May is National Foster Care Month and the Annie C Courtney Foundation is actively looking for caregivers for teenagers in Connecticut foster care. By caring for a teen, you allow them to stay within the surroundings that they know. You become the newest member of their village. You provide love and stability and help the teen and their family to heal while enriching your own life.
“We need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.” – Fred Rogers
When you provide care to a teen, you are supported with a vast array of resources. Foster families receive assistance with medical and dental care, and a daily stipend to cover the costs associated with caring for the teen. Social workers visit regularly to provide support to families and teens and additional services are provided for those who need them. College tuition is often covered as well.
“I am happy, ecstatic, and blessed to be a teen foster parent because this is the most vulnerable age of their lives. Whatever positive influence, reinforcement, affirmation, support, and love I give is already a step up or in the right direction. Teach and guide a child the way they should go. Even if they slip or fall, they will have those core values to remember as guidance.” , says one CT foster parent.
Every teen deserves someone that guides them and respects them for who they are. If you enjoy fostering strengths and dreams; fostering stability and resilience; fostering empathy and caring …becoming a foster family may be the best decision, you’ll ever make.
“Having a teen experience personal breakthrough, accomplish her goals and achieve personal happiness and hope because she has been in our home – this does it for me every time!” states one CT foster mom. And another commented, “We love being foster parents to teenagers because they are becoming an adult. I’m able to teach them new things and life skills”.
The primary goal of foster care is to provide a nurturing home for children while their biological families develop and enhance the skills needed to get their children safely home. These skills will also sustain their family long after reunification. Foster parents don’t just foster children, they foster biological families, too, and offer support and encouragement to parents and children as they become healthy and whole again.
Information meetings take less than 2 hours and are conducted 2-3 times per week on the Zoom platform. For more information or to register for an information meeting, contact Annie C Courtney Foundation at 475-235-2184. Annie C works in partnership with the Department of Children and Families to find foster parents for over 3,000 children in CT foster care. Please check the Annie C website for more information on foster care, and kinship care. : www.anniec.org
