The Wendy's Company’s Post

This coming Saturday is #NationalAdoptionDay, but kids who are older or have special needs face more difficulty in finding adoptive parents. More than 113,000 children in foster care are eligible for adoption, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) - about 4,000 of them are in Maryland. And more than half entered the foster care system because of neglect. Saara McEachnie, director of domestic adoption programs at the Barker Adoption Foundation, runs the "Project Wait No Longer" program - focused on finding adoptive homes for older children, groups of siblings and those with other special needs. She said teens are the most vulnerable. "Families that are seeking to adopt are most often feeling most comfortable, and most equipped or prepared, to be able to adopt a younger child," said McEachnie. "So, that leaves fewer options for our older kiddos that are very much in need of family, and we have few families that are stepping forward." McEachnie explained that children sometimes struggle with attachment or bonding after being removed from their birth family and placed with strangers. She said it's important to educate people who want to become adoptive parents, to better prepare them to adopt older kids. McEachnie said potential adoptive families can learn to make their homes what she calls "more attachment friendly." That includes understanding the attachment difficulties that may come from a child's complex trauma. She said it helps to create networks of fellow adoptive families in order to build a like-minded community for the child. "Building an attachment-friendly home first has to come from a place of understanding, empathy, flexibility," said McEachnie, "willingness to seek and access resources, willingness to continue to understand the population." National Adoption Day was first launched in 1999 by a coalition of national groups, including the Children's Action Network and Alliance for Children's Rights.

It's Give to the Max Day! On Minnesota's biggest giving holiday, we ask you to consider a gift to Ampersand Families. At Ampersand Families, we're working upstream and downstream to get kids out of foster care and into safe, loving, permanent families. More than 11,000 kids experience out-of-home placement each year in Minnesota. Most will be able to return home when their parents get the help they need. But some kids will linger in foster care for years. Some will age out of foster care with no legal family or permanent support system. Many of these precious young people will end up unsheltered, incarcerated, experience poverty and poor mental health, and face many other challenges. Ampersand Families was formed to keep kids from aging out of foster care and entering adulthood alone and unsupported. Over the years, our work has expanded to embrace more preventive, upstream work - keeping kids connected to relatives and kin as soon as they enter the child welfare system, which research shows leads to better outcomes for kids in care. Our vision is that every young person whose life has been impacted by trauma and subsequent child welfare intervention will be restored to a safe, permanent family - with an urgency that honors the brevity of childhood. It takes resources to do this work. With your support, we can help more kids impacted by the child welfare system maintain or rebuild connections to family, stability, and permanency. Thank you for considering a gift! https://lnkd.in/g8c9amum

FOSTER CARE ADOPTION- WE NEED YOU! I too think about the 20,000 children who age out of the foster care system annually and enter adulthood more likely to struggle making a living, fall into substance abuse, and turn to crime to survive. Call HOAA to learn more about foster care adoption and how you can help. #HOAA https://lnkd.in/eWcGjGT8

Embracing futures, one home at a time. Today we celebrate and recognize the efforts made by foster parents in the U.S. How can you help this #nationalfostercare day? 👩👧Share information about fostering. Foster care isn’t for everyone, but people who may be considering fostering a child might be hesitating because of a lack of information. Spread the word among your friends and family about the foster care system and how they can be a part of it. 👨👩👧 Support a foster parent. Work with your community leaders to help foster parents in your neighborhood. Offer to pitch in with food, babysitting, or other services. Every little bit helps. 👨👩👧👧 Consider becoming a foster parent. Foster parents provide incredible support to our childcare system, and it can be incredibly rewarding. So, if you have the time, means, and inclination, consider signing up to be a foster parent. #ncit #fosterparentsrock #mayallbabiesthrive

Today is #CareDay 2024! Today is dedicated to the worlds biggest celebration of children and young people with care experience, led by the fantastic people at Become. A little story time ---- Being in the care system 7-18, I tried so hard at school to not let anyone know I was in foster care. Everywhere I looked people had mums and dads and nice homes and lived with their siblings, and I didn't have that. I was so determined to keep it private and not tell anyone that I was a child in foster care but it started to become difficult and get on top of me as I moved families 5 times in 11 years. 5 families in 11 years. 5 different ‘mums and dads’. It was difficult to keep on top of those lies at parents evenings and school events became insufferable through fear of being found out. It got so suffocating that eventually I told a couple of friends and explained where I was from, and that I was living in foster care. I will never get over the surprise of their reactions. And to this day, the reactions of people that say to me even now 'I had no idea', 'You would never know'. I know people mean this as flattery, I know there is no harm meant by that. I think it used to even flatter me? That makes me embarassed now. Because I always wonder, what does a child in care look like to you? What does that really mean? I know what the stigmas are, I know what people are really thinking. It's because I haven't been to prison or I have been successful in my career. But why are care experienced children categorised like that when they have just as much potential as any other child? ---- I feel sad for the younger me that I felt ashamed and like I had to lie to blend in. The truth is, I'm only just learning to feel comfortable with it, the last two years. I'm learning to say it to my colleagues, my peers, my board members. But it felt like a shameful term. A dirty secret. I wish I could go back and tell the younger me that I have nothing to be ashamed of. That no one chooses to be born, or the family or life they’re born into. I would give younger me the biggest hug, and make me repeat the words as confidently as I say them today. Some of you may know me as COO or maybe as a Brit school brat that was in the same class with Tom Holland (more on that another time) but to: > my nieces and nephews > the younger generation looking up to me I want to be known as a proud #careexperienced young woman that has gone on to achieve great things, and one that will no longer be ashamed of her experiences. ---- Thank you to Become for encouraging me to tell my story on this #CareDay.

More than half of the children who end up in foster care are there because of neglect, not abuse. Their parents simply could not make ends meet. Whether due to job loss, serious illness, disability or substance use, they became unable to provide a stable home, adequate food and safe childcare. Sadly, more serious abuse can occur when, out of desperation, they turn to a neighbor, relative or partner for help. NCEF beneficiary Better Together program, Better Families, offers a proactive approach which builds effective, lasting support systems for families. By partnering with Better Together, parents can halt the slide into more serious issues, including abuse, court involvement and custody loss. They give parents the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty and stabilize their families—whether that means helping them work through challenges, connecting them to employers or providing a loving home to shelter their children while they focus full-time on achieving their goals.  Because of this approach 100% of the families are reunified and 98% of them stay together and out of the foster care system. 

Great training opportunity! [Spring Summit] My Story, My Way: The Therapeutic Lifebook REGISTER ONLINE Wednesday, Mar 13th 2024, 09:00 AM - 10:30 AM (Central Time) Have you ever wanted to put the pieces of your life together? Not just to look where you have come from but to help yourself move forward? What about helping a child you care about put those pieces together? Lifebooks can help children who have been in foster care and those who have experienced adoption. Lifebooks can help them integrate information about their past, present, and future in a useful and therapeutic way. Lifebooks are a tool to gather and process by talking about the child's information, answering their questions, and supporting the child in telling their story using their own words. In this workshop, we will take a closer look at Lifebooks, what they are (and are not), how and when they can be used, and helpful tips to get started. https://lnkd.in/gpAgG2-U

In 2023, we grew our Partners in Permanency program to change the way foster parents, birth parents, and their communities experience foster care. Partners in Permanency is designed to encourage healthy, ongoing relationships between foster families and birth families as children move toward permanency, providing support to birth families who are trying to keep their children with them. Over 90% of the Partners in Permanency parents we work with are single mothers who have these barriers in common: -Access to affordable housing -Reliable transportation  -Safe childcare options -A network of support Our program is designed to give these parents the tools and resources needed to overcome their barriers. Last year, we had the opportunity to wrap around 80 families during their reunification process as well as 51 single mothers working with CPS to keep their families together and prevent their children from being placed in substitute care. Partners in Permanency is the only program of its kind that provides holistic, ongoing wraparound support to these families fighting to break generational cycles of adversity. One-on-one guidance from our team helps families navigate much-needed resources through our available Family Grants and network of volunteers and church partners. Through this holistic, relational approach, birth families are connected with their own supportive village, so they can break cycles of generational adversity and ultimately change the trajectory for their whole family. One family at a time, we are moving the needle closer to our vision of a safe and stable family for every child and a world where foster care is no longer needed. https://lnkd.in/gmvsidy2

"We don't belong here." This is what my husband said to me after our first foster parent information meeting back in 2006. Like me, he was shocked by what he heard from the people in the room - more questions about payments & money than about the kids themselves. We felt like outsiders but we stayed. And I am so glad we did. Not only did that experience lead us to fostering many amazing kids, but it was also a catalyst for starting One Simple Wish - an online platform that shares the stories & wishes of kids and adults impacted by foster care, abuse and crisis all over the US. Since we launched it in 2008, we have helped over 300,000 individuals and we've done it authentically, compassionately and with immense integrity. But despite all the good we have done for kids and families nationwide, 16 years in, I still feel like an outsider. I don't tell people what they want to hear and I don't push narratives I don't believe in. I never have - even as a kid. I have always spoken up when something felt wrong or didn't make sense and, just like when I was younger, sometimes that means you don't get to play in certain sandboxes. Right now, that sandbox is The White House. Yesterday, they convened a group of communty members, providers, advocates, policy makers and politicans to discuss the transformation of the child welfare system. I listened to all four hours, alternating between feelings of excitment and hope and then frustration and even anger. Why weren't we in that room? I am connected here on LinkedIn to dozens of people who were. They are aware of the very effective, very important work that we do. They are aware that it works and we don't ever ask them for a dime to fund it. So, I'm torn. Do we keep going down the path that we have since we began in 2008 and focus our efforts on bringing the general public into this issue or do we start to make some more noise in the big house - the place where hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent, and sometimes misspent. Or do we do both? The bottom line is this: our nation's child welfare system is YOUR business. Your tax dollars are paying for it. You deserve to know if it's working and how it's helping and sometimes hurting kids and families. We need more of the public in these rooms and in these conversations - not just foundations, lobbyists and policy makers and certainly not just the same handful of advocates who keep getting the mic. I encourage you to ask questions here and to share this post. Remember, you are paying for this system. You should know how it's being run and who is running it. PS: If you're not familiar with One Simple Wish, please visit onesimplewish.org or email [email protected]. You can also watch this story from 2012 from NBC News, one of my favs & one that helped grant the wishes of 1000s of kids: https://lnkd.in/gtEsWKxB

TITLE: Raising Other People's Children: What Foster Parenting Taught Me About Bringing Together A Blended Family AUTHOR: Debbie Ausburn, Speaker & Author GENRE: Nonfiction, Parenting and Relationships FROM AMAZON: Raising Other People's Children helps you navigate the complicated world of foster and step-parenting with better awareness and greater empathy, providing real-life solutions for forging strong relationships in extraordinary circumstances. Drawing on Debbie Ausburn’s decades of experience with every facet of the foster care system, Raising Other People's Children provides expert guidance viewed through the lens of real human interactions. The responsibility and complexity involved in raising someone else’s child can seem overwhelming. Regardless of whether you’re a stepparent, foster parent or adoptive parent, it is on you to take on the challenge of caring for them, helping them to move forward while also meeting their unique emotional needs. If interested, you can order a copy of Raising Other People's Children: What Foster Parenting Taught Me About Bringing Together A Blended Family at https://lnkd.in/ebMMnFRU. This book is part of the ongoing Connect Our Kids' Uncurated List of Foster Care Books series, where we bring awareness to books featuring foster care. If you’ve read it, let us know below! If you have a foster care book suggestion, please comment or send it to [email protected]. Thanks! Support our mission by clicking the link https://lnkd.in/giYhTX_A. #ConnectOurKidsUncuratedList #ConnectOurKidsFosterCareBooksAwareness #ConnectOurKidsRaisingVoices #FosterCare #BlendedFamily #FosterParenting #DebbieAusburn