By Kat Bryant
Grays Harbor News Group
Have you ever considered becoming a foster parent, but weren’t sure you could manage it? An event in Aberdeen this weekend will provide all the information you might need to make that decision.
The Shoppes at Riverside will host the Foster Parent Recruitment Fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. It will essentially be a one-stop shop for community resources and foster care agencies.
There are more of those than many people realize, each with a different focus and scope of services. For example, while some work mostly with young children, others work primarily to place at-risk youth in a stable home environment; and some are faith-based while others are not.
The organizations represented at this fair have formed a coalition of sorts to get the word out about the extreme need for more families to open their homes to local children and teens in need.
“The agencies who license and support foster parents are teaming up with community organizations to recruit and retain quality foster homes for the 9,000-plus kids in care in Washington,” said Amanda Mahoney, a representative of Catholic Community Services Therapeutic Foster Care. “We’d love to find more quality homes so we don’t have to move kids out of the county to other parts of the state.”
That’s a shortage all of the participating agencies hope to alleviate through this fair.
“Aberdeen has a lot of kiddos who are getting shipped out of the county, and that’s one of those things we’re so tired of seeing,” said Nathan Lachine, foster parent recruiter at Community Youth Services. “It destroys a culture, having kiddos shipped from a rural area to Olympia or Tacoma or Seattle. … If they don’t see the community wrapping around them, they feel so disconnected and isolated.”
Nichole Erickson is the Grays Harbor liaison for Fostering Together, which provides free information, resources and support for families who are new to foster care. Erickson was in that boat once herself.
“As a mother of seven, some of whom came to me through kinship care and foster care, I understand the challenges facing foster parents in our community,” she said. “The experience I have gained while working with special-needs children in our local school district, and from teaching trauma-informed approaches to parent-child interactions, will allow me to offer much-needed practical support in these areas as well.”
This is one of a series of events the coalition is putting on all over Western Washington.
“We started this out in Shelton, we’re coming out to Aberdeen, and then we’re doing Olympia,” said Lachine. “The goal is, at least every month, to have different recruiting events in different cities.”
For more information on the Aberdeen fair, visit the Facebook event page: www.facebook.com/events/613430739223535.
“No matter where you’re at in the decision-making process to become a foster parent, you should come down this Saturday,” said Shoppes manager Jasmine Dickhoff. “You just might end up changing someone’s life.”
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PRIMARY PARTICIPATING AGENCIES
Community Youth Services Foster Care
communityyouthservices.org
Catholic Community Services Therapeutic Foster Care
ccsww.org/get-help/child-youth-family-services/foster-care
Service Alternatives
www.servicealternatives.com/children-family-services/foster-care
Fostering Together
fosteringtogether.org
Compelled to Care
www.evergreenpnw.com/compelledtocare
