The supports centers of “For Our Children" Foundation in Sofia and Plovdiv help everybody who wants to become a parent, to care at home for abandoned child or child at risk. We believe that there is no better place for development, learning and understanding the world than the family. Only the family environment can provide a child with warmth, care, attention and love.

In Bulgaria more than 7000 Bulgarian children grow up in social homes. Every year more than 1,500 babies separate with their mothers in maternity hospitals in the Bulgaria. There are two main reasons: lack of support and poverty. In Bulgaria the beliefs that the only place for a baby with disability is the social homes and the “state” is a good mother has been widespread for many years. We, the specialists from “For Our Children" Foundation know well that it is not so. That’s why we haven’t been stopping since 1997 to recruit foster parents to take care for vulnerable Bulgarian children.

We help everybody who wants to become foster carer by:

• Telephone consultations to clarify the general motivation and possibilities that foster caring offers
• Information meeting - we meet with the candidates and their families. During the information meetings we talk about foster care, the opportunities it provides to families and its positive effects for children.
• Providing support to collect the needed documents.
• Assessing the foster candidates’ capacity, capabilities and their parental skills.
• Training for candidates for foster parents to understand what children expect and to learn more about the abandonment effects and kids with special needs.
• Presentation to the Commission for the child in the municipality for approving the applicants
• Matching the child with the candidates for foster parents. That is a crucial step from the whole process when we support the child and the foster parent to learn, share and do together the first things that often results difficult.
• Professional consultations by social workers and psychologists before and after the foster care placement. We are available when the family experiences difficult situations, dilemmas or problems.
• Supporting trainings – in order to help the approved foster carer to learn new things and to provide quality care for Bulgarian children.

The most important thing we do is that we manage the whole process of becoming a foster carer. We are with you from the beginning and we will support you after the end of the procedure. Because we want you and the child placed with you to feel good and secure together.

 
Our support for foster carers, children placed in foster families as well as for young people who are about to leave the foster family is completely free.

You can find more about the ways we can support you in the towns of Sofia and Plovdiv (see our contacts).