January 19, 2000
Child and Family Services head retires
Bernard Thompson has spent decades helping area children
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
"I would do this all over again - easy!"
So summarized Bernard "Bud" Thompson about his decades of helping children in need, speaking to assembled family, co-workers and friends at his retirement party last Thursday evening at the Elks Club in Traverse City. After 37 years as a social worker and 33 years heading up Child and Family Services of Northwest Michigan, Inc., Thompson has dedicated his professional life to helping others.
Stepping down as executive director of Child and Family Services last Friday, Thompson celebrated the change and welcomed the acknowledgment of those who worked with him during his career.
"This wasn't a job to him, it literally became his life for 33 years," said Dave Eggli, director of professional services for Child and Family Services. "I have not seen that level of commitment that Bud gives to people."
The current board president, Bud Cline, acknowledged Thompson's sense of perspective gained by his lengthy service with Child and Family Services.
"The strength that Bud has as a leader is a sense of history for the whole organization," Cline said. "He understands how foster care and adoption have evolved and where it is going so we can help kids be successful in life."
Thompson has served as head of the agency, which began as the Children's Aid Society in 1937, for more than half of its life, guiding it through an explosive expansion. When he came on board in 1967, Thompson headed a staff of six people. This staff has now grown to more than 60 serving 1,000 children in 12 counties. Expanding beyond adoption services, Child and Family Services offers a variety of programs, including foster care, adoption, post-adoption parent support, pregnancy counseling and family counseling for crime victims.
During his tenure as a social worker, Thompson has seen a complete change in adoption policy. From the beginning in the 1960s, women were sent to one of a network of maternity homes throughout the state to have their out-of-wedlock babies in secret. These babies were then placed in infant foster care until they were adopted. The permanent placement was usually away from where they were born, with guarantees of secrecy given to both the biological mother and the adoptive family. While these policies may sound draconian, they reflected prevailing social norms at the time.
"When I first started, the biggest problem we had in the area of adoption, was so many babies and no homes for them," said Thompson, a Saginaw native who received his MSW at Michigan State University. "There were just so many more children than there was interest in them."
By the 1970s, Thompson heard about classes in Northport High School that were teaching pregnant teen mothers how to keep and care for their babies. He saw change coming. Now, nearly two decades later, the majority of unwed mothers are keeping and raising their babies, with no associated stigma, and numerous support systems are in place to help them. Maternity homes and secrecy are things of the past, with a new era of open adoption the standard for the few babies available for adoption.
"Michigan was one of the early supporters of open adoption," Thompson said. "At first, I wasn't sure if it was in the best interest of children but we did change and it has worked out for the better."
During his career, foster care has also shifted from an emphasis on temporary infant care to handling more children and teenagers. Even youth with physical, psychological or developmental disabilities are now placed in foster care homes. Under Thompson, Child and Family Services pioneered specialized foster care homes to care for these children, giving special training to foster parents and the caseworkers to break the cycle of passing these kids around.
Child and Family Services had a record high of 175 children in foster care by December 1999. With a network of more than 100 foster care homes, Thompson praises the dedication of the foster parents.
"They are the unsung heroes," he noted. "They live with their commitment every day."
Tearing himself away after three decades of intense involvement is proving a little difficult for Thompson. Looking ahead, still coming into the office here and there, Thompson is planning to devote time to his church, Keswick United Methodist Church in Leelanau County, and to the Karios Prison Ministry. For five years now, he has traveled with members of this ministry to state prisons in the Upper Peninsula to minister to prisoners there in weekends of education and evangelism.
"I have seen hardened criminals who have done just terrible things change their attitudes and personalities through this program," Thompson said. "Maybe the Lord is calling me to set up a ministry in one of the local prisons, like the Oaks in Manistee."