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At our regular meeting on May 16, our speaker was Richard Villasana, a proud Navy veteran and a leading international authority on U.S. foster children. He discovered while on active duty that he had a talent for finding people. He learned that children in foster care often have family that could offer homes to them, but the child welfare organizations didn't know how to locate the families. The process of looking for family members of a foster child is called family finding. This process is critical because it is the first step to moving a child out of foster care. Once enough relatives have been located and notified, social services works with them to find those who are willing to be involved with the foster child. A permanent home for the child is the ultimate goal. Without family finding, many children stay in foster care for years bouncing from one place to the other. Once they aged out (become too old to stay in the foster care program), they end up on the streets with little or no support.  Mr. Villasana, started Forever Homes for Foster Kids to combat this problem. Because he knows how to search for missing people, he and his organization have helped thousands of children be united with family members when their own family is gone due to death or criminal activity. Mr. Villasana spoke about a few cases that his searching ability was able to reach across the border into Mexico and across the United States to get children out of foster care and into family homes. This is really important in that children living in homes with relatives do better than there counterparts in foster homes. Socially and emotionally, the children that are united with family are prevented from being homeless as they become adults. |
