Foster Care
Foster care is temporary care provided to children which can last from overnight to more long term. Foster homes are resources and supports for children who are removed from their homes due to abuse, neglect, or identified as being dependent and their parents are not able to safely care for them. If no relative or kinship care giver is available or identified, children are placed with foster parents on a temporary basis until reunification or permanency can be achieved.
Foster parents provide a loving, secure, caring, and safe place for children to live. Children do best when they can stay in their own school, keep their friends, and see birth parents often, and priority is placed on neighborhoods and schools. Foster parents are part of a team including the child’s therapists, juvenile court, and additional resources working with the children and birth family.
Foster parents impact the lives of children placed in their home by being a positive role model and many times assist both the child and parent in the reunification process by providing additional support.
Adoption
Adoption is a life commitment to a child or children who are unable to return to their biological families. Keeping children with their biological families is always the first goal, but sometimes reunification with the child’s birth family is not possible or not in the best interest of the child.
Children who are in need of their forever families require the same commitment of love, patience, and security as your own birth children need and deserve. When a child is adopted, the adoptive parents become legally and financially responsible for the child through a legal process just as if the child was born into the family.
Children who may become available for adoption may be eligible for subsidies or medical coverage. Children of all ages and backgrounds are in need of permanent, safe, stable, and loving homes and the adoption process provides this for children.
For More Information
If you would like more information about becoming a foster or adopt parent, call Tori Nicely at 419-627-4484.