Ask any parent and they will tell you that parenting is the most rewarding and challenging, job of their lives. Foster parents are no different.
Yet, too often, foster parents find themselves and their families misunderstood. Like all parents, they provide a safe and loving home for a child to grow but with the added responsibility of caring for children who come to them with trauma, emotional scars, and in need of healing and nurturing.
Encompass leverages peer-to-peer mentoring and a peer support program to provide support, education, and stabilization for provides foster, kinship, and pre-adoptive caregivers.
“Our Foster Care Specialist sought our family out regularly as if she knew when we needed her most. She had a special sensitivity, given her own experiences, and understood the challenges we were facing with a child with complex trauma history and exceptionally high needs. Not only could she draw from her own experience; she provided ‘real life’ support and feedback, always without judgment.”
About Us
Encompass is a referral-based service that uses peer-to-peer mentoring to help stabilize foster families (including kinship, child-specific, and pre-adoptive) who are navigating a rising level of need or crisis in their homes.
Our Team
Our dedicated Foster Care Specialists use their lived foster care experience, coupled with the ongoing and expansive training the program provides, to address the challenges of raising traumatized children and to reduce the risk of disruption.
Foster Care Specialists partner with families to create individualized action plans and work collaboratively with DCF, educational, clinical, and community stakeholders to build a support system for each family they serve.
Reach Out
If you are interested in Encompass, please contact your child’s ongoing or adoption social worker for a referral. For more information about the program, please contact encompass@mspcc.org.
