I must say, my Foster Parent Association [FPA] is monthly therapy for me. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to make new friends with other foster parents, and I certainly wouldn't have found other foster parents of teens to network with. I probably would still be waiting for my first respite. It is just refreshing to spend two hours with a bunch of people that are just as crazy as you. Some of them have multiple teenagers, some babies within months of each other, many families are diverse and it is never obvious who is the foster and who is the bio child. Everyone has stories as to how they got here. No one judging, no one labeling you, just a bunch of foster/adoptive parents and soon-to-be parents talking about our passion. Working together to make things better for the kids in our care. Coming up with creative events and new initiatives to give foster families opportunities to do fun things together and give foster children some happy memories.
Out of all the foster homes in our county, only a handful of the parents attend these meetings regularly. In many ways, we work silently behind the scenes, orchestrating a slew of things for our kids and their families. When I'm in the room with all of these people, I'm in my element...I'm enthralled by the stories and amazed by the resilience of both the children and their foster parents.
While I have had an awesome experience, I know one of you [I'm sorry, I can't remember who] had a horrible time dealing with their FPA. Curious, who else has worked with their local or state FPA? Or do some of you not even have one?
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
i so wish i had a group like that to attend! when we were doing our training classes i enjoyed getting to know the other foster parents SO much and hearing their stories made me feel like I belonged because I had the same things going on.
our agency is talking about starting something like that...
anyway, have i mentioned lately i think you are amazing? i hope some day to foster older kids and i think about it often :)
We had the Prez of the local FPA speak to our training class. She said they needed help setting up a website. Well, I called her a few times, never got a call back. Set up the website on my own, called her to leave a message that it was done and still have not heard back. Our resource worker told us to contact the state FPA instead. Pity.
Awww...thank you MamaFoster, that comment means so much to me! If your agency starts an FPA, I would jump on board, see if it works for you.
Denver Laura... that sucks, but isn't it the way it is? That happened to me before with another organization. I did something similar for them and after it was ready to go, they decided to have someone else do it. I was like, "um, yeah, you're welcome anyway, thanks."
Post a Comment