The Utah Foster Care is hosting an event called Better Together: The Importance of Fostering Siblings on Thursday, Apr. 18 at 6:30 pm till 8:00 pm at the Utah Foster Care office at 475 West Price River Drive, Suite #152 in Price. Lead Foster-adoptive Consultant, Kobi Prettyman stopped by Castle Country Radio to share all the details with listeners.
“So our focus of this meeting is a little bit more of what it’s like, maybe some of the strengths and challenges and rewards of caring for siblings. We are going to have a couple of foster parents and also a couple of youth talking about what its like to be able to have stayed together in foster care and so we are excited about that conversation,” stated Prettyman. The setting is a great opportunity for guests who have considered to foster to speak with local foster parents about the rewards and challenges of caring for siblings they have fostered in their homes.
It’s important for officials to try to keep siblings together when they are being placed with foster families, as Prettyman explains, “The preference is really that we keep siblings together if at all possible and sometimes they will even move children from our area in order to keep them together. But we want to be able to accomplish both things and we can only do that if we have families in our community that are willing to take in the children.” The siblings are already going through a tough time at home that keeping them together is a vital factor for their wellbeing. The end goal is to eventually reunite the children with their families.
The evening will be lowkey and full of great information about how a family can become a foster care provider. “We can touch briefly on the requirements but those are easily found on our web pages and I’m happy to talk with people about the requirements. They’re really pretty basic, the requirements are, just having a place in your home, passing a background check, and some training involved, is mostly the requirements. We’re not going to focus highly on that but we’re happy to answer any questions about that, if people have those kinds of questions,” said Prettyman.
The Utah Foster Care office in Price serves the communities in Carbon, Emery, Daggett, Duchesne, Uintah, Grand and San Juan counties. The need for foster parents in these areas is great to help, heal and enrich the lives of abused or neglected children. For more information visit the Utah Foster Care website at https://utahfostercare.org/become-a-foster-parent/