Nazareth Children’s Home has been licensed by the state as an agency to place
children in foster family care. The
license, issued by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, means the home will
be able to train and supervise foster parents and subsequently place children in those
homes, says Nazareth Director Vernon Walters Jr.
Jacqueline Millican, a graduate of the University
of North Carolina at Asheville, will direct the new program. She has been certified as a
trainer by the Child Care Division of Health and Human Services.
The new license will add a program to
Nazareth’s services. In addition to serving children 6 and older at the home on
Crescent Road, the Nazareth staff will place and supervise children from birth to age 18
in foster homes in Rowan and surrounding counties. This means, says Walters, that Nazareth
will be able to serve many more children.
Foster care is temporary substitute care for
children who must be separated from their parents or family when the family is unable to
provide adequate care or protection, he says.
Most children enter foster care as a result of
unstable conditions in their own homes. The most frequent causes are the physical or
mental illness of parents, parental substance abuse, emotional problems of the children
themselves, severe neglect or abuse, abandonment, divorce, illegitimacy or other family
problems with which the natural parents feel they are unable to cope.
The court or parents decide whether to removing
children from their homes, not the Department of Social Services in the county involved.
“Removal of a child from his natural family
is a serious matter and should always occur with a plan in mind for both the child and his
family,” Walters says.
“We want to expand our services to become
more specialized than what we do now. Down the road, we’re looking toward developing
therapeutic foster care, which means that we’ll be able to serve children who have
behavior and emotionally handicapped problems and need specialized care.”
Offering the new service enables Nazareth to serve
family groups with young children in a combination of foster family care and residential
care.
“It also helps us maintain sibling groups by
keeping brothers and sisters together in foster care homes,” he says. “The
program is designed to match a child’s needs with the strengths of the foster
parents. We find a foster family for the child, not a child for a foster family.”
Today's News