This year in the United States, two million children and teenagers will experience family problems so severe that temporary removal from their own homes will be necessary for their safety and survival. The agencies charged with the protection of these youngsters make very effort to keep children at home with their own families while services are being provided. When children do have to leave their own homes while family problems are being solved, they need secure and loving environments in which to live. Foster Parents are the special people who give these children and youth what they so desperately need. Foster parents are individuals and coupLes who take other people's children into their home and who are there to guide and shelter them until they can return to their own homes, find permanent families through adoption, or, in the case of teenagers, until they are capable of living independently.
Foster families provide a unique service to the community, as well as to the children in their care.
This service is different from that provided by anyone else in the community. They provide the daily care, understanding, and affection that gives foster children the opportunity for healthy physical and emotional growth while they are separated from their own family. Foster care is unique partly because its goals can only be achieved through teamwork. Foster parents are vital members of the Children's Services Team. Accepting confused, often angry and severely abused, and sometimes quite difficult children into one's family, and doing all that is necessary to help them and their families is one tough job.