Make A Difference Blog Archives by Date Blog
Ashley & Kelly began their foster care journey back in 2017. Ashley shares, “We had 3 young biological children at home when we started our foster care journey. Kel and I had lots of conversations about how fostering would affect our family - we worried about how it might change our children. Be assured, foster care will change you. You cannot experience the things of foster care and stay the same. We have all become more compassionate and empathetic individuals.”
Meet the Hargroves, our Foster Family of the Month!
In 2018, Maria & Daniel began their foster care journey and decided that they only wanted to foster teens (our greatest need)! Since the beginning, they have been very involved in co-parenting, facilitating visits with bioparents and making sure the teens are able to stay connected with family. They champion and advocate for every teen that comes through their home, including the 15 and 16 year olds that are currently with them.
My wife, Joy-Lynn and I became Foster Parent Mentors (FPM) through Heartland for Children in 2012. When we were approached with the opportunity to be an added support for incoming Foster Parents, we jumped at the opportunity because we saw the value in having someone who other Foster Parents could relate to as being an invaluable resource; especially, if the individual(s) were completely new to the fostering and/or parenting experience.
As FPMs through Heartland, we've had the chance to interact with incoming Foster Parents on many levels including assisting with respite, providing guidance or best practices with difficult behavioral issues, advocating for a child who had to be moved from one home to another, making recommendations on working with case management, providing another vantage point through the process of Termination of Parental Rights (TPR), and many other areas that Foster Parents can encounter during their first and continuing years of child advocates.
What we've gained as FPMs is a heightened level of understanding of how important it is to identify the needs of incoming Foster Parents. Being able to make recommendations on how the training component has and can continue to successfully equip incoming parents with the proper training and education; is a value add that Heartland has really welcomed input on.
Cebien Alty - HFC Foster Parent, Foster Parent Mentor