They say, “It takes a village to raise a child.”
This program supports the Gathering Place in Pleasanton, a collaborative project among Alternative Family Services (AFS), Alameda County Social Services Agency and Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services. It provides a safe, comfortable, family-friendly environment where foster children and their birth parents receive a range of services, including therapeutic, supervised and observed visits.
Our chapter plays a role in supplying reading books for the children to select, read aloud with their birth parents and take home to keep. We also provide games, toys and puzzles for the kids to enjoy at The Gathering Place with their birth parents. We supply gift cards for activities the kids can do together with their birth parents during these visits. Our goal is to encourage the kids and their parents to have positive interactions, while they are together.
This program is expanding into the Tri-Valley Area School Districts, helping support the foster and kinship youths within these districts. We have supplied them with backpacks filled with school supplies for graduating seniors to take with them to college or trade schools. Sometimes we give them gift cards to purchase much needed items, such as clothes & shoes. We are continually reaching out to the schools to determine future needs of foster children.
