About Fostering Families TODAY

Our Vision

FOSTERING FAMILIES TODAY IS... a magazine about you---the parents, children and dedicated professionals in the child welfare system providing foster care and domestic adoption to children. Foster care is often the subject of sensationalized media attention. What is working is easily buried by headlines of what is not. Fostering Families TODAY is a bimonthly magazine where both sides of an issue are explored and debated and questions are raised and discussed on matters that contribute to the nurturing and well-being of the children entrusted to your care. An important contribution to the magazine are your own stories---of excitement, frustration, hope, sadness, joy---which serve to illustrate on a personal level the larger issues that characterize a system that is often slow to respond and under fire. Contact the Editor at louis@adoptinfo.net for more information. We dedicate Fostering Families TODAY to those children who wait for forever families--whether reunited or redefined. Letter From The Editor FROM WHERE I SIT Cynthia Peck, Founding Editor Fostering Families TODAY is committed to the issues that directly impact foster and adoptive families and the children in their care. We have gathered an impressive Advisory Board of parents, advocates and professionals from all areas of child welfare system to guide us. You can see their names to the right. Several have contributed their expertise in Columns that are regularly featured in each bimonthly magazine. All have shared their time and advice in making this publication a worthwhile effort. FFT is committed to helping hard-to-place youngsters find families who will accept and love them forever, unconditionally. Agencies are invited to contact us and arrange to feature some of their children in future issues of this publication. We are particularly interested in featuring those children who are willing to write and speak out on their own behalf directly to readers. "I want a family of my own, and this is what I am looking for" is a powerful statement coming from a child. FFT encourages your participation in the publication. While FFT wants to tackle some of the hard issues involving children in foster care and those moving on to adoption, we also want to celebrate successes by and on behalf of these children. Those stories that remind us that hard work and a positive attitude produces results. We invite readers to: Nominate a foster family, a child who is succeeding against the odds, a worker who goes above and beyond to do her job, a group with a positive mission, and tell us about why they deserve recognition. 250-500 words should do it nicely! Share some aspect of your own success story, complete with photos if possible. Write exactly the sort of story that you'd like to read in a future issue of FFT! Invite your kids to write of their experience with foster care and adoption. You will find Writer's Guidelines on this website. FFT recognizes that we all have a responsibility to be informed and keep abreast of information and changes in the system that impacts our lives as foster and adoptive families. Therefore, we offer readers the option of requesting that their public and private agencies grant them Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for reading and responding to the CEU Quiz offered in each issue (you can see a sample Quiz on this site). Many agencies and some states have already acknowledged this training option as valid toward the credits required for relicensing. If you think this will work for you, contact your local agency or DFS office for approval, then submit your quiz for grading. Finally, do take time to share your reactions to stories you read in each issue of FFT through email by writing to: louis@adoptinfo.net .

© 2004 Fostering Families TODAY magazine, all rights reserved.