal. Obviously, we're not talking about abuse or anything like that, but we're just talking about. Obviously we're not talking about abuse or anything like that, but we're just talking about situations of poverty, isolation, maybe there's a breakdown in housing, health, mental health, job loss.
Speaker 2:There's different things, different reasons why we can cause a family to implode, and so if we can bring volunteers to create what's called a circle of support around that mom and dad or single mom or single dad, or even sometimes kinship placement. You've got grandparents who are doing the best they can but they're really struggling. We just bring that circle of support around the family and with their goal of keeping state intervention out of the family, allowing the family to stay whole but also helping them out of those cycles of whatever they're going through and just moving them forward in life. Somebody gave us a great analogy of this person looking over a bridge and seeing children and people floating down the water and she's throwing out life rings and I, you know, grab the life ring, we'll help you get out of the water. And then she said well, why don't we go upstream a little bit and see why they're falling in the?
Speaker 1:water in the first place, and so that's really our goal is going upstream.
Speaker 2:If there's something we can intervene on, we try to stay in our lane. If we know this is something we can't do, we pass it off. But if it's a family we can intervene with, then that's our goal is to strengthen the unit, keep families connected and so the name is Safe Families for Children and with the real focus on the family. So we're really focused on that mom and dad, that grandparent, whoever's you know, taking care of these children, keeping them safe and then keeping that family unit as much trauma of separation as we can keep out of the kids' growth as possible. We will.
Speaker 1:So that's our goal. That is amazing. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's, yes, it's hard. Every single thing that you just said. My brain has a thousand questions. Okay, Now, going all the way back, you were never raised in America and you're were you always overseas?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we would come home for what they called furlough. Yeah, dad would visit his supporting churches, so that would be our opportunity to be back in the States. We were homeschooled and which I liked, because I like traveling. My dad like showed us what I got to see most of America before I was the age of 10, the more most adults who live their entire lives in America because my dad would take us on these long zigzags across the United States, america. Because my dad would take us on these long zigzags across the United States. So, yeah, I was. I mean, my earliest memory, my very earliest memory, is actually quite comical. It's me standing over a Korean toilet, which you know is a hole in the ground and yelling to my dad that it was broken.
Speaker 2:He's like it's not broken. I was like no dad, it's broken.
Speaker 1:That was my very first memory. And then my very first memory of being back in the States was standing in the doorway of a classroom and telling my mom that I wasn't going in there because all those kids were white.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it had to have been very, very different for you.
Speaker 1:They didn't look like Koreans to me and I wasn't going in there, yeah, yeah, and so, yeah, my life was very different.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love. Well, your life being very different, though. I love what you said about like it feel. It felt like everything up to that point had led you there. I've had that feeling before where it's like, oh, I didn't know why I worked at the Y doing back-end membership stuff, but it helped me here at Haven do back-end stuff when we were first starting and I was like, oh, that's why, this is why I needed that little time there, this is why I needed this, like a tiny season or lots of years spent doing this, lots of years spent doing bookkeeping at a different nonprofit where I needed that skill. Later on, where, coming in and starting Haven, it didn't sound crazy to me that I needed a donor management tool or a CRM. Nobody knows what a CRM is you know, and so it just was like oh, I do.
Speaker 1:I do because I have this random bit of knowledge from trying to make a couple bucks while my kids were home and I was a stay at home mom. And what can I do to fill in these gaps?
Speaker 2:My favorite Bible story is Esther, because it wasn't all wonderful things that led to her such a time as this. It was the hard and the good, and there were a lot of hard things between like some devastatingly hard things between 2020 and my first year with safe families like very difficult things. But there would be times I would be talking to a mom or a dad and they're just kind of hanging their head low because they feel such shame what they're going through and I could say, hey, my family did. We went through this in 2020. We went through this in 2021. And it's not like they're glad. You suffered too. But there's this understanding of. I know how easy it is to be in this position, because we faced this and we didn't know it was coming. It was just the carpet pulled from underneath of us, and so going through a hard time is never fun, but then when you can come out the other side of it with a story that helps you relate to someone who's suffering, it makes it worth it.
Speaker 1:So you know the fact that scars don't go to waste right right like suffering, creates compassion in a way that I've never experienced any other way for compassion like you can have like a standard level of compassion, but the people with the most compassion have suffered yeah, exactly people with the most empathy, people with the with the least amount of judgment they have suffered.
Speaker 1:And it's horrible, like, honestly, like it's part of my like, it's part of my theology that I struggle with so much. Right, and I remember sitting across the table from a friend of mine and this is not a podcast today about suffering, but I remember sitting across the table from her where we were talking about this idea of suffering and I looked at her and I said something that neither one of us can forget and I was like maybe Jesus knows more about suffering than we do, maybe he has a different opinion of suffering than we do. Maybe he has a different opinion of suffering than we do.
Speaker 1:And that's not a very good Western church Western like church in America viewpoint to have, and I don't think he signs us up for a lifetime of suffering or you know what I mean. Like I think that there's like balance in it. But you're absolutely right, having walked through things, you can sit with families that are falling apart or feel like they're falling apart, and I don't have any judgment here. I'm just here to. I'm here to fill in some gaps, because you need somebody to walk beside you. So I love that. Safe families goes upstream, and it's the same question that we asked about when we started. Haven was like why are, why are foster families closing their license? Let's go upstream.
Speaker 1:Like instead of like. Instead of getting more and more people to become foster parents, what if we went upstream and looked at why people are closing their license to begin with, and then kept people in who wanted to be here?
Speaker 2:Well you're going to be very proud of me because of our meeting. It really did open because I've I've always kind of been in my safe families lane and though I love the foster care world, my having this goal of keeping kids out of that world I don't really go into that world very much and um, after meeting you it kind of opened my eyes up to such the need for our families. And, um, we have a a brand new foster family in our church and they were, they were trial by fire. They got three little boys their very first set.
Speaker 2:And they're like they're like only been married for a year and they're very young and um and I shouldn't laugh, but I know the crazy that is happening inside the house.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so.
Speaker 2:I happened to be at a um, a graduation party a couple weeks ago and two of our foster families were standing there talking. One of them was this young mom with these new, new three little boys and, um, they were just kind of pouring their hearts out to each other and I think, to anyone who was walking up with see it was complaining. I didn't see it that way, and so the one very seasoned foster mom who was struggling just as bad as this brand new foster mom, I just like walked over and I hugged her. I didn't say a word, I just hugged her really tightly and then I stepped back and I kept listening and I didn't say anything. And she texted me that night and she said that is all I needed. I didn't need you to say anything, I didn't need you to try to fix it. She was like, saw it? And you? You saw that I just needed a hug. And I was like, oh yeah, I could feel it, I could see it on your face.
Speaker 2:And so I went Sunday to church and I said, okay, who's over foster families? And they were like, well, I think it's so-and-so. So I went to that person. No, it's so-and-so. And I went to that person come to find out there's nobody over foster families? No, of course no, had immediately a meeting with the pastors. We like got it rallied up. I was like this is not my job, but we're going to get this going. And so I was like you'd be so proud of me, you'd be so proud.
Speaker 2:So we did, we did and just I mean I just got a text this morning that we've got families lined up this week to kind of fill in those, uh, some of the um babysitting gaps, cause they're still trying to get the daycare going. Uh, we got, we've got um some people lined up to go in once a week and just get help the family get caught up on housework. Uh, we're going to start um, cause the only thing they had done and I'm going to see what your reaction is the only thing they had done was a sign up genius for clothing. Great, how do you think that went? What do you think happened?
Speaker 1:I think, like clothing, that the like. If people needed clothes, the boys.
Speaker 2:So what do you think they did? All the clothes showed up at her house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in a big old pile they dropped it off.
Speaker 2:And she sat there staring at it.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's an overwhelming.
Speaker 2:I told my pastor. I said that is called the second disaster. I said, cause, what you do, it's it's. It's why, when there's like hurricanes and floods, they will literally say please stop sending clothes because they end up in a pile and nobody has time to deal with that. And so I was like the clothing. I said that's so sweet. I said, but all you had that that's the worst thing you can do to a foster family because they're in, they're in survivor mode and you just dropped off two tons worth of clothing that they they have to sort clean, fold, figure out who wears what, divide out, donate the rest and it's going to end up in the trash. And so we're in a closet that they don't see again.
Speaker 2:They never see again. So what happened was the other foster mom, who was super overwhelmed, went over and sorted the clothing.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And I was like why do we have the overwhelmed foster mom helping the overwhelmed foster mom?
Speaker 1:Well, I can tell you it's because the seasoned foster mom is less overwhelmed by the pile of clothes in the other person's house than she is in the of the chaos in her own house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so anyway, all that to say, it was your helping me. Be observant that I was able to get the ball rolling. I don't have to be over it, but at least I got the ball rolling, cause when I told the pastor, I said I don't have the time to do this, but if I have to I will. And he said no, no, no, we'll get it done. And so God sent the right people to say I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. So I'm very grateful for that, but that, but this has to be ongoing. And I told him this can't be a one and done. We have to support all of our foster families, because, you know, that's why I started talking to you because of one of the other ones whose daughter is struggling and feels like she's losing this connection, you know, and so you know, what you guys are doing is to me, is as valuable, because we do need our foster families.
Speaker 1:So well, yeah, I mean it's, but it's the whole picture, right Like um. The way that I always look at this is um. You know, there's the verse that everybody loves to quote in James. It's like true religion is to the orphan and the widow.
Speaker 2:Great.
Speaker 1:I love that, but so many people can look at it and go, well, I don't want a foster kid in my home, or I don't want to, I'm not called to adoption, or I'm not called to whatever Great Okay, I don't think that everybody is called to foster care and adoption, but we have to. What this is really saying is that true religion is to the marginalized of society and to the people who cannot in that society. Right, like if you look at who he's writing to when he's writing it, he's saying these are people who in our society, cannot care for themselves because our society is not set up for it. A widow is destitute, she doesn't inherit and that's in. I don't know why I'm doing a Bible lesson now but she doesn't inherit, like her husband's property. It goes to another person, right? An orphan has nobody looking out for them.
Speaker 1:So true religion is to go into these spaces and it's to say, hey, you're not alone, I'm going to be right here and I'm going to use my resources to care for you. And so it's not just about, in our society, having a foster or adoption, like having foster care in your home or having adoption in your home or have anything. It's saying, no, how do I use my resources and move to the marginalized in our society? How do I use? And then, and then, let's draw a circle. Let's keep kids out of foster care. Yeah, let's keep kids, because what you're really talking about, oh my gosh. So I'm like I'm straight up on a soapbox. Tammy, I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, let me please interject in case any of my church family sees this. Our pastors are amazing. They just don't know what they don't know. Yeah, of course, what I find with foster families is they don't want to say they need help because they feel like they should be able to do it is they don't want to say they need help because they feel like they should be able to do it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, giving the foster families the freedom to say I love what I do, but I need help, you know, cause I feel like? I think sometimes they feel like if they say I need help, then people are going to say, oh well, then you shouldn't be doing this, and that's just not true. Did you ever see the possum chop story?
Speaker 1:I have, but they don't think that people are going to say that they experience people saying that true story. Yeah Right, so, and I don't, I'm not saying that to like correct you, I'm saying it to go like it's not hypothetical, it's they. They have lost friendships because their their friends have looked at them and said you can't keep coming over here talking about how hard this is, Like you should just not do it.
Speaker 1:My husband and I went to a therapist one time early. We were like a year and a half ish into foster care and we were like, oh, I think we need to go to therapy. And the lady told us to call the state and have them come pick up their kids. Wow, and I was like that's not an option. That's not what we're going to do here. We are asking you to help us, like take care of us while we're doing this. And she was like nope, it sounds like what's going on in your house is too hard and you need to prioritize your marriage and you need to call the state. Like she doubled down Wow, Wow.
Speaker 1:I was like I'm what? I don't, what is even happening? That is not. That's not an option. We're not. We're not closing our doors, but it is what happens and so, um, but yeah, you're absolutely right, People don't know what they don't know. And even with the best of intentions we have, same, I go to a, I go to a wonderful church that I absolutely love, and people don't know what they don't know. And people who are in the middle of doing the work inside of their homes. Those are often the people that, in general, are not going to ask for help. They see themselves as the helpers and so they just in general, would never even think to say can somebody come and just straighten up my house, Like the amount of chaos that is inside of my house.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting that you say that because one of my favorite moms that we're serving right now, that we're, I should say, doing life with, because I hate to say serving like we're somehow doing something crazy, but we're just doing life with our, we do life with our families. That's really what it is. We're bringing them out of isolation, we're bringing them into community and that's our goal is for them to see what, what is possible out there. So one of my favorite connections was um, it's been a couple of years now, um, at least over two. We had a church who was mostly elderly. People refer a new church member to us because she was a mom of six with seven on the way, and she was recently separated from her husband because out of abuse. So she had moved to Tennessee, so from Tennessee to Tallahassee, to get out of of all of that. And, um, she had approached her church about, hey, you know, my, my baby's coming around Thanksgiving. I really need help with childcare during that time. So I had a good connection with one of the pastors there at the church. So she had called me and told me about it and I said, yeah, just do a referral, we'll figure this out, we'll get, we'll have it all lined up because we can do host families, which is not foster care, but it's these families who are vetted and screened. We do the home study, everything, but they can do respite care. So for Florida we can do up to six months, but normally our respite care is like a weekend or overnight stay. So we got this great family to. We had actually two families on standby for Thanksgiving, in case one ended up having to leave town for things or anything, so we wanted to make sure it was covered. So we had this great family who took the younger three. We had the other older ones somewhere else. They were pretty more self-sufficient. You know, all of that went well. Baby was born. She was so happy moving forward. So that was Thanksgiving. The kids are back with her and I had I had decided to go by and check on her just to see how she was doing over to her house and ask her if she had any plans for Christmas, cause I figured if she's, you know, struggling financially with, you know, six kids and a baby, there's probably not any plans for Christmas.
Speaker 2:So I walked in and when I walked into her house, the um, the smell hit me Like it was like, okay, something's going on in here. So I stood in her house. She's standing there looking like she was hit by a train, baby on her hip, kids are running around, um, and I just kind of talked to her how you doing? She's just, you know, tired and the norm like postpartum. All of the things were going on. And so I said would you like me to gather Christmas gifts for your kiddos? And she was like, oh, that would be so amazing. I said okay, well, text me their names and ages and maybe some things they might like and we'll take care of it. And she's like okay.
Speaker 2:So I left and I called her pastor immediately. I said have you been in her house? She's like, yeah, we've all had some concerns. And I said you know, it looks like depression to me. She said, yeah, me too. So I, um, I called this mom and I said hey, what do you think about me bringing some friends over to clean your house? She didn't even hesitate, she just sighed out loud. She said that would be amazing.
Speaker 2:And I figured if it was any other issue, she wouldn't let me in her house to do that. And I figured. But I had this feeling it was a depression thing. And so I put out a call and I said, okay, so we're going to come on this date and I need you to just go go somewhere, gather all your laundry, go do laundry, I don't care, but I need you gone the whole day because we are going to tear your house apart. And she's like, okay, I can handle that. So I got there early and I had 15 volunteers show up with me and she left. I said don't come back until I call you. And she's like, okay. And I said do I have permission to throw stuff away? She said, yeah, I don't care.
Speaker 1:Okay, I have seven kids. We did.
Speaker 2:We from top to bottom, we tore that house apart and we got it back. We reclaimed her space and you know we bought new shelving and we we bought new towels. We just kind of like fluffed it up, made it pretty again for her. So when she got back, um, the kids were squealing and I was so excited and it was just great, you know know. And so, um, we continued a journey with her. We had volunteers coming out and she ended up I ended up taking her as my family friend, my personal family friend, cause I just fell in love with her and you know we've watched her go from that to um, helping her get her Tennessee teachings license to Florida.
Speaker 2:She's an ESL teacher. Now she's in Monticello working cause she's bilingual, so working with the kiddos there. They're out there in a great space she's now looking for she's, she's so close to her credit being to the point where she can buy a house. I mean, she's just doing wonderful. I know she has her ups and downs, for sure. But what's great is, you know we're not, we're not band-aiding anything, we're just giving her the strength to just keep taking another step forward.
Speaker 1:You know so.
Speaker 2:I love it Just knowing that you're not alone. That's a hundred percent it. There's such a difference and we're actually evidence-based. Out of California, there was a 10-year study they did on the mental and physical health of someone who is walking through crises alone and walking through crises with someone alone.