The need for foster families continues to grow in the Castle Country area as the number of foster parents shrinks, but the amount of children in the system remains consistent. To help address this disparity, Utah Foster Care is hosting Color the Town Purple on Monday, April 14, to educate the community on Foster Care.

Kobi Prettyman from Utah Foster Care joined the KOAL Newsroom to discuss the event and what attendees should expect.

“Our Color the Town Purple event was designed to raise awareness about foster care in our area,” said Prettyman. “We want to help people get a little more information, not only about being foster parents but other ways that they can be involved and share the foster care space with us. Anything from supporting foster families to supporting children in care and becoming more involved.”

A chalk art festival will also be held with Color the Town Purple. “We are preregistering to be an artist,” explained Prettyman,” but we are also going to have chalk there that younger kids could just come and draw with. So we are going to give prizes to the artists in different categories. And so that will be from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. and we’ll do judging after that and the prizes during the Color the Town Purple part of the event.”

Regarding the need for foster families, Prettyman stated,” We have declined families more than half, but yet our numbers of children from our area have stayed relatively the same. And so we do have a lot of kinship families that step up and take children. And that is great. That’s what we want to have happen. But we still don’t have nearly enough families, and if they can’t identify a kin for them to go with, then they need a placement, and we don’t have nearly enough of those in our area.” She added,” Coming to the event isn’t just trying to talk people into becoming foster parents; we just want them to be thinking about foster care and think about how they could be involved a little bit.”

Outside of becoming a foster family, there are many ways to support the organization’s efforts. Prettyman shared, “We have a program we’ve started in the last couple of years called Care Communities. And that’s where a group of people gather together to support a family … So you drop off dinner so they don’t have to worry about doing it. Or maybe you help with a repair in their home or mow their lawn or just whatever skills a person can bring to the situation to help a family that meets their needs.”

In closing, Prettyman said,” Just come and join us. Have a good time. Maybe learn a little bit more about what is in our area and become a little more educated.”

Color the Town Purple will be held on Monday, April 14 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Price City Peace Gardens. Registration for the chalk art portion of the event is free and open on Eventbrite. For more information or any questions on Utah Foster Care, Prettyman can be contacted at kobi.prettyman@utahfostercare.org.