Lutheran Services Carolinas Adds Foster Care to their Repertoire
By Meg Hale Brunton
Lutheran Services Carolinas (LSC) is known throughout WNC for the devoted services it provides for senior citizens. Recently, they received a grant that enabled them to expand their services to include transitional foster care for children, ages 0-21, as they transition into early adulthood. In addition to finding homes for children, the program helps foster kids with life challenges such as continued education, insurance, job hunts, and unemployment. “There is such a need. There’s tons of kids, but not enough homes,” Regional Manager Jennifer Armellini says of Buncombe County in particular, citing that there are twice as many kids in the county foster system than there are beds for them. “It just takes someone opening their heart, and realizing, ‘I can truly make a difference in this child’s life.’”
Though LSC’s main North Carolina office is in Salisbury, they have locations throughout the state, with Armellini being located in Buncombe County. Armellini took on the role of regional manager in April 2023, after the new transitional foster care department was formed at LSC earlier that year. Having worked within the foster care system, or with victims of domestic abuse since she was eighteen years old, Armellini was eager to join the LSC team. “I want to feel that I really have my hands on something- to make something that matters,” she says of her work. “I always preferred working with a private agency because of that special care. Really, it’s communication, the response time, really providing that individual attention- that’s what I like to provide my potential foster parents.”
Though she says it is gaining momentum, the LSC transitional foster care department is only in its infancy and Armellini says that her role must be part manager and part case worker for her clients. “I’m the one they’re going to be reaching out to. If they need something after their licensure, I’m the one they’re gonna call. If they’re having issues and don’t know what to do, I’m gonna really provide that support,” she explains, specifying that she is always at the other end of the line to help her foster parents. She is also quick to dispute the horror story myths of foster parenting- that a foster child will ruin the foster parents’ lives and there will be no one to return their calls for help. “At LSC that customer service piece is there. It’s really that extra layer that we provide to families, that personal piece that I think is extremely important. We care and we have these wraparound services to support you. You’re not on your own.”
Thus far, the staff of the foster care team for Buncombe County is made up of Armellini and Regional Family Recruiter Whitney Burton. Armellini feels that she and Burton make a terrific team, with a common goal of finding good potential foster families and getting them the training they need to be successful with their foster child. Whether they parent a foster child for three days, or three years, Armellini and Burton want to equip their foster parents with the tools they need through their educational program curriculum, Collaborative Problem Solving. This pre-service course, coupled with Armellini’s full-time support, helps those foster parents feel confident in their parenting skills. “It really trains parents at the therapeutic level, that really makes them more equipped to parent these kids,” she says of the program. “I let them know how important this is and really how they are gonna impact the child’s life, because that’s the truth.”
While eager to find new foster parents, Armellini says she never fails to give them a clear picture of what they’re in for. “I believe in being extremely transparent; I ask the same of my foster families,” she says. “We don’t want people signing up for a program and being misinformed. I try to answer questions as well as I possibly can.” She goes on to say that, for her, a person’s reason for becoming a foster parent tells her a lot about the sort of parent they will be. Many times, she finds that adults who grew up in the foster care system will become foster parents themselves, since they know how crucial a good foster parent can be in a child’s development.
LSC is looking for quality foster parents of all backgrounds, denominations, and marital statuses. “A lot of these kids, they don’t have permanency; they don’t have a place to call home,” she says. “If you’re gonna provide a safe home for this child, that goes beyond measure.” The department is hoping to grow to a point where they have foster families in all towns in the area. Armellini says that, as destabilizing as it is for a child to be taken away from a parent, it can be even more traumatizing for the child to have to change schools, and to move away from friends and extended family members. In the long-run, they are hoping their services will give these children a sense of security and prevent them from becoming homeless, or incarcerated.
While she acknowledges that no child in the foster system is without a history of trauma, Armellini takes comfort in the knowledge that children have the capacity to pull through it if they have help. “Children are very resilient. They can bounce back if they have what they need. If we [could] tap into them and show them their self-worth, we wouldn’t have the problems we have today. Our kids would be happy- I would be very happy,” she says, adding how rewarding it is to get to be part of the process of helping children heal. “I like to see the light versus the darkness, and I see that in our kiddos. You gotta see that hope.”
Armellini and Burton invite anyone who is interested in becoming a foster parent to reach out to them directly. If you’re interested in having a conversation about what it means to become a foster parent, contact them at jarmellini@lscarolinas.net, or (352)270-1530, or wburton@lscarolinas.net, or (828)283-0126.
