MISSOULA - Montana, in general, has a large need for more foster parents and families and Youth Homes in Missoula is hoping to help fill that need.
Youth Homes is a non-profit organization that cares for children from traumatic backgrounds.
They do everything they can to make it easy for people to become foster parents, such as their six-week Fall 2023 Therapeutic Foster Care Training. The training session is meant for anyone who has an interest in fostering and would like to learn more.
The program begins on September 12, 2023, with a Zoom meeting running from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. The first session includes orientation and a foster parent panel.
The structure of the training is outlined for participants, and a group of past and current foster parents speaks about their experience — both the good and the bad. While hearing first-hand the experience of fostering a child with trauma, training participants get a realistic idea of what they’d be walking into.
The speakers also touch on the goals of a foster parent and what kind of parent-child relationship they should strive for. For Bianey Ambriz, family developer and services coordinator, it’s important for potential foster parents to know what they’d be signing up for.
“I think it’s important because we go over very specific details of what to expect, just for the kiddos, because it’s not always going to be a wonderful moment where you choose a child and they love you forever,” she says. “There’s going to be challenges and we want to be honest about that.”
There are two other Zoom sessions within the six-week training.
The next meeting after orientation will share a clinical perspective of foster care. The lead speakers will be professionals on childhood trauma and abuse and explain to participants what to know about the children in foster care.
The last Zoom session will lay out the legal proceedings and the next steps toward taking in a foster child. During this meeting, parents will learn about the therapy requirements through Dan Fox Family Care for their foster child. Each kid needs to attend a therapy session once a week.
In between the Zoom meetings, training participants are asked to complete five online courses, which each take about two hours, according to Ambriz. The training ends on Oct. 24.
If a family is still certain they want to foster, they will graduate from the training sessions and participate in several at-home interviews, where they’ll be asked about their own childhood and upbringing.
Ambriz knows the process can be a bit intrusive and extensive, but they want to ensure that each child is matched with an appropriate family unit.
The training is meant to both show the truth of foster care, but also show parents that Youth Homes is there to support them along the way.
"It's that duality of we want kids to know that they're cared for, and we also what parents to know that it's not going to be an easy journey, and we want to be able to give them that support to any capacity that we can, because kids need homes,” Ambriz says.
The training is for anyone who is interested in fostering, whether they’ve already spoken with Youth Homes or not. They license families in Missoula, Kalispell and Helena. Ambriz says the greatest need for foster parents is in Helena.
It’s completely free and is meant to be low-commitment, according to Bill Neaves the program director of Youth Homes’ Dan Fox Family Care.
“We kind of make our Foster Adoptive Training a no-pressure sort of situation,” he says. “It's to come in and start learning about what this entails. You're not signing a contract to become a foster parent. You're just willing to come in and learn about it and see if it's a good fit for you."
Both Ambriz and Neaves encourage anyone with a small interest in foster care to contact Youth Homes with more questions or attend the fall training session. To sign up for training, email bambriz@youthhomesmt.org or call 406-541-1663
“We’ve got a whole community of kids across Montana that need safe, loving homes to be in,” Neaves says. “We’ve got a shortage of foster families across the state, these are great kids that belong in a family, deserve a family as much as any other kid in Montana.”
