Flag Flown Over Afghanistan Proudly Displayed at New Life

Last summer the girls at New Life Children’s Center had a project: writing get well cards for soldiers who had been injured in Afghanistan. This project was coordinated by “Chicktime”* the mother/daughter service group that is very active and involved at New Life.

It so happened that Major John McGee, who is with a medical unit that was deployed to Afghanistan, is a friend of some of the Chicktime Chicks.  Major McGee delivered the cards to many seriously injured soldiers while he was deployed. 

As a thank you for writing the get well cards, the New Life girls were presented with a beautiful plaque by the military. The plaque includes a flag that was flown over Craig Joint Theater Hospital in Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.

It’s been a thrilling and humbling experience for the letter writers and everyone at New Life who stops to pause and admire our new plaque.

 Chicktime is a grass roots movement created to serve the next generation, by bringing together groups of women using their unique gifts in the service of others. Chicktime New Life encourages the girls at the Center through fun projects that bring a bright spot to their lives.

They Chose Service

What did you do with your Easter weekend? If you had an extra day or two off and frittered it away, the high school kids from Liberty Christian School in Argyle, TX, might give you cause to squirm a bit. Eight students and two teachers from this private school voluntarily signed up to spend their day off serving at the Nelson Children’s Center in Denton.

And serve they did, cleaning and painting for hours, helping out Nelson’s maintenance and housekeeping teams, who were so appreciative of their help. These helpful high schoolers gave their day off to the Nelson Center, and we just want to say THANK YOU.

Here they are in action:

BeREAL Eggstravaganza

BeREAL (Ready Educated Accomplished Leaders) in New Orleans hosted not one but TWO Easter egg hunts, for their partners Greater New Orleans & Jefferson Foster & Adoptive Parent Associations and CASA New Orleans. 

More than 135 children, youth, and adults got into the Easter fun with traditional egg hunts, games, prizes, food, and music.  The kids scattered all around the property on the hunt for eggs and prizes, and every face had a smile on it. The weather totally cooperated and the grownups had as much fun as the kids.

BeREAL provides transition services out of a renovated gymnasium, where youth (13-25) aging out of their foster homes find training, support, and mentoring programs. Activities like the egg hunts help to raise awareness and encourage community engagement and support for Louisiana’s foster youth.

Caseworker of the Year is LSS Star

Kelly Duszik, one of our Family Services Workers in Tyler, was named Caseworker of the Year at the Texas Region 5 Foster and Adoptive Family Training Conference. Her nominator wrote, “Kelly cares deeply for the children she works with and does the very best for them. She takes the time to get to know each child she works with and speaks with their caregivers to check on issues that need more attention. She is prompt, thorough, and willing to assist in any way she can.”

Kelly has been with LSS for four and a half years, and is a recipient of the quarterly STAR Award we present to acknowledge someone in our foster care department who has done an outstanding job. To quote one of “her” foster parents, “Kelly is always there when we need her, and she was a big help guiding us through all the paperwork. She takes the struggles and triumphs of her families to heart.”

LSS is very fortunate to have Kelly working for our children and families in East Texas. We are all so proud of her!

Bulgarian Delegation Visits Austin

The Department of State contacted me, as president of the National Foster Parent Association (NFPA), requesting a meeting with a delegation of child welfare and adoption professionals visiting from Bulgaria. Plans are underway in this small Eastern European country to “deinstitutionalize” all children by 2020. They hope to accomplish this goal by expanding family preservation services, creating a foster care system, and strengthening adoption programs. Currently, more than 7,000 Bulgarian children are living in orphanages; more than a third are under the age of three years; the remaining two-thirds are between the ages of three and 18.

The four delegates and two interpreters spent three weeks in the United States, visiting Washington, DC, Seattle, Denver, and Austin. The delegation was welcomed to the Lutheran Social Services office in Austin on April 14^th, where we proceeded to share an incredible amount of information. Official titles of our visitors:

· Chairperson, Association for International Adoption and Reintegration;

· Department Chief, International Child Protection and International Adoption, Ministry of Justice;

· Director, State Agency for Child Protection; and

· Deputy Minister, Ministry of Labor and Social Policy

The visit to the United States was designed to provide these visitors with a comprehensive look at child welfare and family social services in the United States. The Department of State specifically requested that we discuss foster parent associations (local, state and national), recruitment and retention of foster parents, supports and services important to foster parents, and how to serve children with disabilities or significant medical needs in foster family homes.

The Department of State outlined these objectives:

· Explore government and non-government organizations that provide services to ensure the welfare of children and families in the United States;

· Visit innovative child welfare programs that offer targeted assistance and produce positive outcomes for children in tenuous circumstances; and

· Examine aspects of domestic and international adoption processes in the United States, including accreditation of agencies, family home studies and background checks, judicial proceedings, and aftercare following adoptions.

Konnie Gregg and Phyllis Christensen, LSS international adoption coordinators, also met with the delegation to discuss international adoption and foster family care for children with disabilities. 

Overall, I feel the meeting was instructive for everyone and very successful. The delegates left with gifts from NFPA, insight into the challenges and reward s of our foster care system, and some new friends in Austin.

Irene Clements, LSS vice president for Advocacy, Child and Family Services, is president of the NFPA Board of Directors and current president of the Texas Foster Family Association (TFFA). She and her husband Bill fostered 127 children over a span of 27 years.

Adoption Coalition Gets the Award But the KIDS are the Biggest Winners

Permanently changing the lives of children in foster care. If that sounds like a lofty goal, it is. It also happens to be the purpose of the Adoption Coalition of Texas, a nonprofit collaborative partnership of child placing agencies that verify and approve foster and adoptive families. The Coalition is founded on the belief that children should not age out of foster care without the support of a family system.

The Adoption Coalition was recently selected from among 807 applicants as the recipient of the 2011 Collaboration Prize, a $162,500 national award funded by the Lodestar Foundation, a grant-making organization that supports nonprofits by encouraging philanthropy.

The Collaboration Prize shines a spotlight on collaborations among two or more nonprofit organizations that gain greater impact by working in partnership. Lutheran Social Services, a founding partner of the Adoption Coalition, was instrumental in the organization becoming a reality, through a grant written by LSS grant writer Cecelia Blanford in 2002.

The Adoption Coalition focuses on increasing the number of adoptions among hard-to-place children of all ethnicities, including teens, sibling groups, and medically fragile children. The success and true impact of this organization is best understood through a simple statistic: In the early days of the Coalition, adoptions in Texas Region 7 averaged 370 per year. They are now up to 780. It is noteworthy that many older kids who were in the system for a long time are included in this group.

“The Collaboration Prize is a tremendous honor,” said Tracy Eilers, executive director of the Adoption Coalition for its first seven years, now a member of the board of directors. “It means that our collaborative approach, focused on doing what is right for the children, has a ‘seal of approval’ from national corporations and foundations. But the legacy that keeps us going every day is the number of kids who now have forever families and opportunities for the future.”

The Adoption Coalition of Texas, working with the Austin Community Foundation and Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, collaborates with five child-placing agencies: CPS, Arrow, LSS, Marywood, and Pathways.

Puppy Dog Faces at VGF this Saturday

The Village at Gleannloch Farms, an LSS Community, will be hosting its first pet adoption day on Saturday April 16^th, 2011 from 11am-3Pm. The Village is helping support the local Tomball community by hosting the Adoption Day for the Abandoned Animal Rescue organization. AAR is a local nonprofit organization that is run strictly on volunteers and donations. AAR house’s injured pets, abandoned pets, and rescues pets on death row from other shelter’s. All animals are rehabilitated, socialized, spayed/neutered, made current on vaccines and put up for adoption.

The Village will be cooking hot dogs and hamburgers with all the fixings with proceeds going to AAR . The Village has also contributed by having a pet food drive during the past week as well as choosing AAR as their charity of the month, which receives monetary donations by employees of The Village.

BeREAL Volunteers Tie the Knot

BeREAL (Ready Educated Accomplished Leaders) in New Orleans has been home to many “firsts”: It’s the first LSS program for foster teens in transition; for most of the participants, it’s the first time they’ve had a mentor or someone to help them navigate life after foster care. And now we’ve had the first BeREAL wedding between two of our volunteers.

Jenny and Charles were married at Audubon Park in New Orleans on Friday, March 25^th and had an outdoor reception at BeREAL on Saturday, March 26^th, complete with a New Orleans brass band!

Christie Kieschnick, BeREAL’s director of education and career development, and her husband Kevin were the matchmakers who introduced Jenny and Charles. Kevin Kieschnick is a Lutheran minister and performed the ceremony.

Jenny has been a BeREAL mentor since August, 2010. Charles coordinated the mural painting at BeREAL, and did much of the artwork himself. One thing the two of them have in common is the desire to be positive role models for youth.

Congratulations to Jenny and Charles, wonderful additions to our BeREAL family.

BeREAL, a project of Lutheran Social Services in collaboration with the Louisiana Dept. of Children & Family Services, provides transition services for youth ages 13-25 aging out of Louisiana’s foster care system, to help them succeed as they make the transition to college and the next chapters of their lives. 

Flying High After Caring for Kids Benefit

Everyone on board for the Caring for Kids fundraiser Saturday night (April 2^nd) witnessed an outpouring of love and generosity for the kids at the Nelson Children’s Center. More than $125,000 was raised to “Give Them Wings to Fly,” the theme prompted by the event’s venue, the C. R. Smith American Airlines Museum in Fort Worth.

If you held a ticket to this event, you were treated to an evening of celebration and discovery, which combined museum exhibits (including a rare Douglas DC-3 airliner), food and drink, live and silent auctions, but most importantly, an understanding of the help, healing, and hope that happens at the Nelson Center.

Gerard Arpey, Chairman and CEO of American Airlines and an advocate for the Nelson Center, welcomed the travelers, and reminded us of the responsibility we have to the next generations to make the world a better place by serving others.

Everyone had to buckle their seatbelts when Rebekah Poling, the director of volunteers at the Nelson Center, told the heartbreaking stories of three children currently being treated at the Nelson Center: Dylan (age 8), Mario (7), and Rachel (14) [not their real names]. These children came to Nelson so troubled―their “wings” and spirits so broken―it meant starting from the ground up to build their trust with intensive therapy and education. The videos will give you an understanding of what their young lives have been like, and how they are healing and being rescued at Nelson. They are, at last, in a safe place.

Larry Mowry, the chief meteorologist at CBS11 in Dallas, served as the night’s most excellent auctioneer for the live auction. Because of the support and generosity of donors and supporters, the kids at Nelson will have renewed living spaces in which to heal. We’re adding new tile, fresh paint, sturdy furniture, fun rugs and throw pillows to all the children’s rooms, and their day room, TV rooms, and relaxation rooms will also be refurbished.

Many thanks to all our volunteers, donors, and supporters who made “Caring for Kids” take flight. You’ve helped the kids at Nelson soar to new heights!

Celebrating 35 Years and 6,000 Adoptions

Karalyn Heimlich and LSS CEO Dr. Kurt Senske

LSS has been at the forefront of the world of adoption for decades. Through the years, this world has changed dramatically, and Karalyn Heimlich, LSS’s retiring director of adoption services, has had a ringside seat to it all. In her 35-year career, Karalyn has helped coordinate more than 6,000 placements. If there was a black belt in adoption, Karalyn would have earned it years ago. 

Rewind 35 years, when Karalyn was just beginning her career with LSS. Domestic infant adoption was the norm and international adoption was just coming into popularity. Following the Korean War in the early ’50s, brief war-time unions left thousands of fatherless Amerasian children behind. Touched by the fate of these orphans, Harry Holt, of Holt International, pioneered the first inter-country adoptions with Korea and the U.S., and revolutionized the concept of adoption.

Karalyn notes that there has been a major cultural shift affecting domestic adoption, particularly in the past 10 years. Single parenting and young mothers choosing to parent and raise their babies has significantly diminished the number of infants available for adoption. More grandparents are stepping in to raise their grandchildren and birth fathers have attained more legal rights.

Karalyn mentions other noteworthy trends in adoption: Open adoption, an arrangement where contact between the child’s adoptive and biological parents is maintained, was initiated by LSS in Texas in the early ’80s; adoption of older children from the foster care system is much more common, as are larger family placements, to keep sibling groups together and priority placement of children with special medical needs; and collaboration between state and the private sector has necessitated that the adoption process be more highly regulated and formally contracted.

It will be hard, or impossible, to replace Karalyn’s in-the-trenches experience. However, we are privileged to have had her compassionate spirit at the hub of our adoption programs these 35 years. Karalyn is the first to acknowledge that being at the heart of creating permanent families over the years has given her life a true sense of meaning.

Karalyn, we will miss you, and wish you well!