Lutheran Family Services has a mission to care for, support, and strengthen individuals, families and communities.
Jenica Faal, from Lutheran Social Services explains about the statewide program.
“There’s a Rapid City office and then there’s a Sioux Falls office, and they serve the whole state in different programs. They have programs with foster care. They have an adoption program. We provide kinship studies for different types of therapies, as well as groups like Fatherhood Connection and Lutheran Social Services provides treatment level foster care. So that is going to encompass children with higher behavioral needs. They also can have special needs or multiple diagnoses and then also medical high medical needs. So those children are being referred to us by the state or also tribal placements. And then all of our families are trained to be treatment level, being able to provide a higher level of care for a higher level of needs.”
Faal acknowledges that not everyone is equipped to become a foster parent. But there are still ways you can get involved.
Faal says, “So there’s lots of ways to be involved. One of those ways is something that’s really important to children in foster care is called the Lifebook. The importance of the Lifebook is that it documents that child’s life from the time that they are in care to when they are either reunited with their birth families or adopted or aged out. And so whatever that end goal looks like, they have this book that essentially keeps track of their life and all their experiences and their connections. I mean, it’s simple. Kids need people to support them. These families need people to stand behind them. Not everybody can have a child in their home. But there’s very simple ways that go a long way and mean a lot to the community and mean a lot to these families that somebody would step in and and want to help. So it’s not as complex as you would think.”
If you are interested in getting involved, go to their website here.
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