Children’s Bureau is in need of foster families

The Children’s Bureau, a nonprofit leader in the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect in Southern California, is in need of foster families for children in the Antelope Valley area.

The nonprofit is offering two virtual information orientations for individuals or couples to learn how to help children in foster care while they reunify with their birth families or how to provide legal permanency by adoption.

Because of the Coronavirus pandemic, the bureau has had to cancel all in-parson foster care-adoption resource parent information meetings.

“We haven’t stopped and we’re not going to because the need is always there,” said Bernadette Boylan, program manager for foster care and adoption at Children’s Bureau. “There’s children still being abused, still being neglected, and they need a family. That doesn’t stop.”

A live Zoom Orientation hosted by a Children’s Bu

reau team member and a foster parent is scheduled to take place from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Dec. 17 for those interested in learning to become a foster or foster-adoptive parent.

The current health crisis has accelerated the need for foster and foster-adoptive parents to help local at-risk youth stay in their communities.

In Los Angeles County alone, the foster care population exceeds 21,000 children with 200 of those foster children waiting for an adoptive family, according to the Children’s Bureau.

Many of these children are siblings in need of families who are willing and able to keep them together. There are at least 10 sibling sets turned away by the Children’s Bureau weekly due to the lack of families.

To R.S.V.P. for the live orientation, email rfrecruitment@all4kids.org. For those who would like to learn about the program at their own pace, an online orientation presentation can be made available to them.

For details or questions, residents can call 800-7303993.