GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (KSNB) - On Highway 281, just down the road from Grand Island, is a resource that's helping connect families and kids who are looking for loving foster homes.
Boys Town in Grand Island is set to start a training session to help prospective parents work through the process to become foster home According to Boys Town representatives, the need is great especially when it comes to children with higher levels of care, and older kids.
Krysten Vance with Boys Town said the impacts of being without a home can be detrimental.
“I imagine putting myself in those shoes and being like a 14-year-old who knows no one will take them and maybe they've gone through several foster care placements and they have no where to go," Vance said. “There's kids who end up sleeping on cots in DHHS offices, or sleeping at the Foster Care Closet, because there is just no where for them to go, or their sleeping in adult homeless shelters."
The goal is to develop people like, Kindy Massing, who answer the call to take care of kids in the system. Massing her husband take care of one of the more high demand age groups, older kids. Massing said the toughest part of fostering is not what most expect it is.
“The hardest part is saying goodbye," Massing said. “Some of them will go back to mom and dad, some of them will go live with relatives. We recently said goodbye to a couple of them cause they went to California to live with an aunt, and you just cry like a baby in the airport. You're losing a part of your heart, they're just that close."
Vance with Boys Town said foster parents can have a lasting impact.
“I'm a foster parent myself, I have been since 2014, and I actually had a child in my home, she was 14 when I got her," Vance said. “She was on probation, ankle bracelet, all that. She hated it at my house, she would tell me she hated it all the time, acted like she didn't like to be there, but once she was out of my house and kinda grew up she sent me a message and thanked me for loving her like she was my own child. While the kids don't always show it, while they're in your care you're making a difference."
The next session of the foster care course is set to start on July 11, and anyone interested can call 308-440-4467, or email krysten.vance@boystown.org.