The State of Alaska Health and Social Services will be holding a “Resource Family Orientation” March 19 to provide information about foster care and adoption.
Director of Office of Children’s Services Christy Lawton encouraged anyone who has thought about becoming a foster parent to come and listen or ask questions even if they have not fully come to a decision.
Lawton: “Its just a brief two hour overview that talks about what the process is once you decide that you want to be considered starting with the application process, the home inspection, the kind of background checks that we do, to really sort of orientate them to what can be a fairly intrusive process in terms of us having to really evaluate and assess the home.”
There are approximately 100 foster homes on the Kenai Peninsula but Lawton said that OCS is always looking for new foster homes.
Lawton: “If we end up having to take emergency custody of some children at night that end up in a situation, law enforcement involved or whatever, we really want to have more sort of padding of our resource list so that we can make these matches and they can be available when we need them.”
The meeting will be held on March 19 from 6pm – 8pm at 145 Main St. Loop in Kenai.
For more information call Tonja Whitney or Michelle Partridge at 283-3136.