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All caregivers are welcome to attend and we are able to provide credit hours toward re-licensing. FVC also hosts informal gatherings, Parents Night Out and social/play groups. Within 48 hours, FVC provides a week’s worth of all new essential and comfort items to ensure children have what they need. When caregivers say yes to keeping siblings together, FVC provides larger necessities to ensure each child has a comfortable first night sleep.
Q2 Connect Pillar Program Highlights
I would have loved for my (foster) children’s father to have access to a home-like setting like our current resource center in the Oakhurst neighborhood. We hope to open a larger resource center so we can provide more intentional programming around the foster and biological family on their road home. When Raeya was 6 months old, we both left teaching. I took a job at Watershed, working in the children’s program. During that time, I said to Tony, “Let’s do foster care.” Looking back, that did not feel like the right time to start something new. Tony was starting his business, I was in a new job, we had little kids.
Foster Williams Obituary (1926 - 2024) - Eagle Springs, NC - Charlotte Observer - Legacy.com
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GO. PLAY. SEE.: 4 Fun Things to Experience in Charlotte This Month
The results speak volumes, with FVC successfully launching their board recruitment plan, welcoming two new board members, and initiating a board chair succession plan as their founding chair prepares for a transition in the near future. Meanwhile, I was feeling enriched by my relationship with my foster child’s biological father. He visited with her and brought a new doll every week.
A Grassroots Movement Becomes a Beacon of Support

I’m here to be an ally.” I had a picture of her room on my phone that I showed him. My empathy grew in leaps and bounds in the hospital that day. We work to elevate the voices of children and families, build awareness, and increase access to the tools needed to end generational cycles of adversity. By connecting foster families with other foster families, biological families and trusted resources, families are strengthened and empowered to continue fostering. We believe that strengthening the families and systems that surround a child experiencing foster care leads to a resilient next generation that breaks the cycle of childhood adversity. Bill Martin echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the team’s aim to create a relief valve for directors and a template for the organization to transcend founder-centric care.
Project SOOTHe provides non-invasive tools, play-based strategies, and individualized consultations to families free of charge to help caregivers engage and bond with the children in their homes. Forms can be filled out on our website by caregivers and our licensed pediatric Occupational Therapist and current foster parent calls to schedule a consultation. After a consultation, a follow-up email is provided that recaps the visit and suggests play-based strategies for the sensory tools that will be delivered. One of the things that brought us together was our mutual desire to support children in foster care.
My experience in the classroom had a lot to do with why I became a foster parent. I had students who were in foster care, living with extended family or foster parents. Watching grandparents struggle to parent again, or having a conversation with kids and not getting a clear picture of where they were living, or with whom … changed me. Tony and I started gathering information about foster care before we started a family. COVID delivered a blow to an already strained foster care system. Therapy and support service availability dwindled.
How To Give Back This Holiday Season - WFAE
How To Give Back This Holiday Season.
Posted: Sat, 21 Nov 2020 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section. We understood, but just the thought of separating siblings felt so hard and so sad. We knew we were going to adopt his sister … but as we were gaining a daughter, someone else was losing a daughter. I think sometimes people forget about the other side of the story. Hat Creek Burger Company is carrying on its mission to provide support in all its communities by partnering with all of our Texas locations.
After Maeve was born, Tony started roasting coffee in the backyard and selling it to friends and family for fun. This went on for a couple of years, through the birth of our second daughter, Raeya. Create professional content with Canva, including presentations, catalogs, and more. Transform any piece of content into a page-turning experience.
They provide resources such as welcome packs, funded trainings, support groups, and classes to help ensure a healthy transition for children in crisis. This is why we are proud to support Foster Village Charlotte and their mission. Part of their success, Santoro believes, comes from Foster Village’s reliance on its five staff members, all of whom have fostered children themselves. Santoro has four children, ages 10, 8, 6, and 4; she adopted the younger two.
To achieve program goals, we will need a continued strong partnership with Mecklenburg County DSS which may also include a court program that will help us pilot phase 2 of the program. In addition, we also need strong leadership with lived experience as a birth family to ensure we are being intentional and thoughtful in our program design. This program expansion would also include the need for a new staff member and additional oversight and navigating to community resources that extend beyond the mission of FVC to help families sustain permanency. Reunifying families is a vulnerable population but there are risks involved including safety for our team and the children we serve.
Five years ago, shortly after she welcomed her first foster child, Santoro began to regularly meet three other foster parents at a playground. They told her they lacked resources and felt overwhelmed. Santoro envisioned an organization to support foster caregivers, and by the time she welcomed her second foster child, Santoro and the three other parents—Molly Zalewski, Sloan Crawford, and Traci Prillaman—had co-founded Foster Village.
We also found out that our foster daughter’s biological brother was born and needed a home. But then, during a court meeting, the judge decided that the baby would live with an aunt and uncle. Once we did, I couldn’t unhear or unsee what I had seen and heard. We finished classes and home inspections, then got a phone call saying we could start hearing about kids soon.
Copyright © 2024 Next Stage Consulting All rights reserved. I asked the leader of Foster Village there if she would consider an affiliation model. But she kept checking on us and eventually agreed to let us use her logo and brand. That allowed us to point back to something that was already working elsewhere.
I knew I could have a tangible, meaningful, and positive impact through the beauty of my artful designs. When you purchase any items from our House Collection, we donate 100% of the purchase price to Foster Village Charlotte. Your purchase supports the work of Foster Village Charlotte, which ultimately impacts those who need it the most. My hope is the Safety Pin House serves as a reminder that when we all come together, children can have a safe place to call home.
Foster Village Charlotte knew where they wanted to go – but they also knew they needed help to build a strong foundation that would make them sustainable for years to come. “When we joined Cultivate, we had a lot of momentum and community support,” said Founder and Executive Director Becky Santoro. We recently hired a licensed clinical social worker. We also launched a “before your first placement” group. At the end of four weeks, new foster parents have an opportunity to partner with a seasoned foster parent mentor to walk them through their first placement.
Understandably, almost half of foster parents choose to not accept another placement, citing lack of support as a strong contributing factor. Foster Village Charlotte plays a critical role in supporting and maintaining a family’s ability to foster a child. They show up in real, tangible ways, so the families feel seen, understood, and supported.
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