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Foster Care
Opening our hearts and homes
He just wanted someone who would keep their promises. Too many times adults in his life had said one thing and done another. He struggled to trust that anyone meant what they said or that he was worthy of someone’s love.”
PA Counties We Serve
With Foster Care
Needing a Loving Home
This is the reality for kids in foster care. Many times, their birth families cannot provide what they need at this moment in time due to no fault of the children.
Between 13,000 to 15,000 children are in foster care in Pennsylvania. All of these children desire and deserve to have a safe place to call home and family to depend on. Each year, approximately 1,100 children age out of the foster care system without a stable home environment to call their own. Many will not graduate from high school.
Will You Help?
Being a foster parent is a beautiful and difficult job. A job that will challenge you to see beyond the surface of trauma and neglect to see a child’s potential.
Becoming a foster parent is more than standing in the gap and providing a child or children with a safe, stable home for a time of family instability or longer. It is looking at the great number of children that need help and saying, “I can change that number, even if it is only one child.”
Working Together
Access Services’s foster care team works tirelessly to ensure that each of the children we serve are placed in loving, supportive homes where they can heal and grow to their full potential. We cannot do this without families who are willing to open their homes.
Our Foster Care program offers ongoing support and training to all of our foster families. We will assign you a Foster Care coordinator who will be there with you from the very beginning to walk with you from placement to reunification or adoption.
Healing Love
You will get attached. That’s okay. We want you to! Our kids need to experience healthy attachments in order to heal.
Building relationships and working closely with your child’s birth family will allow them to see that family has no limits. It will give you the opportunity for forever friendships and an extension of your family, even after reunification.
No matter if you invite kids into your home for short or long-term, you will make a difference in their lives for a lifetime!
To learn more, contact Access Services about our Foster Care program today!
Frequently Asked Questions
Am I qualified to be a foster parent?
We qualify our foster parents through an interview and home study process. Once approved, you will receive support from other team members and ongoing training to help you with your new foster parenting role.
Some basic qualifications include:
- Be at least 21 years of age.
- Obtain current child abuse, criminal history and FBI clearances.
- Supply three non-family member references.
- Be in good physical and mental health.
- Have a valid driver’s license and a fully-insured car.
- Have a home that is insured and meets safety standards.
- Earn an income sufficient enough to meet the current financial needs of the family.
- Be willing to obtain the required training.
Will I have any special training to help me be a foster parent?
Access Services offers trainings which are convenient and flexible to fit in with most any family’s busy schedule. Foster parents are required to take 24 hours of pre-service training their first year and 6 hours of ongoing annual training.
How long will a child stay in our home?
The length of stay for a child usually depends on the specifics of each child’s situation. Foster care is temporary in nature with a primary goal of reunification with the natural family or a similar permanent solution.
