Foster Alight

While Foster Alight does important work in several areas to improve outcomes for children in foster care, our primary passion is serving birth parents. Most of the time, parents are the reason children are removed from their homes and placed into foster care. When these parents don't address the causes of their children's removal, they often contribute to other societal problems (homelessness, addiction, incarceration, etc.). Plus, they will often lose other children to the system in the future. However, when parents succeed, they can break the negative cycles, reunify their families, and heal the trauma of separation, which is why reunification done right is the research-proven best outcome for children. Helping these parents transforms not only these families but our whole community.

Foster Alight helps parents in two primary ways:

1) Our Family Advocates program partners a trained community volunteer with a birth parent. They both commit to meet for an hour a week for six months, with relationship being the main goal. So often, these parents are villainized and dehumanized — isolated and barely clinging to hope as they struggle to breathe under the crushing weight of shame and trauma. A Family Advocate plays a singular role. They don't have to be there; they don't work for Human Services. They just care. They're often the only person close to the parent who is a positive, encouraging presence in their lives, helping them to believe in themselves and take practical next steps. At its best, the Family Advocates program looks like transformation and feels like friendship. Of course, the model of using community volunteers has the added and essential benefit of helping other people to see the realities of the foster system up close and personal, which universally results in growing empathy for birth parents, many of whom were once foster children themselves. Many Family Advocates remain close with the parents they work with, stitching together our communities and growing the support systems of both families. This program primarily serves Larimer County but can be scaled as volunteers and demand allows.

2) Our ReParents program offers free online support groups to birth parents. Transportation is often a barrier to parents receiving the support they need, but COVID normalized virtual groups. Far from simply being a place to commiserate, ReParents uses evidence-based psychotherapy techniques to help parents find community and gain traction. They say the worst pain a person can experience is the loss of a child. Of course, these parents have children who are alive but separated from them, which presents unique hardship and pain. Add to that the shame and stigma these parents face, and their situation can feel unbearable. ReParents provides a productive place to help parents move from a place of shame, trauma, and overwhelm to a place of confidently moving forward toward reunification. This program is available to parents around the world.