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Helping foster families and children by creating a village of support in the Charlotte area. You pick up a phone call in the middle of a work day to learn that a child needs you to open your home. You must quickly evaluate your life and decide whether to accept the placement with limited information about the child and the trauma they’ve experienced. You’re asked to come get the child immediately, unsure of whether the child will be with you 2 hours, 2 days, or 2 years. Even with the limited information, you say yes and go to meet the child. You’re rooting for the parents, but also knowing you’re next in line.
Mission
It will be imperative for us to set healthy guidelines for eligibility and liability. Creating pathways for earned revenue including curriculum design and the use of the FVC Resource Centers on off-hours for like minded individuals and organizations. FVC is interested in developing earned revenue pathways that diversify funding and allow us to be an expert in the field. Knowledge of copywriting curriculum, becoming accredited to provide CEU credits to educators and therapists, and setting up facility terms and agreements are all areas of future growth within the organization. Over the next several months, this family comes back to the FVC Resource Center for trauma-informed trainings, foster family gatherings, family attachment and connection classes, and therapy-led support groups.
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Copyright © 2024 Next Stage Consulting All rights reserved. I asked the leader of Foster Village there if she would consider an affiliation model. But she kept checking on us and eventually agreed to let us use her logo and brand. That allowed us to point back to something that was already working elsewhere.
Safety Pin House
Foster Village operates on an annual budget of about $350,000, 70% of which comes from individual donations. It occupies a small house in the Oakhurst neighborhood in southeast Charlotte, but Santoro hopes she can raise enough money for a new resource center by the end of 2023. A new center would allow for more comfortable interactions between children and caregivers at sensitive and emotionally charged times, like when foster children reunite with their birth families. It is this ‘village,’ alongside a real community need that has fueled Foster Village’s momentum.
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So I created a website, wrote up my story, and asked family and friends to give me 18 months to dedicate myself to Foster Village. I needed $2,500 per month to make day care payments. The social worker brought me to the hospital where the child was, and I met with police officers, doctors, and the father—a very out-of-body experience.
The child is familiar with the people at the center and loves playing in the backyard. As foster parents engage in professional services and programming, they experience a safe space for their emotional needs to be met and connection with other foster families. And the ripple effect of stabilizing and equipping the foster family directly impacts the child.
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We need support in the sourcing and hiring process but also in the knowledge of when to grow positions into full time and what is sustainable and livable. An active board leading this initiative is an area of growth for us. Having clarity in budgeting and market-value rates of positions is a resource need. In the summer of 2022, FVC expanded to two facilities. This expansion allows us to deepen our work with our program in development and is central to our strategic plans for the next three years.
Join 17,000+ parents in the Charlotte metro area.
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Understandably, almost half of foster parents choose to not accept another placement, citing lack of support as a strong contributing factor. Foster Village Charlotte plays a critical role in supporting and maintaining a family’s ability to foster a child. They show up in real, tangible ways, so the families feel seen, understood, and supported.
This program equips caregivers with sensory tools and play-based strategies to help manage children's trauma responses effectively. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic further tested our resilience, prompting us to advocate fiercely for caregivers' needs during unprecedented times, enhancing our virtual support offerings to maintain continuity of care. In the ever-expanding and growing community of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, where nearly 400+ children navigate the complexities of foster care, we at Foster Village Charlotte stand as a beacon of support and hope. Established to address the tangled web of challenges these children and their families face, our mission is rooted in untangling critical issues such as insufficient resources, isolation, and fragmented information.
To achieve program goals, we will need a continued strong partnership with Mecklenburg County DSS which may also include a court program that will help us pilot phase 2 of the program. In addition, we also need strong leadership with lived experience as a birth family to ensure we are being intentional and thoughtful in our program design. This program expansion would also include the need for a new staff member and additional oversight and navigating to community resources that extend beyond the mission of FVC to help families sustain permanency. Reunifying families is a vulnerable population but there are risks involved including safety for our team and the children we serve.
We found that grassroots fundraising was really aligned with who we are and what we are about – this picture of everyone coming together for the good of all,” said Santoro. In June 2018, we launched Foster Village and opened Tony’s new coffee shop. We also found out our new daughter’s brother, then 16 months old, had not been adopted after all. We took him into our family, and he fit right away. I went to Michigan State to be a special education teacher. We graduated and moved to Charlotte in 2007 to teach in Title I schools.
You play, show them around, and blow out the candles with so many adults that are here just for you. The team launched Foster the Movement, a fundraising campaign that asked foster families, volunteers and donors to share their stories on social media and ask for support from friends and family. The Village overwhelmingly responded, raising more than $80,000 to help continue the services that had supported many of them so well.
Project SOOTHe provides non-invasive tools, play-based strategies, and individualized consultations to families free of charge to help caregivers engage and bond with the children in their homes. Forms can be filled out on our website by caregivers and our licensed pediatric Occupational Therapist and current foster parent calls to schedule a consultation. After a consultation, a follow-up email is provided that recaps the visit and suggests play-based strategies for the sensory tools that will be delivered. One of the things that brought us together was our mutual desire to support children in foster care.
All kids experience some trauma when they enter the foster care system. And people don’t always realize that even though we “sign up for this” as foster parents, it’s hard. As Foster Village Charlotte continues to evolve, our commitment to these children and families remains unwavering. We are dedicated to expanding our services, refining our programs, and continuing our advocacy to ensure every child and caregiver in the foster care system receives the support and dignity they deserve.
They provide resources such as welcome packs, funded trainings, support groups, and classes to help ensure a healthy transition for children in crisis. This is why we are proud to support Foster Village Charlotte and their mission. Part of their success, Santoro believes, comes from Foster Village’s reliance on its five staff members, all of whom have fostered children themselves. Santoro has four children, ages 10, 8, 6, and 4; she adopted the younger two.
Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section. We understood, but just the thought of separating siblings felt so hard and so sad. We knew we were going to adopt his sister … but as we were gaining a daughter, someone else was losing a daughter. I think sometimes people forget about the other side of the story. Hat Creek Burger Company is carrying on its mission to provide support in all its communities by partnering with all of our Texas locations.
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