May is Foster Care Month
CFW Foster Care - A collaborative effort between Clarke County, Frederick County and the City of Winchester to serve the needs of children in our communities.

You Can Change a Lifetime! 5

All children deserve a safe, happy life – including the 496,000 American children and youth in foster care.  Young people in foster care especially need nurturing adults on their side because their own families are in crisis and unable to care for them. 

 

 

What is foster care? 4

Foster care provides a temporary, safe home for children in crisis. Foster parents help facilitate the child’s support, treatment, and care programs by becoming partners with the child’s social worker, teachers, and doctors. Being a foster parent is not a passive act of opening one’s home and providing food, clothing and shelter, but instead a proactive statement of nurturing, advocacy, and love.

Who are these children? 1

There are children in Winchester, Frederick County and Clarke County (CFW) who are in need of a place to feel safe during difficult times.  Due to abuse, neglect, or unsafe conditions, they need a foster home.  Children who come into care range in age from infant to 20 and come from diverse backgrounds.

What do they need? 1

These youth need foster and adoptive parents; they do best in stable, nurturing homes.  They need someone in their corner, so they can learn to trust again.  Like all children, they need day-to-day guidance and support from loving adults.

What is the Foster Care and Adoption Program? 1

The Foster Care and Adoption Program offers placements for these children and services to help their families. The primary goal of foster care is to provide a safe place for a child while the biological parents become stable.  Our hope is to reunite children with their families.  When a child cannot return home safely, we seek adoption or other permanent placement.

How you can make a difference? 2

If you have room in your heart and home, you can make a difference in the life of a child in need by becoming a foster parent. Ideally, children should remain with their actual families whenever possible. Although foster care services make every effort to keep families together, it isn't always possible.

You, as a foster parent, can make an incredible difference by providing a safe and caring home for children in need of foster care. If you have a desire to nurture a child who needs a safe place to live, if you feel called to care for children who have lived through difficult experiences, if you think it is the right time to open your heart and home to these children, consider becoming a foster parent.

Click here to learn more about the role of a foster parent.

Who can foster or adopt? 1

Foster and adoptive parents are ordinary people who care about children and want to make a difference in their lives and futures.  They receive training and supportive services, including financial assistance, counseling and child care.
Parents:

  1. must be 21 or older;
  2. may be married couples or single invididuals;
  3. may work outside the home; and
  4. must be able to provide a safe, loving home.

Ways to be a foster parent 1

Foster parents offer children safety and stability until children can return to their families or go to permanent homes.  Foster families offer different types of care:

  1. Short Term – children stay for a few days up to three months
  2. Regular Foster Care – children stay for any length of time, often one to two years
  3. Foster to Adopt – Although the main goal of fostering is to return children to their families, this is sometimes not feasible. Adoption becomes an option.

Click here to learn more about adoption.

What are the characteristics of a successful foster family? 4

Commitment, patience, understanding, flexibility, good communication, open to feedback and direction, ability to ask for help when needed, ability to set clear boundaries and limits, ability not to personalize a child’s behavior, and sense of humor, able to work as part of a team with the child's social worker, counselor or others.

Supporting Adolescents in Family Environments (S.A.F.E.) Program 3

Teens need supportive, caring adults to guide them into adulthood.  Unfortunately, there is a short supply of foster families willing and committed to fostering the teenage population.  This mean that teens entering the foster care system may have to move to a different area, losing access to their family, friends, school, mentors, and teams.

Help keep the area’s teenagers here in our community!

Some benefits include:

  1. Payment for board, clothing and transportation expenses.
  2. Medical and dental coverage for the foster child.
  3. Additional financial supplements above the regular foster care stipend (up to $2,000 per month)

What is a S.A.F.E. foster family? 3

It is a unit of one or more adults who have been specially trained to work with the support of a professional team of social workers, counselors, and educators to provide daily care, supervision, and parenting in a family setting to challenging youth.

They are:

  1. positive role models
  2. committed to accepting youth between 12 and 18 years of age with troubled past
  3. willing to support  youth’s relationship with birth parents
  4. available to actively participate in therapeutic services needed by the youth.
  5. able to transport child to: counseling, mental health appointments, court hearings, school, work and other  meetings
  6. able to pass drug screening, DMV, CPS and Criminal History checks

For information on how to become a “S.A.F.E.” Foster Family, please call the CFW at (540) 955-3700 or beth.mason@dss.virginia.gov

The S.A.F.E. Priority 5

Older youth are in most urgent need of attention. Nearly half of the young people in foster care are over the age of 10.

Each year, 26,000 young people in the United States age out of foster care, most without the appropriate resources, family connections, skills or options they will need to live healthy adult lives.

How do I become a foster parent or a S.A.F.E. foster parent?

  1. Contact the Clarke, Frederick, Winchester City Department of Social Services (CFW) by phone (540) 955-3700 or email beth.mason@dss.virginia.gov.
  2. Fill out an application and pre-service screening.
  3. Attend 27 hours of PRIDE Training.  Classes are offered several times a year.  Classes include home visits and background checks.  Families are coached through the entire process.

P.R.I.D.E. Training
Parent's Resource for Information, Development and Education

PRIDE is a model for the development and support of resource families. It is designed to strengthen the quality of family foster parenting and adoption services by providing a standardized structured framework for recruiting, preparing and selecting foster and adoptive parents.

PRIDE is 28 hours of training for all prospective foster and adoptive families. Through this process, the adoption home study is also completed (at no cost) for families interested in adopting special needs children.

PRIDE training is based on the philosophy that the value of family life for children, however family is defined, is compelling. Because of this, knowledgeable and skilled foster and adoptive parents are integral to providing quality services.

PRIDE's goals are to help:

  1. Meet the protective, developmental, cultural and permanency needs of children placed with foster and adoptive families.
  2. Strengthen families, whether they are families of origin, blended families, extended or kinship families, foster families, adoptive families, or tribal members.
  3. Strengthen the quality of family foster parenting and adoption services by providing a standardized, structured framework for pre-service training and mutual assessment.

PRIDE training classes are offered throughout the year. Please call 540-955-3700 to find out when our next training will begin.

A child in your community needs you

All children grow and thrive best when they are with a family. You could be that family. Open your heart and home by becoming a foster, adoptive or resource parent.  Contact us today!

(540) 955-3700
beth.mason@dss.virginia.gov

We are always happy to answer your questions.

Links:

Sources:

  1. “Foster Care and Adoption.” http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov. 2009. Fairfax County Department of Family Services. 16 March 2009. http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/dfs/webdocs/fostercare/adoption.htm.
  2. “Consider Becoming a Foster Parent.” http://www.dss.state.va.us. 2008. Virginia Department of Social Services.  16 March 2009. http://www.dss.state.va.us/family/fc/index.html
  3. Clarke, Frederick, Winchester City Department of Social Services. (2008) “Supporting Adolescents in Family Environments.” [Brochure]
  4. “Becoming a Foster Parent.” http://www.greaterhopefoundation.com. 2007. Greater Hope Foundation. 30 March 2009. http://www.greaterhopefoundation.com/parent.html.
  5. “May is National Foster Care Month...You Can Change a Lifetime!” http://www.fostercaremonth.org. 2009. National Foster Care Month. 2 April 2009. http://www.fostercaremonth.org/Pages/default.aspx
  6. “P.R.I.D.E. Training.” http://www.dss.sd.gov. 2006. South Dakota Department Social Services. 2 April 2009.  http://dss.sd.gov/fostercare/pride/index.asp