Austin Community Group Fall Kick Off Meeting

Please join us October 1, 4:00PM - 6:00PM, at Hill Country Bible Church to hear from Sarah Mercado, Caring Family Network, on "Advocating for our Kids in School." School is back in session! While this is an exciting time for many children, for others is stirs up much anxiety, stress and uncertainty. Sarah will share lessons learned from both her professional work and in her own parenting, in advocating for foster and adoptive children within the school environment.

Childcare is free! Deadline to RSVP for childcare is September 23. Visit the following link to register: http://www.hcbc.com/children.

October 1 ACG is hosted by Hill Country Bible Church, Northwest. HCBC is located at 12124 RR 620 North. ACG will meet in room 4-102, 4th floor. Email ACGAustin@gmail.com with questions.

Great Resource for Nutrition

Here is a great resource to learn more about the diet of kids adopted from around the world. It gives tips and tricks to encourage a good diet, it has info about food by country, and goes over feeding challenges of adopted kids. Please give it a look over. It is full of valuable information.

http://adoptionnutrition.org/

Can We Create a Culture Like This?

Creating a Healthy Adoption Culture in Your Church from Tapestry on Vimeo.

Together For Adoption - October 21-22

Registration for this conference is open! It is in Phoenix this year on October 21-22.

Helping Foster Care

There is a great organization who serves foster kids by providing them their own suitcase with clothes, a pillow and a other personal items. It is surprising to think that many of these kids are taken out of their homes with little to no personal items. Often then they are given borrowed items. When they are ready to move to another foster home, they may carry nothing of their own with them.

www.projectcarecase.org gives children not only their own valuables but also their dignity. Imagine a child arriving from school to their foster family home to see a social workers' car in the driveway and a small sack of clothes by the door. It doesn't take long for these children, who are often in and out of the foster system, to know what this means: they are being transferred to another place -- often the unknown is the worst on these children.

But with Project Care Case they can at least have their suitcase, their OWN clothes, a teddy bear, pillow and a Bible to take with them to the next living situation. It doesn't seem like much but it can meet a lot when nothing else in your life is permanent.

Project Care Case is always looking for donations of these items or gift cards to Wal-mart or Target where the director can buy these items. Please consider supporting this organization.

contact www.projectcarecase.org to find out what their current needs are.

Foster Care Needs

This post is the beginning of several posts that will lay out the various needs of foster care and how to get involved. There will be a variety of ways to care for the Austin foster child, from fostering children to supporting those directly care for the children. Keep checking back for more ways to help!

The Need:

In Travis County there are 430 children in foster care (ages 0-17)
In Williamson County there are 214 children in foster care (ages 0-17)
Approximately 200 children in Travis County are available for adoption and waiting for forever families.

So how can you get involved? I'll throw the big commitment out there first. Foster families are needed. It is not uncommon for kids who have emergency removals to stay overnight in the offices of foster care agencies because they do not have enough foster families to help.

How do you get started? Find a foster family and talk to them about their experience. Ask them about agencies and all the challenges and joys of fostering. Don't know anyone? Email and we'll help get you connected.


Stats from Nov 2010 DFPS Region 7 Performance Report.

Adoption Phone-line for adoptive families

A great new post-adoption resource is available for free. Focus on the Family recently launched a post-adoption phone line for adoptive families. The line is staffed by counselors who have been trained by Dr. Karyn Purvis (the author of The Connected Child). Counselors are available Monday through Friday, 8am-10pm EST at 800-A-FAMILY (800-232-6459). It doesn't matter how long ago your adoption took place or what type of adoption you did (international, domestic, or through foster care), if you have questions and need support, please take advantage of this free resource.