Fostering Hope Foundation

Where there is help, there is hope. Where there is hope, there is a future.

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Colorado Springs

A note from the director

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Fear. Isolation. An inability to focus. Living in the present and unable to focus on the future. The world around me – and social interaction – is dangerous and to be avoided. This is how I’ve felt at times during this pandemic, as many of you may have. Likewise, it’s the connections and experiences with friends and family – even by text or Facetime – that seems to shed perspective on it all and bring the calm.

I realized recently that this is a window into the experience of kids in foster care and why Fostering Hope exists.

To be clear, childhood trauma, in the technical and scientific sense, is very different than typical fear and grief, and toxic stress is not normal stress. We are feeling these things in the face of real and imminent danger, and when it goes away, so will much of our fear. For our youth, this is the constant, even debilitating baseline they live with when the world around them is humming along uneventfully.

But even a glimpse into their world can help us understand more personally why the love and support they experience from our wonderful foster parents and volunteers and greater Fostering Hope community is so healing and transformational. Just today, a friend sent me a care package knowing I was going a little stir crazy. The warmth from this gesture and knowing I was on their mind will carry me through whatever today’s headlines bring.

So, as I reflect on this, I just want to say thank you. Whether you’re a donor, a volunteer, a foster parent or one of our community partners, your contributions to creating calm out of chaos and shining love into darkness are truly something special.

Volunteers Get Creative to Support Foster Families from Afar

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Sue knew her foster parents would be struggling to keep their kids entertained and engaged with no school or activities and strict stay-at-home orders. Normally, she’d take them to the park or on a play date, but in a Covid-19 world she did the next best thing: she dropped off a pair of activity kits at their doorstep. One included all the materials to create a balloon rocket, and the other a pom-pom drop game.

She is one of many Fostering Hope volunteers who have found new ways to support their foster families during the time of coronavirus. Instead of childcare, transportation, or date nights, all of which are not allowed or safe during the height of the pandemic, they’re relying on video and doorsteps.

Volunteers for another family read stories to the kids via video, and others put on a YouTube-style puppet show. It may not seem like much, but an hour of respite for a foster parent in quarantine can go a long way.

Others have left hot meals on doorsteps, complete with a side of toilet paper and other supplies. One volunteer stepped in to do video math tutoring for a child struggling to make the adjustment to e-learning.

“I want you all to know it means so much to have your arms around us as we go through this,” one foster mom shared with her team. “All of you are heaven sent, and I don’t mean that in a Hallmark kind of way … please know you are so, so needed and loved.”

In an interesting turn of events, the “extended family” is serving in new ways. Foster families and volunteers have brought groceries to elderly volunteers who are homebound and unable or at high-risk of going to the store. One foster family who received more food than they can eat as a family, repackaged what was left and distributed to an elderly neighbor.

Mission Story 5: Saying Goodbye

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Fostering Hope Mission Story 5 of 10: Saying Goodbye (Riley)
*All names were changed in the followng story.

Fostering Hope Foundation volunteers help foster families in countless ways. Organizing a foster child’s first real birthday party, making a home-cooked dinner, or helping with a school science project are just a few examples of the essential and wide-ranging aid provided to foster families.

But sometimes a volunteer goes so far above and beyond expectations it amazes everyone involved. Riley is one of those volunteers.
Foster parents Maddie and Rob Jenson opened their home to a group of teenage foster boys between the ages of 15 and 17 years old. All the boys were from broken homes and had experienced a life of extreme hardship, abandonment, and abuse.

When Maddie and Rob got word that their biological son, a member of the U.S. Army stationed in Texas, was being deployed to Afghanistan, they desperately wanted to tell him goodbye in person. But they couldn’t take the boys out of school, nor could they find anyone who could stay with them. Just when they were about to give up, Riley, a member of their Fostering Hope Foundation volunteer team, offered to help.

Riley agreed to stay with the boys while Maddie and Rob were away. She cared for them for five days. Cooking meals, helping with homework, driving them to school, and doing everything else necessary to keep a household with several teenage boys from devolving into complete chaos. And for those of you with teenage boys, you know firsthand that’s no small feat.

Thanks to Riley’s generosity and dedication, not only were Maddie and Rob able to say goodbye to their son in person, but their foster boys were able to remain in a loving, stable environment while they were away.