Foster Care Services Graduates 17 Families Through Online STARS

Foster Care Services Graduates 17 Families Through Online STARS

On Tuesday, June 9, our Foster Care Services Team in Columbia, Missouri graduated 17 families from Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries’s first-ever STARS class taught completely online.

When COVID-19 hit, we lost our ability to meet with families in person. Despite this obstacle, we knew we had to make training happen somehow. 

We trained them online via Zoom. As for many amid the pandemic, navigating the online world via Zoom brought challenges for our team, but they adapted.

The Online STARS Class celebrates graduation on June 9.

“It has been a different process, but overall we’ve had good participation,” Licensing/Training Director Amy Kingery said. “We are thankful for our team of trainers to be able to conduct breakout groups and encourage more interaction.”

We are fairly certain this was one of very few foster care licensing opportunities offered throughout the entire state amid the virus. While our state shut down, necessarily so, the need for children in foster care to be well cared for increased.

More well-supported foster parents = more safe homes for children from hard places.

We are so proud of these 17 families and their commitment, and also of our Foster Care Services Staff and how tirelessly they have worked to keep this going despite the circumstances.

To celebrate their accomplishment, Foster Care Services held an online graduation celebration. The families were mailed their certificates of completion ahead of time, to be opened altogether during the ceremony. The envelopes were filled with confetti and included a note from a member of our FCS team.

Each family was announced and congratulated as a slideshow played with their names and photos. The FCS team even played “Pomp and Circumstance” to celebrate the occasion.

“Completing both STARS Training and the home study/licensing process via Zoom has been a big change for us as a staff,” Family Advocate Karcie Wyatt-Clark said. “I think we were all a little nervous at first, wondering what the process would look like. But God came through, providing us with amazing families who were ready and willing to be not only flexible throughout the entire process, but to open up and share their histories and future desires with us through a computer screen.”

STARS is a required course for those wanting to become licensed foster parents in Missouri. Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries has taught three sessions of STARS in 2020 and many of our families are now fostering within the central Missouri area.

If you or someone you know is interested in foster parenting, please consider signing up for our next STARS training class.

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