Fostering Voices Podcast

Foster care according to our 8 year old bio daughter, who has been a foster sibling for over 6 years, and our 10 year old daughter who we adopted out of foster care.

It's easy to forget why we are fostering, or why it's important to be involved in foster care. This episode is a reminder for all of us of what foster kids are going through. This should help us to empathize and encourage us to continue to care for foster kids, and families who are fostering kids.

This week's episode focuses on building community in your actual neighborhood! We talk about the importance of community all the time. But it's easier to build community at work, or at church, maybe in a foster support group, or sports team. But how about where you actually live?

We used to be super disorganized! Our house was a mess, as were our finances! But we have found that with each child we add to our home, the more we NEED order, schedules, routines, and a BUDGET! Now that we are a family of 9, we are running better than ever before. So we are sharing our home management tips with you!

Thanks for joining us for another episode of our podcast! This episode is a conversation about RACE, and why we need to check ourselves, and our thoughts on race. The more we know, the more we can educate our kids, and the next generation to do and be better!

Welcome back to our podcast, friends! We took a few weeks off, and are so excited to be back with you all. Season 6 is going to be a great one! Tune in to hear how we spent the last few weeks, and what you can be expecting in the coming weeks!

Welcome to Episode 100!! We are so thankful to be able to bring you an absolutely incredible interview with our friend - Wendy Nguyen, of Wendy's Lookbook! Wendy has been a fashion blogger for about 10 years now, and maybe you know her because you are one of her 1.1 million followers on Instagram. But Wendy is so very much more than a pretty face, with incredible fashion sense. Wendy is a former foster youth, and she shares her heart and story with us.

Weoften get the question of how to start a podcast, so this is our answer! Over an hour of info from us, and our friend Davey Jones, of Davey and Krista.

This week we are talking about ANXIETY. Does that give you anxiety to just see the word? Well, something that you need to know is that anxiety is NORMAL. And it's beneficial. As long as it doesn't paralyze you and cause you to not be able to function properly. But we have overpathologized fear and worry, and that's why it seems like everyone is struggling with anxiety. This is a great interview with clinical psychologist, Dr. Ray Branton.

This week we are so thankful to be able to welcome our friend, Ray Branton to the podcast! He shares practical ways to have successful, and meaningful relationships - with your friends, but especially with your spouse! You can find out more about Ray and his practice, PCA Counselors.

This is one of our shortest episodes - clocking in at just under 20 minutes! We wanted to do a nice light episode where our listeners could get to know us a bit better, without having to hear us retell our life stories. Which come up here and there over the last 95 episodes.

Foster parents need to accrue different number of training hours to keep their licenses open. In Arizona, that number is 12 a year. We had 3 more that we needed to do, so Chris did his training on Feelings, and I did mine on Loss. They were very intermingled, so it worked well for us to do a podcast episode on them!

how to get licensed for foster care right now. We are still in the middle of a global pandemic, and so it is actually easier to get licensed right now, than ever before. Because all of the classes, and most of the requirements can be done online!

With Mother's Day around the corner - and even if you don't listen to this right when we release these episodes, there are always birthdays, Christmas, and other opportunities to buy thoughtful gifts for our loved ones. So we encourage you to listen to this episode to get some tips!

"Safe House" by Dr. Josh Straub, talks about how EMOTIONAL SAFETY, more than any other factor is scientifically linked to raising kids who live, love, and lead well. So it's important as the parents to learn emotional safety, so we can provide that for our kids as well.