Angels in Waiting

Miracles Occur Through The Hearts And Hands Of Nurses...

Angels In Waiting (AIW) is a non-profit 501c3 charity created by nurses in 2005.  Early on during the inception of AIW, we resurrected a dormant federally funded program known as EPSDT In Home Operations. Created by President Johnson in 1965, this federal program enables highly skilled nurses to become foster parents and bill Medi-Cal for their nursing hours related to caring for medically fragile foster care infants and children in the comfort of their own homes.

 The Problem: 

Increased teen pregnancies and epidemic drug use by pregnant women have resulted in an escalating number of premature births and children with medical and developmental complications. Concurrently, there is a growing number of cases where children become medically fragile at the hands of their parents due to abuse, so a return to their biological home is not in the child's best interest. 

The foster care system is heavily burdened with an influx of medically fragile infants and children who need our help.  Local resources have been, and continue to be, strained to the limit in dealing with the expanding number of these and other medically fragile foster children.  The foster care system, while a protector of, and quasi-surrogate parent for these children placed in their care, is not an adequate loving parent. These children lack consistency in their lives at every level.  A child may have as many as four to sixteen different social workers assigned, depending how long they are in the system.  These children are harder to place with the average foster parent because of their special health care needs. Sadly, they become forgotten members of our society, left alone in hospitals, institutions and group homes, inevitably identified as “failure to thrive.” 

 State agencies are impacted deeply through fiscal cuts. Medically fragile foster care infants and children are on a substantial rise due to increase illicit drug use among pregnant woman… At great expense to the child’s wellbeing and the State of California budget. "Medically Fragile Foster Care Infants and Children" are left in hospitals for weeks to months of unnecessary and extended periods of time as DCFS try to find suitable placements, the answer is simple: Place them with Nurse-Foster Providers!   However, the needed marketing funds are limited due to deep state cuts.

The Solution:

AIW has the solution; Nurse-Foster Providers!   Angels In Waiting's Founder, Linda West-Conforti RN, authored State Assembly Bill-1133 making sure EPSDT nurse-foster providers, have ”preferential consideration” when placing medically fragile foster care infants, children, and youths. This consideration is placed over group homes, institutions and with less-educated poorly supported foster parents.

The AIW Bill became California state law last October. AIW’s aim is to bring awareness to the new law, recruit nurses, and help the Departments of Children and Family Services (DCFS) throughout Riverside as well as other California counties to help recruit their needed Nurse-Foster Providers as per California’s State Law #490.

 

 

 AIW is a vital tool in outreach and recruitment for nurses to become Nurse-Foster Providers / foster parents for DCFS’s and Foster Family Agencies throughout Riverside County. Through meetings with DCFS’s, nursing publications, network television exposure and our dynamic website, AIW has recruited numerous Nurses-Foster Providers in the Inland Empire and throughout California.   Currently AIW has a 85 % adoption rate!

 It is our goal to finally put a stop to medically fragile foster care infants, children and youths, shuffling in-and-out of numerous hospitals, institutions, group homes, and through many ill-equipped and poorly supported foster care homes in Riverside County.  Please help AIW with the donations needed to help recruit enough Nurse-Foster Providers for Riverside County needs. Please help AIW Save Countless Childhoods by donating to AIW’s Nurse-Foster provider program, and or donating a “Sammy the Comfort Penguin stuffed animal to a foster child in need. All proceeds go towards AIW’s noble Nurse-Foster Provider program.

~Together We Have The Ability To Save Countless Childhoods, Please Keep Our Little Angels In Waiting As Earth Angels Verses Sending Them Back Into Heaven~