Cultivating Families

The Adoption/Foster Care Decisions Course is for families exploring foster care or adoption.

The three-week course is led by experts who have walked that road themselves. Participants are equipped to make the best decision for their family - they learn about the costs associated with different options.

Supportive Care Groups are for foster parents, adoptive parents, and relatives as parents (kinship parents).

Some people adopt a child to become a family, others foster out of a calling to be with children who need care until they return home or find a new home, and some choose to raise a loved one's child.

No amount of training can fully cover what adoptive, foster, and kinship parents will experience once a child is in their home and the potential for emotional, intellectual, and physical stress can become very high.

Research has shown that informal and formal social support systems and groups have a beneficial influence on stress outcomes for participants.

Adoption and foster care activities provide faith-based congregations with incredible opportunities to offer real-life bridges to their communities. Awareness Events, Adoption and Foster Care Decisions Courses, and ongoing Support Groups open doors to foster and adoptive families that may not be a part of a faith-family.
It may seem daunting to a busy congregation to offer these activities. A great first step is to engage in “Learn and Serve” projects such as: First Night Kits,Comfort Cases, and Building Beds for foster children.

Faith-based congregations can participate by organizing groups of prayer volunteers. Whether part of a congregation or not, individuals can participate by becoming a prayer volunteer. Students and Adults can participate in the basic prayer initiative and we have future plans to develop a version for homebound elderly persons and a children’s prayer bead activity.
What: As another means of raising awareness, Cultivating Families has partnered with Child Protective Services in DFPS Region 6a and 6b (the Greater Houston area) and organized a prayer initiative customized to the 5500 children currently removed from their homes. Our prayer initiative offers a guide for each prayer volunteer to pray for ten children in state care. Praying for each child individually, identified by gender and age, we believe that we can pray for a distinct expression of their needs. It also expressly provides an opportunity and encouragement for the prayer volunteer to align their heart with God’s word, mindfully setting aside a part of their day to focus on these children in the care of the state.

Cultivating Families has taken great care to both protect the privacy of the children in state care and provide enough details (age and gender) for the prayer volunteer to feel a sense of connection with the child while praying. Local congregations and other organizations help promote the Prayer Initiative, and assist the volunteers in registering through our website to become a prayer volunteer. Requiring registrations allows Cultivating Families to track the number of children covered in prayer, and the number of volunteers engaged. It also provides a way for us to occasionally reach out with encouragement and updates on the state of foster care in the Greater Houston Area. All of this serves to raise the awareness of those involved in the Prayer Initiative.

While not as in-depth as parent training, volunteers and child care workers also need to understand foster and adopted children’s background and current needs.
Our Trauma-Informed Volunteer and Child Care Worker Training offers basic information to help volunteers and child care workers understand the impact of foster and adopted children’s history, how their history affects their current behavior, and the importance of meeting their current needs. The training offers insights and skills that can be applied in classrooms, small group activities, and nurseries.

We seek out and research evidence-based parent training beneficial for parents of foster and adopted children and encourage congregations to offer these within their local community.
One such training currently recommended is Empowered to Connect (ETC) Parent Training, an interactive learning experience designed specifically for adoptive and foster parents. The ETC Parent Training was developed by Michael & Amy Monroe and relies heavily on the Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI®) (https://child.tcu.edu/about-us/tbri/) model developed by Dr. Karyn Purvis and her colleagues at the TCU Institute of Child Development.
Cultivating Families has trained ETC leaders, equipped and practiced in presenting both the “Prepare Course:” six sessions designed to provide useful insights and a solid foundation for those who have not yet adopted or begun fostering; and the nine session “Connect Course” designed for parents who have already have foster or adopted children in their home. To date, the training has been well received by Christians and non-Christians alike.