The Bair Foundation Helps Foster Families Fit Together
By Meg Hale Brunton
There are over 120,000 children and teens in the foster care system today. It is the greatest goal of The Bair Foundation Child and Family Ministries to help these children find a sense of belonging and a loving home. A large portion of their efforts to build strong children, strong families and a strong community begins with finding and empowering strong foster parents.
Founded in Pennsylvania in 1967, The Bair Foundation is now in nine states across the country, and has three offices in North Carolina alone (Asheville, Raleigh, and Wilmington), each covering a 75 mile radius. Bair State Director, Dani Walker-Novi has been working with children and families in human services for ten years. While Bair is a national organization, Walker-Novi finds that it is still able to forge close relationships with the families it helps, and make connections on a local level all across the state. “I love that I have the opportunity to be a part of all areas of North Carolina services that have an impact on our families and children we serve,” she says. “I am blessed to be able to learn about different areas of the states and identify and support needs specific to individual communities.”
Intake Coordinator Toni Houlihan says that a big part of her role is recruiting foster parents. She attends a multitude of events, where she gets the opportunity to speak with the public about all of the foundation’s fostering options. “I love getting to know folks, going into their homes and seeing the possibilities. I love doing events and seeing these families, ready to open their heart and their home to a child in need,” she says. “Actually seeing these kids adopted. To me that’s the goal. I want to see them adopted and going to their forever home.”
Houlihan takes pride in the phenomenal support that the foundation’s staff provides to their foster care parents. They offer a free extensive six-week training program to ensure that the foster children are receiving the highest level of foster care. “We call our foster parents, ‘treatment parents.’ We teach them how to be professional parents,” she says of the graduates of their program. “We want to make sure everyone is safe and gets supported. Our goal is to help the kiddos with the most needs, and get them the treatment that they need.”
The program (called Intensive Alternative Family Treatment) trains its attendees in therapeutic foster care to help children with mental health issues, behavioral challenges, or who are medically fragile. “With being a Therapeutic Foster Care agency our families are provided with additional training to provide care in their home to children who may have extensive medical and behavioral health needs,” says Walker-Novi.
The foundation also helps coordinate Foster to Adopt options, so that foster parents can legally adopt the child they are caring for if the biological parent terminates their rights. There is also an option called ‘Share Parenting,’ in which the foster parent and biological parents stay in touch and discuss the wellbeing of the child under the foster parent’s care until the biological parent gets on their feet. Parents can also sign up to do respite care, to give full time foster parents (or foster children) a break. Other than round-the-clock support for their foster families from treatment coordinators, the foundation also hosts monthly support groups, as well as events where families can get to know each other.
Both Houlihan and Walker-Novi have spent years of their professional lives, working in the many roles of assisting families, from crisis units, to in-take at hospitals, to private agencies, to child protective services. “My personal and professional values align with The Bair Foundation mission of providing quality care and services dedicated to the treatment, restoration and empowerment of children, youth and families,” explains Walker-Novi. Houlihan concurs, adding that she is excited to be working on this side of the equation because she feels there will be more opportunities to make a positive difference in a child’s life.
Though often rewarding, Houlihan acknowledges that working in foster care is often emotionally draining and that one has to be able to rely on a strong team connection. “We all really support each other here. We try to laugh because you’ve got to have a sense of humor, and focus on the positives,” she says of the nine people on her team. She adds that, while hard, the reward for the work they do is overwhelming. “We really want the best outcome for the child. I can’t wait to see the families that I’m training adopt one day. It will make all the horrible stories worth it.”
While there are always children in need across the country, Houlihan states that the Covid-19 pandemic did increase the amount of kids in the foster care system, and that every NC county is currently struggling to find places for them. Houlihan regularly speaks about foster parenting to church groups, citing that if just one family from every church in the country took in a foster child, there would be no kids in the foster system. She clarifies that anyone, regardless of race, religion, background, ethnicity, marital status, or sexual preference, can qualify to become a foster parent. “We try to purposefully fit the kid with the parent. We want to make sure that child gets in the right home, that it’s a good fit for them and a good fit for the family because every disruption could cause more trauma to the child,” Houlihan says. “It only takes one caring adult.”
To learn more about The Bair Foundation Child & Family Ministries, or to sign up as a foster parent, visit their website: https://www.bair.org/
