June is national Family Reunification Month for foster children and their families and members of the community are invited to attend the first celebration held in Athens to mark the reunion of some of those children and their families. Each year, approximately 100 area families are reunited after children were placed in foster care.
“We are serving 184 kids in foster care and our waiting list 120,” that’s according to Susie Weller, Executive Director of Children First. She says her agency and Home in Five are hosting the event.
“Our mayor Kelly Girtz is signing a declaration, we’re going to be having a party celebrating reunifying parents, and we’d love for people to come down. It’s going to be at 10 o’ clock at City Hall on June 10th.
She says the gathering is meant to recognize the best outcomes for families in the system.
“Children First in Collaboration with Home in Five, will be establishing this event and we’d love for people to come down and celebrate keeping our families local.”
Weller says for a third of the families in Clarke County that go into foster care, parents successfully work the case plan and their children returned to them.
“These families have struggled many times with substance abuse, domestic violence.,” Weller said. “This is a way to support folks that have all that they can to do what they needed to do to get their children back. Here we are hoping to support them even further. What can we do to help keep these kids permanent in Athens and healthy?”
This is the first year in what organizers plan to make an annual event.