39 min
Gathering Episode 13: We can't fix everything, but we can fix dinner Gathering
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- Relationships
Join me, your host Michelle R Scully, in a poignant conversation about foster families with the beautiful, inside and out, Hope Forti. Hope's the Director of Families Together at The Tennyson Center for Children in Colorado. Hope grew up in Lake County and though love took her to Colorado, she still has strong ties and passion for foster children and families here. Shortly after the birth of their first son, Hope and her husband Kyle became foster parents themselves. Hope thought love would be enough but experienced firsthand the sense of overwhelm foster parents too often experience. We speak about the Neighbors Program which was developed at Hope's kitchen table 4 years ago, as they came up with a brilliantly simple idea - to invite non-foster families to come alongside foster families. That's where Neighbor's comes in. As a community, we can support foster families by the simplest and oldest show of love in the world; preparing a meal. Families Together's motto is "We can't fix everything, but we can fix dinner." At the time of our conversation, Hope had just found out that the Neighbors program had just matched their 300 family!
We don't often talk about the staggering numbers of children in foster care - 424,000 in foster care in the U.S.; 60,000 children in California alone. A child is placed in foster care 100 times a DAY. Nearly half of foster parents quit in the first year, citing lack of support as the reason. Historically many Lake County foster children were sent out of the county due to a lack of in-county foster families. That is changing slowly but surely due to the good work being done to provide support to our local foster families. We've got a call to action for you - you can help support our local foster families by becoming a Neighbors volunteer. Let's do this Lake County and fix some dinner. #lakecountystrong.
Join me, your host Michelle R Scully, in a poignant conversation about foster families with the beautiful, inside and out, Hope Forti. Hope's the Director of Families Together at The Tennyson Center for Children in Colorado. Hope grew up in Lake County and though love took her to Colorado, she still has strong ties and passion for foster children and families here. Shortly after the birth of their first son, Hope and her husband Kyle became foster parents themselves. Hope thought love would be enough but experienced firsthand the sense of overwhelm foster parents too often experience. We speak about the Neighbors Program which was developed at Hope's kitchen table 4 years ago, as they came up with a brilliantly simple idea - to invite non-foster families to come alongside foster families. That's where Neighbor's comes in. As a community, we can support foster families by the simplest and oldest show of love in the world; preparing a meal. Families Together's motto is "We can't fix everything, but we can fix dinner." At the time of our conversation, Hope had just found out that the Neighbors program had just matched their 300 family!
We don't often talk about the staggering numbers of children in foster care - 424,000 in foster care in the U.S.; 60,000 children in California alone. A child is placed in foster care 100 times a DAY. Nearly half of foster parents quit in the first year, citing lack of support as the reason. Historically many Lake County foster children were sent out of the county due to a lack of in-county foster families. That is changing slowly but surely due to the good work being done to provide support to our local foster families. We've got a call to action for you - you can help support our local foster families by becoming a Neighbors volunteer. Let's do this Lake County and fix some dinner. #lakecountystrong.
39 min