“It’s not just about fostering and providing a home for kids. It’s about creating moments that are core memories – that are filled with hope.”
That is from Jody Hoogwerf, the program manager of foster care at Closer to Home Community Services.
The Calgary-based non-profit is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. The organization offers a variety of community services in Calgary, including foster care.
Now, thanks to being awarded southern Alberta’s latest Agency Foster Care contract, Closer to Home is expanding to provide foster care in communities south of YYC.
The contract means Closer to Home will be able to use funding from Alberta Children and Family Services to support 50 new foster care spaces across a wide area from Fort Macleod south to the Canadian border, stretching east to Medicine Hat and west to the British Columbia border. The 50 new beds are on top of the existing 26 in Calgary.
Hoogwerf notes this will help keep kids going into foster care in their local community.
“[It’s] really important to keep kids in their home communities,” she says. “What we often find is when kids come into care, because of the lack of beds, kids have to go to some of the bigger centres [like] Lethbridge, Medicine Hat [and] Brooks.”
Hoogwerf says the focus now moves to recruiting foster families to support kids in need and the new contract will help provide support in more rural areas.
“Our hope is we can recruit foster families in some of the smaller centres in order to keep kids either in their home community or at least closer to their home community, where they have access to their schools, their sports teams, their friends, [or] their [First] Nation, if they are working on their cultural journey or connected to Elders or community leaders. It would be really great to be able to keep those kids a lot closer to home.”
The contract covers care for those aged zero to 17 and 364 days.
Anyone interested in applying to provide a foster home can answer questions at the Closer to Home website, and a southern Alberta representative will connect with them.
“It’s an intensive process, obviously, [because] we’re caring for Alberta’s most vulnerable kids,” Hoogwerf says.
She adds part of the application process is a ‘Safe Home Assessment’, which Hoogwerf says is a “pretty rigorous interview to ensure people who are interested in fostering can become the appropriate supports and be celebratory of diverse kids and be able to walk somebody’s healing journey with them.”
Closer to Home offers support for foster parents on a 24/7, 365 days-a-year basis, in case they have any questions or concerns along the way.
BIG IMPACT
Hoogwerf says kids going into foster care generally come from a situation in which their biological family members cannot take care of them, or from a group-home setting and are ready to move into a less restrictive setting like a foster home.
Although it has happened before, Hoogwerf says the end goal of fostering is not adoption, but ultimately, to reunite foster kids with their bio-families.
Foster families are there to provide a safe space for kids – as well as their bio-families – on their respective healing journeys. Hoogwerf remarks foster parents can help create moments that inspire hope and opportunity, and which “allow them to be able to have a safe space and build connections and heal, as their families heal alongside them.”
“Sometimes, we know that just can’t happen simultaneously, so it builds an opportunity for kids to be able to see the world through a safe lens.”
She adds fostering is an opportunity to “change the trajectory” of not only a child’s life, but their families, as well. “This is a game-changer.”
Hoogwerf notes although the ideal scenario is for the child to be reunited with their bio-family, there have been many cases in which strong lifelong bonds are built between the foster child, their foster family and their bio-family.
“We have one young girl, who came to us at a young age and this foster family helped reunite her with her dad. She just did her bar exam and she [practices] family law now,” she says. “When she got entered into the bar, not only was her bio-family there, but her foster family was there to celebrate her as she went into the bar. She’s in her 20s, and she’s been at home since she was four.”
Hoogwerf says the team at Closer to Home and Alberta Children and Family Services is “such an exceptional group of people,” and the partnership is beneficial for so many.
She adds representatives will be at the Community Job and Resource Fair in Lethbridge on Wednesday, as well as a job fair in Coaldale on Thursday to answer any questions the community might have about fostering.
More information on Closer to Home is available at the non-profit’s website.
