May’s National Foster Care Month provides an opportunity for people all across the nation to focus attention on the year-round needs of American children and youth in foster care. The numbers are staggering with approximately 64,000 children in foster care in California alone. Los Angeles County’s foster care population exceeds 21,000 children with 200 foster children waiting to be connected to a family who will adopt.

Children’s Bureau offers a comprehensive foster care and adoption program that brings families together for a lifetime. The agency is in need of resource families for children in foster care while reunifying with birth families or to provide legal permanency by adoption.

A current Children’s Bureau family advises potential resource parents “to come into it with an open mind and an open heart. Be prepared to care beyond anything you could have ever imagined.” Watch more resource families share their experiences here: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYtQmBjNHBk ).

Children’s Bureau Resource Parents protect and nurture children, meet children’s developmental needs, support children’s relationships with their birth families and do all of this as a member of a professional team. Children’s Bureau welcomes every resource parent regardless of, race, age, religion, disability, marital status, ethnic background, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. Qualifying families receive training, family assessment, approval and support.

Discover if you have the willingness, ability and resources to take on the challenge of helping a child in need. A monthly information meeting is being held Saturday, May 18, from 10:00 a.m. – Noon at Children’s Bureau’s Valencia office, 27200 Tourney Road, Suite 175, Valencia, CA 91355.

To R.S.V.P. or for more information, please call 661-208-4212 or 661-272-9996 or email us at RFrecruitment@all4kids.org. An information packet or application may also be obtained by filling out a request form on the website at www.all4kids.org/program/foster-care/.

Children’s Bureau now also offers a fee-for-service Domestic /Independent Adoption Home Study Program for families seeking the adoption of an infant whose birth mother is making an adoption plan for her newborn child. In addition to adoption home studies, Children’s Bureau provides approval of Interstate Compact packets, post placement supervision visits and reports, and finalization services when the birth mother delivers her baby in another state and the family / birth mother is working with an adoption agency.

About Children’s Bureau:
Since 1904, Children’s Bureau has been a nonprofit leader in the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect. More than 34,000 children and families are helped each year throughout Southern California with services that include school readiness, parenting classes, family resource centers, support groups, mental health counseling, foster care and adoption. Children’s Bureau is one of the largest investors in child abuse prevention in the country and is developing a national model to transform an entire at-risk community through its Magnolia Community Initiative.