Right now, there are at-risk families right in our local area. In many ways, they are just like your family. Parents who want their children to be safe. Parents who desire to have a home that is stable and loving. Children want to come home from school knowing that things will be okay when they get there. However, many of these families are facing such hard circumstances that their children are in the custody of the State.
These families need time, resources, and help with their kids while they work toward making the changes that are needed for their children to return home. We can meet these needs in our area by providing families who will foster children within their own counties and school districts. Clover Hill’s Fostering Network affiliated families know that these kids already face enough challenges being removed from their parents—they shouldn’t have to be uprooted from their schools and communities as well.
Here are the greatest needs for families who can foster:
- School-aged sibling groups of two or more
- Teenagers
- Children and students with special needs
- Children and students who are medically fragile
Virtually none of the children who are in foster care prefer their foster homes to their own birth families, regardless of their past circumstances. That’s hard to believe, isn’t it?
More than 50 percent of the children who come into foster care will one day return to their original family or another member or their extended family. It’s imperative that we do everything we can to encourage those birth families to get the help they need.
Over the last few months, Clover Hill has been given the opportunity by Chesterfield’s Department of Social Services to launch a pilot program creating our very own Fostering Network to provide care and support to those who are involved in this initiative. The Network is set up to help foster families succeed.
There are three ways you can be involved in our Fostering Network:
- Be a foster family
- Be a respite family that acts as aunts and uncles to these children
- Be a support mentor which helps with the various needs of foster families.
With your help, the Clover Hill Fostering Network can be part of the solution. The families right here in our church can make a difference!
