Jim and Cathy's latest venture

Special Friends
Taken from the website for AASK-Arizona

"Special Friends are volunteers who commit to spending quality time each month with a foster child who is matched to them based on certain commonalities. These can include gender, shared interests, and location of residence. Special Friends are caring adults who listen, support, and encourage children while exposing them to life-enriching experiences involving the arts, sports, volunteer activities, etc.

As a Special Friend, you can help make a difference in one of these children's lives by serving as a role model, advocate, mentor, and friend. Special Friends assist youth in learning important life-skills such as decision-making, relationship building, and living successfully within a community.

Mentoring

Do you remember the first time you invited someone special to watch you perform in a school play? Shopping for your prom dress? Being cheered on as you played your first varsity game?

You have the opportunity to create these memorable experiences for a child in foster care. Away from their parents and without a stable home environment, what these children need more than anything is just one adult to step forward and say: I care about you. Your life is important. You matter to me.
How does the program benefit children?

With the presence of a stable adult in their lives, 73% of youth are more optimistic about their futures. You can be the difference in a child's life simply by spending time with him or her doing things that you love. As a mentor, you can watch movies, go hiking, do arts and crafts, go to your favorite restaurant, or just sit around and chat. You can motivate a child to achieve his or her personal best by cheering them on and taking pride in their accomplishments.

By listening, supporting, and encouraging, you can make a huge difference!
How can you get involved?

Being a mentor is fun and rewarding! All you have to do is show up and be a good friend."

Cathy adds:

There are 10,000 children in Arizona alone in out of home care. Mostly in group homes, or "orphanages" they are more commonly known as. And let's face it, people who adopt generally want young kids, babies, cuties. They rarely adopts teenagers. When these children turn 18 they "age out" of the foster care system. Where are they going to go for support? Help filling out college applications, buying their first car, getting their first apartment? Where do they go for Thanksgiving? Christmas? Their birthday?

Working in the emergency room, I can tell you that many of them end up there. Drug overdoses usually. Some just looking for a place to spend the night.

So, yes. Jim and I, along with our children, are taking on a foster child living in a group home. We have just started the process, filling out our application, getting fingerprinted and getting letters of reference. Once we are proven safe and sane, which takes about 6-ish weeks, they will match us with a child (which we have the option of choosing) and we agree to spend 2 days a month with them for the next year. If this turns out to be a good match, and the chosen child does not get adopted in that time, we can chose to continue to mentor this child indefinitely. So we pick up our special friend and take them to dinner and a movie, or the mall, or the pool, or just to our house to make pizza's, or cookies, or do whatever. And while we're at it, we teach them life skills, social skills, and survival skills.

One child was quoted as saying something like, "he was the only person that spent time with me because he wanted to", referring to his special friend. The staff in the group home were wonderful to him and took excellent care of him, but anyway you look at it, they are getting paid for it. Special friends are there because we want to be. If I remember correctly, this came from a 16 year old boy who has been living in a group home since he was 8. No mom, no dad. No family. Very sad.

SO...... we are going to be special friends. We are very excited about it, but realistic. We know we can't save the world, can't bring them all home with us, but maybe we can keep one kid out of the ER.

Visit www.aask-az.org for more info

Wish us luck! I'll keep you posted!!

Cathy