Download or read book Foster the Family written by Jamie C. Finn and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are great rewards that come along with being a foster parent, yet there are also great challenges that can leave you feeling depleted, alone, and discouraged. The many burdens of a foster parent's day--hurting children, struggling biological parents, and a broken system--are only compounded by the many burdens of a foster parent's heart--confusion, anxiety, heartache, anger, and fear. With the compassion and insight of a fellow foster parent, Jamie C. Finn helps you see your struggles through the lens of the gospel, bringing biblical truths to bear on your unique everyday realities. In these short, easy-to-read chapters, you'll find honest, personal stories and practical lessons that provide encouragement and direction from God's Word as you walk the journey of foster parenting.

Download or read book It s Okay to Wonder written by Rhonda Wagner and published by Joy of Avery. This book was released on 2019-08-03 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I'm excited to be a sister in our foster family, but I'm worried about new rules. I feel happy and sad at the same time. What about when our help isn't needed anymore?" It's Okay to Wonder is a story about Avery, a loquacious girl whose parents have decided to become foster parents. While Mom and Dad attend another foster training class, Avery shares with her Nana and Pop about her mixed-up feelings. She and her grandparents learn together what it might be like to become a foster family--that it's okay to feel two emotions at the same time and that it's okay to wonder! The Joy of Avery series offers resources for foster care families and brings the world of foster care to life by exploring Avery's feelings as her family welcomes foster children into their home. It's Okay to Wonder is the first book in the series.

Download or read book From Foster to Fabulous written by Helen Ramaglia and published by Inspiring Voices. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a former foster child, I know how it feels to be alone, to feel lost, to feel hopeless, and to feel helpless. I also know you can make a difference in the life of a foster child. Ive been there. While my story is not unique, I want to share it in order to help the caring people of America walk in the shoes of a child who experiences physical, mental, and emotional abuse; is removed from everything she knows; is provided a roof over her head by the State and strangers; and then is thrust into adulthood totally unprepared but later succeeds. I want them to see, touch, and feel what the abused/foster child suffers and why they are who they are. I want them to see the major gaps in the childs life skills and social abilities and why they exist. We must walk in the childs shoes in order to understand them. Only then will we be able to truly fill the enormous amount of needs they have and feel confident in adopting, fostering, and working with foster children. We must fully understand the heart and life of a foster child before we can effectively foster, adopt, or work with this vulnerable population of extraordinary children. I invite you to walk with me, and learn how it truly feels to grow up as nobodys child. A little girl destined to failure, confined by abuse, and traumatized by foster care is inspired by faith to succeed.

Download or read book Surviving The System The Life of A Foster Child A Guide To Emotional Healing written by SHAMEKA R. POINTER and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-07-20 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surviving The System: The Life of a Foster Child, An Emotional Healing Guide written to help foster kids overcome their experiences being in foster care system. It's also an extensive self examining of letting go of the past and striving to be healed emotionally in order to be successful in the future

Download or read book Unlimited Love written by Rosemary Farris and published by Covenant Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2022-08-05 with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the inspiring story of how one mother and her family had a positive impact on more than four hundred children over their twenty-five years of fostering. Learn about their passion and how they welcomed hurt, scared, and troubled children into their home at all hours of the day and night and cared for them like they were their own. From newborn babies, to toddlers, to brothers, and sisters and teens, they touched the lives of so many with their love and devotion. What a marvelous story. It is a reminder that there are still good people out there doing their part to help others. aEUR"Bob Morse, writer and editor I still consider you my parents because you were the first ones to truly love and care for me when I needed it most. aEUR"Paul, former foster child I have never met anyone that can match Rosie's love and compassion for her kids and Kenny's support and devotion to Rosie. aEUR"Steve Brazzell, family friend

Download or read book The Life Of A Foster Child written by Dana Blackie and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-26 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children and teens enter foster care through no fault of their own, because they have been abused, neglected, or abandoned and are unable to continue living safely with their families. This short book is just one of many books to come detailing my experiences of the care system. The personal journey detailed within the book has been provided to create deeper thought into some of the experiences looked after children are faced with. There are opportunities to consider one's own thoughts and feelings in regard to particular areas throughout the book.

Download or read book Life As A Foster Child written by Jeff Gooding and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The young boy and his siblings were ripped from their father’s care and placed in a “prisonlike” campus, a state-run children’s home. Soon enough they passed him off to a foster home. In a matter of a few years’ time, the young boy had endured every type of abuse that he could imagine. Sexual, physical, and mental anguish engulfed his life. Every day became a strain to endure. Eventually, the boy became mature enough to figure a way out of his situation, and he was successful at escaping his tormentors. However, there were demons lurking in the shadows of the young man’s mind, demons that he didn’t even realize grew inside his head. Let’s take a journey through this screwed-up, young, impressionable individual’s life as he endures impossible treatment from people that he was told “love” him. Let’s watch as he matures into a young man. Let’s see how he copes with all the problems associated with the abuses that he endured a few years earlier. Finally, let’s see if you can figure out how the greatest abuse he never dreamed would happen set the young teenager on the track to eventually being able to tell the world the story that everyone needs to know can and does happen to very young, innocent, and defenseless children.

Download or read book To the End of June written by Cris Beam and published by HMH. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book that “casts a searing eye on the labyrinth that is the American foster care system” (NPR’s On Point). Who are the children of foster care? What, as a country, do we owe them? Cris Beam, a foster mother herself, spent five years immersed in the world of foster care looking into these questions and tracing firsthand stories. The result is To the End of June, an unforgettable portrait that takes us deep inside the lives of foster children in their search for a stable, loving family. Beam shows us the intricacies of growing up in the system—the back-and-forth with agencies, the rootless shuffling between homes, the emotionally charged tug between foster and birth parents, the terrifying push out of foster care and into adulthood. Humanizing and challenging a broken system, To the End of June offers a tribute to resiliency and hope for real change. “A triumph of narrative reporting and storytelling.” —The New York Times “[A] powerful . . . and refreshing read.” —Chicago Tribune “A sharp critique of foster-care policies and a searching exploration of the meaning of family.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Heart-rending and tentatively hopeful.” —Salon

Download or read book My Full Life Circle Squared written by Richard Oden and published by Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a very unique story. I grew up in the foster care system in the state of Alabama until being adopted at age twelve. Eighteen years later my life came full circle as my wife and I officially became foster parents to three beautiful children. While they were in our care, I got deployed to Afghanistan with the air force, and my wife had our firstborn biological child while I was overseas! On January 29, 2016, twenty-two years after I got adopted out of foster care, my life came full circle again as my wife and I adopted those three children out of foster care! While deployed, I wrote most of my book, My Full Life Circle Squared, which came out on Veterans Day, November 11, which was also National Adoption Month. It is a foster care/adoption story, but it is also a military story as well. Some of the real and significant sacrifices of our military members do, indeed, endure. This is a very inspirational story blessed by God! I have many life experiences that so many people can relate to. I talk about sleeping in the back of cars, not having my father in my life, getting married to my middle-school sweetheart, us having three miscarriages, being in foster care, getting adopted, being a foster parent, being an adoptive parent, money, and much more! I hope my story paints the picture of the providence of God and his will in my life and how he put me in foster care so that one day I could, indeed, inspire, encourage, motivate, and minister to others! I encourage others to help fatherless children by considering fostering/adoption and encourage our military as well! I will be donating a portion of all proceeds to foster/adoption and military charities!

Download or read book Steps in My Shoes written by Ron Deming and published by . This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steps in My Shoes is a true story about a foster child's journey through the foster care system and beyond. The book shows how four foster homes, two adoptive homes, five facilities, reactive attachment disorder (RAD), and sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) impacted the author's life.

Download or read book A Forever Family written by Rob Scheer and published by Gallery/Jeter Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of The Promise of a Pencil and Kisses from Katie comes an inspirational memoir by the founder of Comfort Cases about his turbulent childhood in the foster care system and the countless obstacles and discrimination he endured in adopting his four children. Rob Scheer never thought that he would be living the life he is now. He’s happily married to his partner and love of his life, he’s the father of four beautiful children, and he’s the founder of an organization that makes life better for thousands of children in the foster care system. But life wasn’t always like this. Growing up in an abusive household before his placement in foster care, Rob had all the odds stacked against him. Kicked out of his foster family’s home within weeks after turning eighteen—with a year left of high school to go—he had to resort to sleeping in his car and in public bathrooms. He suffered from drug addiction and battled with depression, never knowing when his next meal would be or where he would sleep at night. But by true perseverance, he was able to find his own path and achieve his wildest dreams. “A heartwarming, hopeful memoir brimming with humanitarianism and compassion” (Kirkus Reviews), Rob’s story provides a glimpse into what it’s like to grow up in the foster care system, and sheds necessary light on the children who are often treated without dignity. Both a timely call to action and a courageous and candid account of life in the foster care system, A Forever Family ultimately leaves you with one message: one person can make a difference.

Download or read book In the Care of Strangers written by D. Alexander Holiday and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-04-28 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In three previous books, through a selection of prose poems, the author shared bits and pieces of a life, one comprised of complete abandonment by a mother and the disconnected roles played by extended family members, a life that eventually led to being placed in foster care. Now, for the first time, with In the Care of Strangers, he tells the entire story of what such a life was actually like. In this five-part memoir, dependent on the seven deadly sins, the author tries to reconstruct a painful journey of coming of age under the literal care of strangers and the individuals that made up the foster homes and hospitals that would help to shape a young man’s life, certainly a difficult life, riddled with abuse from the start (Malice) and ending with greed and envy in a fourth and final home. He finds and develops pride in himself while recuperating from a paralysis. How this young man attempts to survive the experiences of foster care while also having to contend with a disability, and still managing to try to simply achieve graduation from high school, with a goal toward college, is a testament to a human spirit beyond measure. This riveting story, told through an innocent, almost childlike voice of a boy shocked into care, then as an older man who has come to terms with his situation (The Unclaimed), and finally through the poetry, should be taken as an inspiration for many.

Download or read book The Foster Child s Journey Into My Home written by Ella Mentry and published by . This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book I write about the life that I experience, through the eyes of foster children, while they lived in my home with my family and me. I want to let the world know that it is important for us to help raise, not only our children, but children whose parent or parents are unable to do so. Yes, "it takes a village to raise a child"! These foster children enter the foster care system, some as young as newborn, and sometimes they linger or get lost in the system. They either float from home-to-home, are adopted by an adoptive foster parent(s) or the foster parent who is caring for them. Very few children return to their families, for many different reasons. I want to enlighten people, by helping them understand that these precious foster children deserve a home, they deserve to feel wanted, loved and told that they are special. As a former foster parent, I learned that there was a misconception about foster children. Some people thought that all foster children were born drug-addicted and/or were sickly. Not so! Foster children are up-to-date with their immunizations, they go for physicals each time that are placed in a foster home and upon leaving the foster home. I also want to share some of my experiences which I had with foster children...some of the things they did and some of the things they have said. We must remember that children are quite resilient, therefore, even foster children thrive in uncomfortable circumstances. Please read what I have written because I would like for everyone to try and understand what it must be like to be a child, be removed from your home and placed inside of a home with total strangers. Please take a minute and try to imagine yourself in their shoes...how scary it must feel like to them. How, even babies who are used to their mother's scent, end up in a stranger's arms. This stranger has a totally different scent that the baby's mother, so imagine how irritable this baby can become because he or she no longer smell

Download or read book A Look into the Life of a Foster Kid written by Dejuan D. James and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2019-07-18 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a depiction of the traumatic experiences, dark moments, eye-opening situations, and a tale that relates to a lot of foster kids and foster parents! This is a story that helps you see and understand the background and history of Dejuan D. James and others who have entered the world of the living with new people on a daily basis who are not related to them. This is based on a true story! However, most names have been changed to hide identities. Another interesting fact of this book is that it was written entirely from the confines of an iPhone 7 in the Pages application!

Download or read book Kids Need to Be Safe written by Julie Nelson and published by Free Spirit Publishing. This book was released on 2005-12-15 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Kids are important… They need safe places to live, and safe places to play.” For some kids, this means living with foster parents. In simple words and full-color illustrations, this book explains why some kids move to foster homes, what foster parents do, and ways kids might feel during foster care. Children often believe that they are in foster care because they are “bad.” This book makes it clear that the troubles in their lives are not their fault; the message throughout is one of hope and support. Includes resources and information for parents, foster parents, social workers, counselors, and teachers.

Download or read book Love and Mayhem written by John DeGarmo and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people say being a parent is the toughest job there is. John DeGarmo, foster and adoptive parent, tells us just how tough it can be, having parented over 40 children. At times he and his wife, Kelly, have cared for up to nine children at a time, many with severe trauma and learning difficulties. Love and Mayhem is an honest and open account of the struggles, sadness and joy that comes with the job of being a parent to a traumatised child. From the sleepless nights with babies withdrawing from drug-addiction, to the heartbreak when a child moves on to another home, and the loving chaos that comes with a large and blended family, John DeGarmo fights for the many children who have come through his home. Ideal for foster families, general readers, fostering agencies and social workers who are looking for a true to life memoir of what it really is to be a foster parent.

Download or read book Separated in America written by A. Do-Bee and published by Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2020-04-15 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a child I was never afraid to die but, I was afraid to live. In America, there are thousands and thousands of foster children. Most have a happy place to call home. There are a percent who live in a home of abuse of all forms. I am writing my autobiography to bring attention to those who are abused and have no way out. I lived in six different foster homes and two group homes, and in three of the foster homes, I was abused, beaten, raped, and used as a sex toy, and I was raped in one group home. I promised myself no matter what that I would make it. I would be someone making the right choices in life because, after all, it was God who gave me this life, and I know He watched over me. He sent people when I needed them most. We foster children are separated from our parents through no fault of our own. Our parents can be drug addicts, criminals, may just not have the means to provide, or they abuse the child. I watch the news and see the children taken from their parents as the police put Mom and Dad in the police car and CYFS, Children Youth and Family services, load the children in a car, and off we go to God knows where. Most people watching the same news station say, "Thank God the children are safe." Are they? Do you understand what happens next to the American foster child? Once the news story is over, you forget all about those children, but their hell is just beginning. We are plunged into a world where we have no control, into strangers' homes or into group homes with kids just like us or kids who take advantage of us. It is one scary place to be, and you have no clue what happened to your parents or if they are coming to get you or you are now just a name on paper and forgotten about. This country needs to take care of their own children. It is on the parents, and their choices dictate their children's lives. I grew up in foster care from age seven to nineteen. I made my choices. I graduated high school at nineteen and went to college and then to tech school to become an auto mechanic, I worked two part-time jobs and a full-time job and paid back all of my school loans on my own and made it in life. I write my childhood down in hopes of just one foster child to read, and I pray it has an effect on them to strive to become a productive person and make it. In the end, I got the payoff I have always wanted""a person to love me for me, and I married her, and twenty-five years later, we are still soulmates and best friends. She is my life, and I am hers, and now, our child is our life. Thank you and God bless.