Develop a Foster/Adoptive Ministry That is Trauma-Informed
The Church has always been a powerful influence in families and relationships. But is your church actively engaged in supporting some of the most broken of families and relationships?
The 2 most critical needs for parents and children
More Foster Families
We need more foster families and people who support foster kids, families of origin, and foster/adoptive families. Church ministries can recruit new people to foster or be in a supporting role. This is desperately needed so that all children have a loving, healing home.
More People in Support Roles
About half of foster families stop fostering within the first year due to isolation and lack of support. This is detrimental to the children living with those families. Church ministries can help retain foster families by providing support and understanding how kids with trauma need a different kind of parenting.
The Church can be the solution to both!
Why partner with Fostering Hope?
Resources to Get You Started
Ministry Development Worksheet
Use this guide to set a game plan for your ministry for the year ahead.
5 Areas of Need in Foster Care
Where can your church help? Read about the 5 needs.
Ministry Advocate Role Description
Read the description and commitment needed for a church ministry advocate.
Foster Family Roster
Give this pdf to foster/adoptive families at your church so you can match them with support teams.
Schedule a Ministry Partnership Consult
We want to help you get started in building a trauma-informed foster and adoptive ministry in your church.
Start a Ministry FAQs
Because churches are a place of hope and healing and our children and families desperately need this. However, traditional approaches can actually further harm a child. We want our foster families to feel included in our church, not excluded nor judged because of their parenting strategies. Many trauma-informed parenting strategies and the latest brain science supports a church’s desire to build trusting relationships and increase compassion and grace. You may even find that trauma-education supports all areas of ministry!
We want to be respectful of church authority, so it’s important to have a conversation with your pastor understanding what obstacles are standing in the way. We would be happy to help you address any concerns. But even if your leadership is not fully on board, you don’t have to have a formal foster and adoption ministry to be ministering effectively to the foster and adoptive families in your church. Just gather a few people who are interested in supporting those families more intentionally. Present opportunities to your church’s leadership team as they become available. Sometimes seeing what is happening in other churches can help stoke the fires of your home church.
One way to do this is through studying compassion. FHA has Compassion presentations we would love to share with you so you can take it back to your church. As Jesus had compassion on us and stepped into our broken story, so that our eternal destiny would change, so we can have compassion on others and step into their broken story, too.
We need financial support, but because we work with a variety of church sizes and locations, we leave it up to the church to determine what they can give. We present opportunities throughout the year: whether it is a request for drinks for AFAH Conference, or babysitting costs for an evening training, or the funding of an entire program. There is a wide variety of opportunities to support Fostering Hope.
Respite care (babysitting), assistance to transport kids to bio family visits, and grace, grace, grace from their communities.