New Year Tips:

Enhance Your Foster Care Experience

As we turn the page into a new year, it’s the perfect time to renew, refresh and rethink strategies and tips that could make a difference in the lives of foster children. Here are some practical New Year tips to make your journey as a foster parent even more rewarding.

1. Keep Learning: Take advantage of training, ask questions, and stay informed of new research findings in the foster care field.
2. Make Self-care a Priority: Regular exercise, healthy eating, quality sleep, and even hobbies that help you unwind can help ease some of the stress and anxiety of foster parenting.
3. Build a Strong Support Network: Connect with other foster parents to exchange ideas and advice and offer emotional support.
4. Set Goals for Your Foster Child: In collaboration with the child and your case worker, establish achievable goals for the child this year.
5. Foster Independence: Teach your foster child essential life skills such as cooking, cleaning and budgeting.
6. Keep a Positive Perspective: Remember, setbacks will likely happen along the way, but don’t lose heart.

New Year’s resolutions are always more fruitful when shared, so include your foster child in discussing your resolutions and make it a collective effort. Wishing you a joyful and fulfilling journey as a foster parent in 2024.

Negotiate Less; Explain More

All children are learning as they go, but foster children especially may not have positive role models in their lives to guide them down a safe and healthy path. 

THINK: How can I explain my reasoning behind certain rules? 

For instance, instead of simply insisting on a 9 p.m. bedtime, explain the importance of getting enough sleep, its impacts on health and well-being, and why 9 p.m. is an appropriate time for them. Allow them to ask questions and be a part of the conversation, but ultimately, you are responsible for keeping them safe and making appropriate choices. 

Meet Chelsey and Xander Singleton

Chelsey and Xander Singleton have been foster parents with TFI since December 2022. They advocate and care for every child who is placed in their home. Currently, the two children placed in their home are in Pre-K but are also being homeschooled by Chelsey to help them get a head start in school.

The foster parents help nurture the children through the support of their church and their families. Recently, the couple sponsored a booth for TFI at a foster care awareness fair and provided their foster care worker with leads for new foster families!

The Singletons communicate their needs with the foster care worker to ensure their home maintains compliance with all foster care regulations. The family strives to ensure that each child in their home receives the services and love they deserve.

TFI is grateful to have the Singletons as Oklahoma foster parents! 

TRAINING CORNER

Need Additional Training?
Training includes:

• Compassion Fatigue & Secondary Stress
• PTSD in Children and Teens
• Self-Care for Foster Parents 

Find classes HERE

We recently wrapped up Stage One of our Each One Reach One campaign to recruit more foster parents. We were excited to award our grand prize of $1,000 to Teresa Lane! This leads us into Stage Two of the campaign where the grand prize is $3,000. In Stage Two, the goal is to continue recruiting more foster parents while following up with those who have started the process to become certified. In addition to our monthly prizes, giveaways, and Stage Two grand prize, there are incentives for our current foster families upon completion of training of new foster families.

If you need recruitment tips or swag to help you reach more people, please reach out to us! You can contact your foster care worker or your recruiter directly.

Texas – Traci Roberts (troberts@tfifamily.org).
Oklahoma – Rachelle Huffman (rhuffman@tfifamily.org).
Kansas – Ashley Unger (aunger@tfifamily.org) and Shelby Grissom (sgrissom@tfifamily.org).
Nebraska – Shelby Grissom (sgrissom@tfifamily.org)

Our agency staff has also been competing in the Each One Reach One campaign to see who can recruit the most new foster families. Angela Blanton, Director of Foster Care in Oklahoma, won first prize in our December monthly competition! We awarded our agency-wide Stage One grand prize to Melissa Aguila who is a Permanency Case Manager in Kansas.

Congratulations to all of our family and staff winners! Thank you for caring for children and families. Keep up the great recruiting!

Fund Development

During the holiday season, heartwarming stories about generous donors positively impacting children’s lives are always prevalent.

One such story this year was centered around TFI’s recently opened residential facility in Wichita Falls, Texas. The community came together in a beautiful display of support for the children living there, with one business generously funding the decoration of the facility, Foundation Automotive providing gifts for all the kids, and United Supermarkets contributing food for a special Christmas dinner.

Thanks to their kindness, the residents were able to experience the joy and sense of togetherness that comes with the holiday season.

We love stories like these. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any ideas for ways we could help, contacts, questions or fun stories of generosity.

Below are our foster parents celebrating a milestone anniversary as a TFI Foster Parent! We love having you as part of Team TFI!

15 years
Lydia Horner

5 years
Chelsea Standifer

1 year 
Danielle Casteel
Corey and Melissa Erion
Jonathan Figueroa and Abigail Franco
Jon and Alvina Havner
Brittany Hill and Sashia Beard
Kile Johnson and Michalla Ray
Todd and Nekki Ledoux
Cynthia Lenk
Amanda Mellies
Nathan Schwenn and Brighton Shields
My’Kera Simms
Andrea Smith
Tyler and Trinity Tabares
Carol Yauch