The goal of Foster Care Awareness Month is to promote awareness about the foster care crisis in our communities and try to recognize ways to support children and youth who need foster homes. Monterey County has about 400 children in need of foster care. These children need loving families to help nurture and positively guide them in life.
Organizations like Kinship Center assist in the foster care process by offering programs designed to support both children and families. Carol Bishop, regional executive director of Kinship Center, explains how the goal of these programs is to place children in permanent family situations. “Our Family Ties program provides support to relatives raising their kin children – mostly grandparents raising their grandchildren – by providing case management, support groups, family recreational activities, emergency assistance, resource referral and assistance with legal guardianship. Our Placement Program provides foster care and adoption services”.
While foster care is usually temporary, the goal of places like Kinship Center is to place children in safe, loving, and permanent homes, and also to offer professional support, counseling and mental health services for all involved. Bishop states that mental health counseling helps to support children and their families by assisting them in healing from early trauma and working to improve family relationships and communication.
California recently adopted a new term for foster care families. They are now referred to as resource families. A resource family becomes the primary caregivers that provide out of home care for children in foster care. Monterey County Family to Family (F2F) is an organization that works with public and private partners to increase awareness about the needs of resource families and foster children. By law, all resource families are required to successfully meet approval standards through the RFA (Resource Family Approval) process.
In order to start this process, all applicants for foster care and adoption attend an informational meeting where they are given details about the process and support they will receive from the state and placement center. Once they submit the application and provide the supporting documents, there is a required training session. Bishop notes that “once they begin the actual application process, they attend 30 hours of training designed to prepare them for parenting children who have experienced trauma and loss before a child is placed with them.”
Each family must go through a home study process of interviews and assessments by a social worker to ensure that they have the best chance of success. Once a child is placed with them, the resource family will have the support of their social worker and whatever other professionals they need to help them. Organizations like Monterey County Family to Family and Kinship Center help provide various support services that guide children and families on a positive path. These services include parent coaching, support groups, classes for parents, and access to mental health clinics. Even after the adoption process is final, families can continue to attend support groups and access these services if needed.
Foster Care Awareness month is a time to acknowledge resource families, social workers, child welfare policymakers, mentors, volunteers, and all people who help children find permanent homes and build stronger connections to others. During the month of May, agencies do more to raise public awareness about fostering and adoption services, as well as renew their commitment to ensuring a better future for children in foster care.
There are many other ways can people help with the foster care crisis in Monterey besides fostering or adoption. Bishop urges people to “learn about fostering and adoption, and educate others about the need for foster and adoptive parents for children in our own community.” One of the easiest ways people can help is to “attend events that support our work on behalf of children. Volunteer to tutor or mentor a foster child, and maybe look into becoming a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate).” She says that people can also check with the Monterey County Department of Social Services to see what opportunities are offered to be of assistance to foster youth. The hope is that by becoming more educated about foster care, people will do more to get involved in the lives of these youths.
Margie de Quesada is a former teacher turned family travel blogger. She writes about the places her family visits around the USA and has a bucket list goal to visit all 50 states before her kids graduate high school. You can read Margie’s travel blog at www.dqtravel.net.