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Be Their Foundation For Life
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Hundreds of local children have suffered in ways that adults can hardly comprehend. While their friends and classmates are learning, growing, and enjoying their childhoods, these children have suffered trauma, abuse and neglect. They need guidance, they need love, they need family and, above all, they need safe, caring foster or adoptive homes.
A Window Of Opportunity
The most urgent need in our community is for compassionate individuals to become foster or adoptive parents for children and youth ages 9 to 15.
For children of all backgrounds, these critical years are the bedrock upon which their adult lives will be built. The behaviors, attitudes and choices of this period echo throughout an individual’s life. But for children in the child welfare system, these years are especially momentous. A loving foster or adoptive parent—someone like you—can help a child build a strong foundation for a happy, successful life. As one local foster parent put it, “We have a window of opportunity to have a positive impact on these children.”
Many foster and adoptive parents choose to open their homes to children ages 9 to 15 because there is a real opportunity to make a difference for a lifetime in a relatively short amount of time. A loving home during this vital time can mean the difference between a child continuing the cycle of abuse, neglect and poverty or transcending it. Whether providing a caring refuge as a foster parent or giving a child who has suffered a forever family through adoption, you can make a difference for generations to come.
Are You Called To Care?
Fostering or adopting a child in need is both challenging and rewarding. Most foster and adoptive parents in Central Florida say they are living out a conviction to care for these children. This calling stems from their most deeply held values, life experiences and spiritual beliefs. And it enables everyday people to become true heroes for local children and youth.
Please ask yourself if you are called to provide a home for a child in need and become their foundation for a better life. You don’t have to be wealthy or perfect to foster or adopt. You just have to open your heart and home.
To learn more about becoming a foster or adoptive parent, please call Paula Mealy of Kids Central, Inc. at (352) 387-3487 or visit KidsCentralFosterParents.org for more information. Kids Central, Inc. is the nonprofit lead agency charged with caring for abused, neglected and abandoned children in Citrus, Hernando, Lake, Marion and Sumter Counties.
