Good News Café on Adoption & Fostering

  • In NEWS
  • April 2, 2015
Good News Café on Adoption & Fostering
In March, EEA had a fantastic Good News Café on adoption and fostering.  The rest of this article gives a taste of what representatives of Evangelical Alliances from across our region learned… If every church supported a family to adopt or foster a child, for some nations, there would be no more children in institutional care. And, in some nations, we are on our way to seeing this amazing Good News reality. The inability to bear their own children can be a huge source of pain for couples but adoption and fostering goes beyond this.  This is about families for children, not children for families. And the Church has so many families that can transform children’s lives. These children can be invisible or rejected as second best. We can raise awareness in society to show that they are precious and deserve the best.  Lots of creative ideas were shared, including holding sports & cultural events. Raise awareness in the Church. Inspire about God’s heart for placing the lonely in families. Inspire about the difference that can be made – to the child, the family, the Church and to wider society.  Inspire about how the Church has so much to offer, with theological, pastoral, practical and spiritual resources to support a family and children. Don’t hold special meetings or you will just get a handful of interested people.  Talk to leaders. Get the issue into the Christian media. Evangelical Alliances have a key role to play.  Produce literature and videos for Sunday morning services, perhaps for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or Orphan / Adoption Sunday.  Recruit champions who can encourage and support their church and perspective parents.  Build capacity. Churches can provide mentors for children or for parents. They can provide training before adoption / fostering and after the child has joined the family. Most effective is a local or national network of support which can help NGOs to collaborate and make sure resources get to those that need them. Individual families may well want to be networked with each other. Specialists can provide the best training for parents and churches. They can also equip social workers to be able to work with Christian parents more effectively. Huge thanks to Phil Green of Home for Good and Ruslan Maliuta of World without Orphans for speaking at the Good News Café. They would be delighted to give more advice to national Evangelical Alliances.

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