If you follow A Fostered Life’s podcast, Facebook page, blog, or YouTube, you’ve heard me talk about The Flourishing Foster Parent, my support and equipping membership group for foster parents.

One of the benefits of being part of FFP is access to our weekly “Coaching Calls.” Each week, members join a live Google Meet where we focus on a topic relevant to foster parents. Sometimes I lead the discussion, but at least half the time, I bring in guest speakers and facilitate a conversation with them followed by a Q&A time with the call participants. It’s so good, and the feedback I’ve gotten from folks on these calls has been amazing.

Here’s what some of the participants have written to tell me lately:

• “I very much love this community and know that the support is there.”
• “Thank you for all you do. You have a huge impact on our lives and the lives of children and families in the welfare system.”
• “Your content, as well as reading parenting books and resources you recommended, helped me feel prepared from a parenting perspective. I feel like the knowledge and skills I learned let me handle this as well as I could have… So thank you for all that you do!”
• “This group has been a lifeline for me.”

The Coaching Calls are usually recorded (except when we do a “Caching Up and Checking In” call) so that folks who miss the live call can still access the content later. In additional to making these recordings available in the FFP Library, I’ve also begun offering digital downloads of a few of the recordings in my online Store.

I decided today to invite you to listen in on a recent Coaching Call. The topic was “Trauma Informed Parenting,” and our guest speaker was Adoption and Trauma Therapist Lesley Joy Ritchie, who practices in Seattle. Lesley helped develop the wonderful PATCH (Parenting Adopted and Traumatized Children) Program and was able to offer some really wonderful insight for those who are, well, “PATCHing.”

This Coaching Call contains some of the most valuable content I have! I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for anyone stepping in to the role of foster parent to do the heavy lifting of learning about the role trauma plays in a child’s development. This gives you an idea of what our weekly Coaching Calls are like!

If you are a foster parent who could use a regular support community and ongoing sharpening of your foster parenting tools, consider joining The Flourishing Foster Parent! The cost is $20/month, there is no obligation, and you may leave the group anytime. Click here to learn more.

No foster parent should ever feel like they’re going at it alone!