As we begin the month of May , it is important to remember that May is National Foster Care Month.
As adoption professionals, we tip our hat to Florida’s foster parents, who day-in and day-out are the lifeline for many of our State’s precious children when these children otherwise are not able safely to live in their own homes. Many of these foster moms and dads nurture these kids as best they can, but ultimately bid them adieu when the child is reunified back into the home from which the child was removed or even placed elsewhere with a family member or non-relative caregiver.
On the other hand, some foster parents become through adoption what we in the adoptions community affectionately refer to as the child’s “forever family.” Frankly, for a host of reasons, these foster child adoption finalization hearings are among the most poignant. Many times, the child to be adopted is older, he or she, regrettably, has been through some level of trauma and also has felt first-hand the fear and uncertainty attendant with being removed from one’s home. The child’s foster and now forever family, in turn, represents a safety net, as well as a fresh start, for the child. For all involved, the adoption finalization hearing is the culmination of so much love, sweat, and tears, played out over months, if not years, and now, happily, wrapped into a series of moments of joy.
Will you aspire to a greater good? Are you motivated to make a difference in the life of a child? Do you get that you stand wonderfully to be enriched and ennobled by welcoming a child into your home, weaving that child into the fabric of your family, and maybe even being this child’s “forever family”, the fabric woven into a tapestry? Is the cacophony that is daily life as a mom and/or dad in your orbit?
If yes, then we have beautiful foster care kids here in the Sunshine State that need your love, guidance, humor, tenderness. And, as a Florida foster parent, not only are you paid a monthly stipend by the State of Florida, but without raising a finger, you also automatically are made a member of both your local and statewide network comprised of other similarly situated foster families.
The state entity is FSFAPA, Florida State Foster/Adoptive Parent Association, www.fsfapa.org.
Be a foster parent. Be that rock solid role model every kid would want to be like and emulate, be that grown up from whom an impressionable foster child can learn, and to whom that uncertain, finding-my-way-in–the-world foster child can turn. Open your arms and the sanctuary that is your home to these precious kids, envelop them.
After all, out there in the big bad world, with its tweets, and its texts, and its insensitive, mile-a-minute pace, you may be one person, BUT to one person, you just well may be the world!! Think about it!!