Foster or Adopt a Local Child
Like gifts, gatherings, and good tidings, family is central to the holiday season. But for some local youth, the holidays are a painful reminder of what they have lost.
While their classmates wish for clothes and electronics, many children, teens, and groups of siblings long for a loving family this holiday season. Too many kids have suffered abuse, neglect, and abandonment, and they need nurturing foster or adoptive parents. These young people have entered the foster care system through no fault of their own, but because they have experienced trauma, abuse, and neglect.
There is an urgent need for foster parents to care for youth in our community. Foster parents provide a loving, temporary refuge when kids need it most. They offer a safe place to heal until the children can safely reunite with their families or transition to another permanent living situation. Foster parents have the unique opportunity to make a difference for a lifetime in a short time.
Foster youth are reunited with their birth families whenever possible. But when this cannot be done safely, the court system terminates their biological parents’ rights, freeing the children for adoption. Adoption gives a child the priceless gifts of love, home, and forever family, with the same rights and privileges as biological children.
This holiday season, consider opening your heart and home to help a child or siblings in our community. Many foster and adoptive parents consider it a calling – a blessing for them as much as for the youth. They say the first life you change will be your own.
Visit KidsCentralInc.org today for more information on how to become a foster or adoptive parent. You can change a life for good in the New Year – and for many years to come!
Kids Central is the nonprofit lead agency that cares for abused, neglected, and abandoned children in Citrus, Hernando, Lake, Marion, and Sumter Counties.
