How Can I Help?

Being a foster parent isn’t easy. It’s time consuming, emotionally draining at times, you have to learn how to navigate the social services system, have bio parents you need to learn how to work with as well as countless number of social workers representing multiple agencies within social services. It’s not for the faint of heart.

If you’re not up for becoming a foster parent, there’s still lots you can do. Here are a few resources and ideas. Without all these, foster parents would get lost in the system and foster children wouldn’t be able to be cared for. Thank you to all who help.

• KAFPA. They do a lot of amazing work for foster families from clothes giveaways to free Fridays to tickets to Happy Hallow (we just went and little man had a blast! Thank you KAFPA).  You can help by volunteering at the different events they have, donate goods, diapers, food for their internal meetings, and of course they’ll always take monetary donations.
• Child Advocates of Silicon Valley (CASA). This agency provides foster children with a court appointed advocate so that the foster child, if old enough, can have someone on their side that is not a foster parent, bio parent, or social worker. We got incredibly lucky and got a wonderful CASA when little man was 1 year old and we still keep in touch with her. I think she got it pretty easy with us but it can be a very emotional role where you see children being placed in incorrect homes (bio or foster) and there’s a lot of paperwork and policies that need to be kept because CASA is part of the social services group of program. If you don’t have the time or the desire to be a CASA, they hold an annual fundraising event (it just happened last weekend and was a blast!) and I’m sure they’d be happy with time and/or monetary donations.
• You. Yup! Simple enough. Reach out to foster parents to see how they’re doing. It’s an emotional and tough journey. Offer babysitting, dinner, an ear, a glass of wine. It’s easy to feel like you are the only one when you’re a foster parent. Having someone reach out and help can make their day.

There are lots of other ways to help if you can’t be a foster parent. The above two organizations are in Santa Cara County but I’m sure there are other agencies near you. You can start with a simple “how can I help foster families near me” Google search.