The reality is…
More than 10,000 children and young people in New Zealand are unable to live with their biological parents because they have been subjected to, or are at risk of, abuse or neglect.
These children will spend days, weeks, months, or sometimes years, living in a foster family.
What they need
The best thing for these children is for their foster home to be a stable, loving environment – the worst thing is to be bounced from foster home to foster home.
But because of their experiences, children in foster care can have challenging behaviours – and being a foster parent to these kids can be tough. As well as helping to heal deep emotional scars, there are legal issues to deal with and financial pressures to overcome.
Why we’re here
Fostering Kids exists to support the foster families who open their homes and hearts to the children in their care. We do this by providing encouragement, support and education to fostering families, so that the placement has the best possible chance of working out.
I was truly ready to hand my foster son back as I just could not find the energy to fight anymore. The support of Fostering Kids gave me the energy and confidence to keep going. The results have been the best for all and we are still supporting our foster son and his family and loving every minute of it again.” – Foster parent March 2011
It’s because of my foster family, and because of people like Fostering Kids, and people like you, that I’ve been able to grow up the way I have, and I thank every one of you” - Fostered teenager Nov 2011
Why we need your support
Out of the estimated 6,000 foster families in New Zealand, Fostering Kids is currently only able to support a quarter of them.
We want to be able to grow our services and make them available to more foster parents – and in turn, help Kiwi kids in foster care recover their sense of self-worth and learn to trust adults again.
By supporting Fostering Kids, you’ll be helping support foster parents and ensuring a brighter future for some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable children.
You cannot change the world, but you can change a child’s world. Click here to help now
What we do
We provide practical, ongoing support including:
- specialised training programs and materials to foster parents in areas such as helping overcome arrival behaviour like stealing food to hoard, older-age bedwetting, violence and swearing
- training for new challenges as they emerge, such as morphine addicted babies, already-sexualised primary school children and developmental delays that can crop up years’s later due to a birth mother’s heavy drinking
- connecting new foster parents with others near them for mutual support
- motivating struggling teenagers in foster care through workshops with inspirational adults from fostered backgrounds
- advice on Child Youth and Family, court and legal issues. Some foster parents find these more of a challenge than the kids
- taking calls from and visiting foster parents facing challenging situations with their children or the Foster Care system.
If you watch no other video on this website,
watch this one…
It’s because of my foster family, and because of people like Fostering Kids, and people like you, that I’ve been able to grow up the way I have and I thank every one of you.”
