America’s Kids Belong’s 2024 FosterCon webinar series held an online webinar (now available online) titled Fostering Permanency. The webinar featured Pam Willis, who along with her husband, found her “Yes” in her 50s, after raising five bio kids. The couple felt called to adopt seven siblings who had been in foster care for a year after losing their parents. Pam shares their journey to become a family and what she’s learned about foster-adopt from the perspective of their extraordinary, life-changing “Yes.”
Viewers also heard from Lisel Atherton, AKB’s child welfare expert who has worked with AKB for many years with our I Belong Project (which films youth waiting to be adopted). She has fostered and worked in child welfare prior to AKB.
Hannah Rodriquez shared her experience as a current foster parent and her journey of welcoming a young man into her family after he aged out of foster care.
The blend of these three experiences led to a dynamic webinar filled with helpful information for anyone considering adopting through foster care.
The webinar answers questions like:
- What is the process of adopting from foster care?
- Can youth be adopted out of state?
- How can you best welcome a teen into your home?
- How can we best support youth who are adopted?
A few insights from the webinar:
Pam Willis on becoming prepared for adopting 7 siblings…
“We both just kind of sat there. Stared at the at the emptiness of our
house that we’d been staring at for a few months, you know, feeling really lonely in this big old
house, and it just felt like. All of those years of fostering, and all of the things that we had
learned and worked with children and. It was all just coming to this point where this was being
laid before us, and were we going to. Take this, chance and change, the entire course of our
lives, and we both just felt really strongly that was what we needed to do.’
Lisel Atherton on the family-selection process:
“Child welfare’s focus is finding families for kids; not kids for families. And so they’re really
looking at what needs does this child have? What does their trauma look like? And is this
family able to come and support that child?“
Hannah Rodriguez on connecting with teens…
“Whenever we welcome a teen into our home the mission is always to figure out what’s
their interest and then to become as obsessed with that thing as they are. And when when
they see that I’m genuinely interested in what they’re interested in, that is a huge huge way to
connect with them, and to kind of break down those walls a little bit and get them to open
up.”
Did you miss this webinar? No problem! Check it out FOR FREE and others coming up HERE.
Don’t forget: complete the on-demand webinar and we’ll send you a CE certificate!
~Consider what your next step in the foster care journey may be~
