Life Skills Foundation is a non-profit based in Tacoma, WA that helps house and care for children in the Emergency Placement Foster Care system.
WHO WE HELP
Right now, there are foster children in hotel rooms because they have nowhere else to go. Without a stable home address, they cannot attend a regular school and without a family, there’s no one helping to raise them. Their days are spent in state offices and every few nights they’re moved to a different budget hotel or they’re shipped to another state in search of a bed.
These are the kids we help.
EMERGENCY
PLACEMENT
Our kids come to us from Emergency Placement Services (EPS). These children have been suddenly removed from either unsafe living situations with their families or from inadequate foster homes.
EPS kids often live in fear of where they’ll be shipped to next. Life Skills Foundation helps provide the stability they need in a loving, well supervised home where each child receives the individualized care they deserve.
By state law, EPS kids can only stay with us for up to 30 days or until a permanent foster home or living situation can be identified. For this reason, it’s vital to expand our EPS Homes and our placement services in order to provide care to as many children as possible and to ensure the continuity of care they receive with us continues after they leave.
BEHAVIORAL
REHABILITATION
In 2020, we began accepting children from Behavioral Rehabilitation Services (BRS). These kids have mental and educational challenges different from EPS kids. Many have suffered traumatic circumstances, exhibit aggressive behavior, can be a danger to themselves and are often runaways.
Delivering BRS demands greater resources than our general EPS kids. BRS kids require a highly specialized and certified staff trained to deal with troubled youth. For this reason, it’s necessary to create separate homes for our BRS kids to care for their specific needs.
FAMILY
VISITATION
Family Visitation assists a child’s emotional development by reducing the fear and anxiety often caused by family separation. We fund visitation for kids that still have a connection to their biological siblings and other family members.
But visitations are one of our most costly programs as all meetings must be supervised by specialized staff and transportation on both sides are covered by the program. However, the rewards far outweigh the costs since children that receive visitation are happier and have better outcomes.
We need your help to build a new visitation center on our Main Campus in order to increase quality time for the children and reduce costs.
PLACEMENT
SERVICES
The number of foster children in need of a home is so great we cannot house them all. We strive to be the bridge that takes our kids from uncertainty to a stable, loving and permanent home that upholds our standards for exceptional care.
Finding a loving, long-term foster home or permanent placement through adoption is our ultimate goal and the best long-term solution for each child. We’re currently expanding our child placement services to identify and train potential foster and adoptive parents.
WE’RE GROWING
The establishment of new homes is not funded by the state and we need your help to get these new homes up and running!
SUCCESS STORIES
Layla
At 15, Layla was facing assault charges and living in deplorable circumstances. When she arrived at our girls’ home, she instantly bonded with our staff and even took on a leadership role in the house, helping mediate disputes between the other girls. Through her bond with our staff, Layla confided that she had been the victim of sexual assault from a family member.
Our staff reported the abuse and helped place Layla with an experienced foster mom. We continued to support her by writing character letters to the judge in her assault case and testifying on her behalf. The judge was so impressed with Layla’s progress in the short time she had been in our custody that he reduced her sentence to probation.
Layla has since enrolled in the Running Start program at a local college and stays connected with our staff. She’s on her way to becoming another kind of statistic; a success story. Layla’s an example of how the loving kindness of a proper home environment can completely transform a child’s trajectory in life.
Greg
When Greg came to our boys’ home he was prone to aggressive outbursts and required more intensive services than his peers. We quickly learned Greg did well one-on-one and alone, so we tailored a plan specific to him, including outings with a social worker, conferences with a counselor and visits with his grandmother. Responding well to this individualized program, Greg became cooperative and proved to be a very bright kid.
But it was one of our smaller programs that seemed to have the biggest impact on Greg. JMC Bucks allows our kids to earn credits, through good behavior and chores, redeemable in our little store of fun things. Greg loved JMC Bucks and he began to self-regulate his own behavior through this positive reinforcement.
Greg was with us for 7 weeks before returning to his grandparents. The Department of Children, Youth & Families was stunned by his progress. His story proves each child requires unique solutions. By tailoring a program for Greg, he no longer faced the uncertainty of random hotel rooms and returned home.
Autumn
At 16, Autumn was already Type 1 diabetic, sneaking out to parties, smoking weed, and getting drunk. Eventually, excessive drinking landed her in the hospital and Child Protective Services stepped in to remove her from her grandparents' home.
Autumn came to our girls’ Home not knowing what to expect. We partnered with her social worker and her grandparents, creating a tailor-made plan to get Autumn back on track and back home.
Autumn responded well to the empathy of our staff, confiding she’d been struggling with the trauma of finding out she was adopted and also losing her adoptive mom two years prior. By creating a safe space for Layla to share her feelings she began to thrive and was able to be returned to her grandparents’ care.
Autumn and her grandmother started a YouTube channel together to talk about how she coped with her trauma. Learning how to successfully communicate her pain has set Autumn free from her previously self-destructive patterns.
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