Not every child will have a ‘wonderful time of year’
For many children, the Christmas season is “the most wonderful time of the year.” Many children are taking part in fun holiday traditions: Picking out the perfect Christmas tree, visiting Santa and spending time with family and friends.
But, for more than 5,000 Philadelphia kids in foster care, Christmas looks very different. What most of them want more than trees, Santa and parties is a family. They want a place where they feel they belong, a safe place where they can play, dream and grow.
In my work as the executive director of an organization that supports children and families with social services, I see kids like these every day. And it’s hard to celebrate this season with my own family without thinking of them and wondering if they know how much they matter.
Right now, more than 125,000 children across the United States are waiting for adoptive families. That is enough children to nearly fill Citizens Bank Park and Lincoln Financial Field combined. Children in foster care need families who will love them and provide them with stability. But every year, roughly 20,000 teens in foster care will “age out” without a family to call their own. Between today and the time your family wakes up on Christmas morning, nearly 800 youth will have to leave the foster care system alone.
Children who leave foster care without an adoptive family often face challenges like homelessness, poverty, incarceration and substance use disorder, continuing a vicious cycle of trauma in our city and around the country. As a community, we must step into these hard places. We must be proactive and find ways to prevent this cycle of trauma.
Even in this season of joy, many children enter foster care because their parents are experiencing difficult situations.
Sarah, an expectant mom, had to leave her kids with strangers so she could go to the hospital to deliver her baby. Moms like Sarah sometimes have their children taken into foster care simply because she doesn’t have family or a support system. Instead, she should have a trusted community of people who can wrap around her with support in times of need.
A dad struggling with addiction should know that he can achieve his sobriety in rehab while his children are safe and loved, without having to watch them go into foster care.
The Safe Families for Children program is a national movement for parents who are facing heartbreaking situations like these. It’s designed to keep families together, allowing parents to work through difficult situations, while host families temporarily care for their children anywhere from a few days to several months. During this time, parents stay highly involved in their kids’ lives.
Through Safe Families for Children, we are seeing families stay together and gain new support networks right in their community. When a child goes into foster care, they typically spend two years there. But children hosted through Safe Families typically return home in just 45 days. With foster care, only around 50 percent of children are reunified with their families. But with Safe Families, 93 percent of children are able to return home.
The Safe Families for Children program empowers parents to get back on their feet faster, keeps families together, and keeps children from enduring additional losses and trauma. We’ve seen this program work when the community rises to meet the needs of its most vulnerable. There are so many ways to get involved, whether it’s by hosting a child, supporting host families with meals, transportation, or babysitting, or by mentoring a child.
Consider making this holiday season the most wonderful time of the year for a family in need.