Foster Care Opportunity0

In an effort to impact the huge need for foster care of children in RDU, the Summit is partnering with KidsPeace Foster Care.  Ashley Tyndall is a member at the Summit who serves in the KidsPeace Durham office.  We have asked her to share what makes KidsPeace special and how you can be involved. - Curt Alan, Community Pastor

Seth has seen more than most of us would even imagine. This small child was a victim of regular physical and emotional abuse, and he witnessed his sisters being sexually abused. Seth often went without meals, and he describes a week that went by with only a jar of peanut butter to share with all of his brothers and sisters. By age eight, Seth and his siblings had been entered Child Protective Services Custody and were placed in separate foster homes.

Understandably, Seth had some behavioral and emotional difficulties that many people just couldn’t understand. He needed a committed family to provide a higher level of support than traditional foster care. Seth was referred to KidsPeace Foster Care and Community Programs of NC, which provides Therapeutic Foster Care (TFC). TFC agencies like KidsPeace serve children that have a mental health diagnosis. Many of the children who are referred to us have been abused or neglected in the past, and some have never had an adult who could stick with them.

KidsPeace believes that these children can be best served in their own communities and within a family structure. TFC parents don’t need to be experts in child psychology, but they do need a genuine desire to help children in crisis. KidsPeace offers a high level of ongoing training and 24/7 support, as well as a stipend to cover the financial expenses of having a child in your home. We focus on fostering resiliency and increasing the protective factors that help kids succeed. We also take extra time to match children’s specific needs with the strengths and preferences of our foster families in order to ensure the best possible match.

At first, Seth couldn’t see why he should trust his therapeutic foster parents any more than the biological parents that had allowed such horrible things to happen to him. But his foster parents refused to give up on him. Gradually, he began having fewer nightmares, his negative behaviors decreased, and he even made honor roll at school for the first time. Seth is currently eleven years old and is midway through the process of being legally adopted by his KidsPeace foster parents. He still has a long way to go, but he recently told his social worker, “I’m pretty sure KidsPeace saved my life.”

If you are interested in learning more about being a KidsPeace therapeutic foster family, or finding other ways to serve children in need, please attend our upcoming orientation session.  The session will be at 7pm on Wednesday February 24th in the SummitKids area across from the Elementary Worship room.  Please RSVP to me at Ashley.tyndall@kidspeace.org You can also check out KidsPeace National Centers online at www.kidspeace.org or our YouTube channel for videos.