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As a foster/adoptive parent, Amanda Cruce has welcomed more than 50 children from Florida’s foster care system into her home. Most have been teenagers. She learned early on that loving foster children as your own kids and then seeing them return to their biological family is a complicated experience, but that’s the goal of fostering.
It's Foster Family Appreciation Week! We have an amazing network of 250 foster families in Polk, Hardee, and Highlands counties and we are excited to highlight how they make a difference in the lives of our children & families every day!
It's Foster Family Appreciation Week! This week we are highlighting just a few of our 250 amazing foster families. Meet Megan & Alex Delfino!
It's Foster Family Appreciation Week! This week we are highlighting just a few of our 250 amazing foster families. Meet Kassandra & James Fields!
It's Foster Family Appreciation Week! This week we are highlighting just a few of our 250 amazing foster families. Meet Corey and Kyla Rogala.
It's Foster Family Appreciation Week! This week we are highlighting just a few of our 250 amazing foster families. Meet Lauren and Winston Hackett.
It's Foster Family Appreciation Week! This week we are highlighting just a few of our 250 amazing foster families. Meet Dustin and Beth Ann Prickett.
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