Foster Care Adoption

"Foster Care 101: Insights and Tips for New and Existing Foster Parents" is your essential guide through the journey of foster care. This comprehensive audiobook illuminates the foster parenting path, equipping listeners with the tools needed for navigating the system with empathy and confidence.

Filled with real-life stories and practical advice, Called to Care starts by helping you honestly assess your motivation to help - sometimes the wrong motivation sets the stage for an unsuccessful experience. From there, the book shows what adoption and foster care really look like in a variety of situations, from domestic and international adoptions to short-term foster care and foster-to-adopt arrangements. Also included is how churches and individuals can minister to refugees.

If you are considering adoption or foster care or are already somewhere in this difficult and complicated process, you need trusted information from people who have been where you are. Mike and Kristin Berry have adopted eight children and cared for another 23 kids in their nine-year stint as foster parents. They aren't just experts. They have experienced every emotional high and low and encountered virtually every situation imaginable as parents. Now, they want to share what they've learned with you.

Adopting or fostering a child brings its own unique set of challenges only another parent facing the same uphill climb could possibly understand. From parenting children with traumatic pasts, to dealing with attachment issues, to raising a children with special needs, it can sometimes be a struggle just getting through the day. Mike Berry knows the loneliness and isolation you can easily feel in your particular parenting role - because he's been there.

Named after the lager that christened her at birth, Stella's life is characterised instability and neglect. Her teenage mother abandons her in the first few weeks of her life, and left in the 'care' of her father, she ends up lying deserted in a house with no food, no water, no clothes and no warmth. She eventually lands in the care of foster carer Louise, who is determined to change her life for the better.

When foster carer Cathy Glass is asked to foster Darcy-May, a two-day-old baby, she is very concerned. The baby is coming to her straight from the hospital and will have no contact with her teenage mother, Haylea. Even more worrying, she will be brought to Cathy with a police escort, as it’s vital her extended family don't know where she is.

Every day seven hundred children enter the foster care system in the United States, and thousands more live on the brink. Safe offers a deeply personal window into what happens when the universal longing for family crashes up against the unique madness and bureaucracy of a child protection system that often fails to consider the needs of the most vulnerable parties of all—the children themselves.

From the sterile isolation of infertility and its treatments to the emotional rollercoaster of adoption and foster care, Rachel McCracken gets it! She gets the heartache and the sorrow of the desolate valley called Infertility. She gets the dedication and work that it takes to blend a family. She gets the commitment and purpose one needs to help children rise from the ashes of abandonment and fear. Rachel's new book, Chasing Kites: One Mother's Unexpected Journey Through Infertility, Adoption, and Foster Care weaves her real-life experiences of struggle, heartache, and loss into a wonderful narrative of faith, hope, and the joy that can come through it all.

Being the middle child has its ups and downs. But for Grace, an only child who was adopted at birth, discovering that she is a middle child is a different ride altogether. After putting her own baby up for adoption, she goes looking for her biological family, including: Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister, who has a lot to say about their newfound family ties. And Joaquin, their stoic older bio brother, who has no interest in bonding over their shared biological mother.

Who are the children of foster care? What, as a country, do we owe them? Cris Beam, a foster mother herself, spent five years immersed in the world of foster care looking into these questions and tracing firsthand stories. The result is To the End of June, an unforgettable portrait that takes us deep inside the lives of foster children in their search for a stable, loving family. Beam shows us the intricacies of growing up in the system - the back-and-forth with agencies, the rootless shuffling between homes, the emotionally charged tug between foster and birth parents.

Ruth was a ghost of a girl when she arrived into foster mother Maggie Hartley's care. Pale, frail, and withdrawn, it was clear to Maggie that Ruth had seen and experienced things that no 11-year-old should have to, that she's been conditioned to "see no evil, speak no evil". Ruth is in desperate need of help, but can Maggie get through to her and unlock the harrowing secret she carries? Through love, reassurance, and patience, Maggie starts to unravel Ruth's painful past - a past defined by cruelty and abuse.

Ward of the State: A Memoir of Foster Care tells what happened to a little Black boy from the inner city of Detroit. This is the story of Karlos Dillard, who was severely neglected by his mother, who often left him and his siblings at home alone for weeks to fend for themselves. Enduring severe neglect and abuse, the boy was removed by the State of Michigan and put into foster care. Karlos was removed from his mother's care just to end up in foster homes that treated him worse. Karlos was told he was not loved, he was not wanted, and he was nothing but a ward of the state.

“Your parents are so amazing for adopting you! You should be grateful that you were adopted.” Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss, and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily.

Maggie faces one of the most challenging cases of her career when a young, orphaned Syrian girl comes to live with her. Barely able to communicate without a shared language, Maggie must battle to reach the vulnerable refugee and help her to start to overcome the traumas she has endured. But there is more horror to come when Maggie starts to suspect that the young girl is being groomed by relatives back in Syria to return and join ISIS.

Your church needs orphans as much as orphans need your church. Find out why and how you can get involved in Until Every Child Is Home.

The heartbreaking story of three little children searching for someone to love them. Maggie Hartley faces one of the toughest challenges of her career when three abused and neglected siblings she’s been caring for are placed for adoption with a family she believes are unsuitable. The couple are looking for a perfect ready-made family, and Maggie knows that they’re not going to find it with these traumatised children. And when her worst fears come true, Maggie must fight against the very system she’s part of to have the siblings returned to her so that she can start to undo some of the damage that has been done.

Join Drew and his dragon, Diggory Doo, in this uplifting story about what it means to be a foster child and the many issues, questions, and feelings foster children have that are directly or indirectly affected by foster care. 

Growing up in foster care, Muir has lived in many houses. And if she's learned one thing, it is to Pack. Light. Carry only what fits in a suitcase. Toothbrush? Yes. Socks? Yes. Emotional attachment to friends? Foster families? A boyfriend? Nope! There's no room for any additional baggage. Muir has just one year left before she ages out of the system. One year before she's free. One year to avoid anything - or anyone - that could get in her way. Then she meets Francine. And Kira. And Sean. And everything changes.

Breathing Through Foster Care is an honest and sometimes raw account of the daily joys and challenges of fostering. This honest glimpse into an imperfect family offers practical tips on how to avoid the missteps they made. It also provides many strategies they learned along the way to maintain a healthy family with children who have experienced trauma.

The American child welfare system is bent toward protecting adults, not children. Kids in danger are treated instrumentally to promote the rehabilitation of their parents, the welfare of their communities, and the social justice of their race and tribe. It is time to stop letting efforts to fix the child welfare system get derailed by activists who are concerned with race-matching, blood ties, and the abstract demands of social justice, and start asking the most important question: Where are the emotionally and financially stable, loving, and permanent homes where kids can thrive?