Foster Source

Imagine being taken from everything you know and placed in a stranger’s home. No matter the child’s age or life experiences, being removed from home and placed in foster care is traumatic. This only adds to the trauma the child already experienced due to abuse and neglect at home. It takes a committed and well-trained foster parent to help the child begin their healing journey. 

This funding will assist Foster Source in filling the overlooked gap of appropriate foster parent support. We provide trauma-informed education, basic needs and wish list items, and mental health support to foster parents. Unfortunately, this need is far greater than what our organization can provide. We need more financial support to expand our services so all foster parents can be equipped to spark healing in vulnerable children. 

We know when foster parents have support, they provide healthy and loving homes for children in foster care. Children in foster care deserve to have someone that can provide them with tools to regulate their distress while they await reunification with their biological parents.

Foster Source was created because too many children in foster care did not have parents adequately equipped to take care of them and their unique needs. Foster care agencies and human service departments have struggled with having enough foster parents to help children heal from trauma related to abuse, neglect, and being removed from their homes. Renee and Brian Bernhard founded Foster Source in 2016 because being foster parents themselves, they saw firsthand the dire lack of resources and services needed to sufficiently provide for foster children. They saw too many foster parents quitting after just one year because of this overlooked gap. The Bernhard's decided to take on this challenge and serve the ignored population in child welfare: foster parents. 

Foster Source exists to provide services to foster parents that create supportive homes for all foster children and increase retention. We currently have four programs that focus on education and support, meeting basic needs, virtual therapy, and advocacy for foster parents. Our goal is to continue to expand until all foster parents have access to these services.

The Problem: 12 children enter foster care every day in Colorado. Colorado has an extreme shortage of foster parents, and about 2/3 of current foster parents quit within the first 1-2 years due to feeling inadequately supported. 

At any given time there are over 430,000 children in foster care in America. Of those children, 80% have mental health needs. Even the best parent needs support and resources to parent a child in foster care. Our child welfare system under invests in foster care families by providing minimal financial support,  averaging about half the cost of what it takes to raise a child in America.

Foster Source programs:

1. Learning Source provides weekly parenting education and monthly support groups for foster parents, currently via a virtual platform. 

2. Therapeutic Services sponsors virtual therapy for foster parents through our partnership with Sondermind. We sponsor an equine-assisted parenting lab with our partner, Groundwork Ranch. 

3. Relief Services aims to decrease social stressors by providing basic needs and wish list items for foster families. 

 4. CHAMPS is part of a national campaign to ensure quality parenting for all children in foster care by promoting the foster parent voice as a vital component of the child welfare system.

Within child welfare, services and funding are only provided to the child and biological parents. Foster parents receive a small stipend for their role, yet this does not cover the financial and emotional price tag that comes with being a foster parent. Foster Source is uplifting children in foster care by supporting and nurturing the foster parents that are caring for them while the biological parents receive services and assistance from the department of human services. There are other agencies around the nation who provide education specifically for foster parents; however, Foster Source is one of the only (perhaps the only) agency that provides education for free. We are not aware of any agencies that are sponsoring mental health therapy for foster parents and have seen the profound benefits in providing this service. Foster parents now have a space to work through secondary trauma and receive individual support for the stress and behaviors specific to their home. This significantly impacts the foster parent’s ability to nurture the children in their care. Foster Source seeks regular and ongoing feedback from foster parents to ensure we are meeting their needs and supporting them in ways other agencies cannot.

Foster Source is impacting the lives of innocent children who have endured trauma and neglect which brought them into foster care. By having healthy foster parents that can tend to a child’s many needs, children can begin to heal their trauma and become healthy young adults. The services Foster Source provides to foster parents has a positive ripple effect onto children, the child welfare system, and the greater society. 

In the past, foster parents were seen as an incubator, providing a holding space before children return to their biological parents or are adopted. Now, the culture has shifted. There is now an expectation for foster parents to aid foster children in healing their trauma. To properly facilitate this process, we need to teach parents how to appropriately walk children through the healing process, without causing more harm. When foster parents foster better, children heal sooner. When children heal sooner, they break the cycle of foster care and generational trauma.