Latest update November 26th, 2024 1:00 AM
November is Foster Care Month
Head of the CPA Ann Greene
‘Give the gift of love and protection and foster a child today’
“Being a foster parent is a priceless type of activity…it is for one who really opens up their home and their heart to take a child and provide that care for a child. If you can provide that care for a child, you just save an entire generation,” the words of Ann Greene, Head of the Childcare and Protection Agency of the Ministry of Human Services.
Her words could not have come at a better time as recent events have brought foster care to the fore, even as Guyana has designated the month of November Foster Care Month.
The theme for the month is “Give the Gift of Love and Protection and Foster a Child Today”.
It is expected that throughout the month there will be programmes that will raise the level of awareness so that more persons will be encouraged to come forward and be a part of the future by fostering a child.
Coleen Khan, the agency’s Foster Care Manager in a brief interview with this newspaper, informed that her department is responsible for the short listing of prospective foster parents and the placement of children in their care.
“First of all we recruit and then we also do placement and then we do monitoring,” Khan explained.
After a child is placed, Social workers do follow-up, psycho social support.
There are many children in need of foster care in Guyana and there are many who are opening up their homes to them also, but there is still need for more homes to open up to these children and it takes a special touch to be a foster parent.
But thanks to the Childcare and Protection Agency, parental training is available.
According to Khan, there were times when the agency has had to intervene whenever they deemed the foster care not up to standard.
“We have children who move through one foster parent to another; but it is not as a result of cases of abuse; it has to do with if we feel that the standard is not up to what we feel is right,” Khan said.
Foster Care Manager of the CPA Coleen Khan
The Childcare and Protection Agency has often come under attack for the work they do, with many persons accusing them of taking away people’s children.
But if there was no such agency, what would have been the fate of the countless abandoned children who were rescued by the agency?
“When people attack us, I say if people only know if we weren’t here then what. There are sometimes we’re tired. Sometimes I leave here really exhausted and I will go down the steps, weary, but knowing that we have made a difference in a child’s life and saved a generation,” Ann Greene said.
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