With only a few more hours left in their “Safe Home for Kids” campaign, Hindy, whose home is one of the only legally approved foster families in Crown Heights, joined us to express her gratitude for the overwhelming communal support, and what it means for the future of foster care in the neighborhood.
You’ve just reached 50% of your goal!
It really has, BH! We’ve seen almost 450 donors come together to bring us within reach of our goal to help us make a warm, safe space for children to stay until they can be reunited with their parents.
Can you tell me a little more about the campaign and its impact in the future of foster care?
Right now, we’re one of the only legally approved foster families in Crown Heights. With Hashem’s help, we’ve been able to take in several children throughout the years. More recently, with three siblings living with us long term, we have been unable to respond to new cases. That’s why we need a larger space.
Now, after this campaign, any time there are one or two children that need to be taken in immediately we can say yes.
Keeping brothers and sisters together during these tough times is so important for the children’s stability and well-being. Our new location we will give us a separate private room for these children to get comfortable in a space which is close to their friends and schools.
How can people be involved?
Hopefully, more people will get interested in foster care. First they can go online and participate in the campaign at charidy.com/safehomeforkids or call 516-231-HOME.
Then we want them to think about helping foster children more directly, either by taking them in or by volunteering with childcare. For example, you can help by encouraging your older children to volunteer to help a foster mom at bath time or with homework or baby sitting.
Oftentimes when a child is removed from his or her home, they arrive literally with only the clothes on their backs, or perhaps a black trash liner containing all of their possessions. It is my intention, now that I will have the room to do this, to keep tubs of clothing, shoes and coats in differing sizes so that any child that comes into my care will have appropriate clothing. You can help by donating any unwanted or gently used items.
I’m amazed by all that you are doing for these kids. It’s an undertaking many cannot accomplish due to lack of space or resources. How did you become involved in this work?
Actually I am going to be speaking about that tonight at the Junior Nshei event. I am sure your readers will want to come by and hear it in person.
The goal of foster care is always reunification with the parent. How does the role of foster parent to parent play out during this time?
One of the most important and perhaps often misunderstood roles of a foster parent is that of becoming a mentor to the birth parents. The foster parent is often viewed as being against the parent; this is quite simply not the case.
Oftentimes, the foster parent will play a crucial role in helping a mother or father learn skills that they may be missing thus resulting in the child being able to be returned to the care of their parents. Because more often than not a foster parents role will be to work with both the agency and the parents to facilitate the return of the child to the parental home, therefore, it is helpful where possible that an amicable relationship be maintained.
In addition to the three siblings you have in long term foster care, how have you been able to help other children over the years?
There’s been several other children ranging in ages from toddlers to teenagers, on a more short-term basis and in all of those cases the children were returned home. Unfortunately, there have been many, many other children that were in need of a place of safety and we were quite simply unable to take them due to lack of space & resources.
But this is about to change.
How will this campaign, and your partnership with Vaad Hakohol, further your efforts in foster care?
The success of this campaign will enable us to establish a permanent emergency facility so that no child ever need to sleep on an agency’s floor again.
The first part of this process was to find a home large enough to accommodate my own family plus additional bedroom space to enable us to keep a room at the ready for when that call comes. As you will appreciate, this has not been an easy task in our current housing market, but with the help of our community, my family will soon be moving into larger accommodation, which will allow us to be able to provide emergency care for any jewish child in the Crown Heights area.
Are there others who have been integral to this process of establishing a safe home?
Absolutely! We could not have done this without the Vaad hakohol of Crown Heights, specifically with the support of Zaki Tamir and Rabbi Eli Cohen, who I would like to publicly thank for all their help in making this happen.
I also want to thank everyone who has contributed in anyway large or small, I cannot put into words what this means to my family.
To participate please visit www.charidy.com/safehomeforkids or call 516-231-HOME (4663)
such a great mitzvah to be associated with!!
Hashem should bless you bountifully for your chesed.
Thank you HIndy!!! for all your amazing work