Lifebooks For Children in Foster Care

Many of us are familiar with scrap books but what is a lifebook? A lifebook brings together a child’s past, present, and future much like a scrapbook. A lifebook is a culmination of a child’s past and present. It is used to document each child’s history and capture the present. Lifebooks are an important source of comfort and are unique to foster care.

Caring Gifts for Foster Care

Where do you store your most treasured belongings? Are they tucked in a drawer, trunk or displayed on shelves? What if the only place you had to put your belongings was in a trash bag? This is the unfortunate reality for some youth in foster care.

Being a Blessing

Thanks to a generous donation from Howalt McDowell Insurance and Sanford Health, children and youth in LSS’ Sioux Falls area Treatment Foster Care homes had an especially Merry Christmas!  These two teams made a decision to make Christmas a little brighter for youth and families in the Sioux Falls area.  They not only made a donation, they also had a great time shopping for the gifts!

Life Book pages make a difference in children’s lives!

Life Books are a connection to the past that can provide insight to the future.  They are essential tools to aid the children in the child welfare system in understanding the narrative of their lives and the meaning of the changes they have experienced.  Life Books are valuable in preserving children’s life stories as well as in helping them make sense of their past.  (Center for Adoptive Studies, University of Illinois)

How will being Foster Parents affect our other children?

When people are considering becoming foster parents, there are a lot of questions.  One of those questions is how adding children to their home will affect their family including any children already in the home.  Thank you to one of our current foster parents for sharing their insight on this topic.

November is National Adoption Awareness Month

While all adoption-related issues are important, the particular focus of this month is the adoption of children currently in foster care.

Memory Keeping is an Ongoing Process

Life Book Volunteers

On April 16th and 20th, 2018, LSS Foster Care Services was blessed with 12 volunteers who came together and made over 1,500 Life Book pages for youth in foster care!  Lori Hofer was instrumental in collecting donations, purchasing supplies, and recruiting volunteers to make Life Book pages.  These supplies and pages will be distributed and used by youth, social workers, and foster families throughout the year. 

Why Not You?

Are you interested in adoption or foster care? November is recognized as National Adoption Month, and local agencies are sponsoring an Adoption and Foster Care Awareness event on November 2, 2017, at the Rapid City Dahl Arts Center, located at 713 7th Street, Rapid City, South Dakota.

1000 pages!

Year after year, a great volunteer group from CIGNA comes together to make Life book pages for children and youth in foster care.  These caring and talented volunteers outdo themselves each year!  This year they put together over 1000 pages in one day!  That’s right, 1000 pages! 

Foster Care Celebrates Successful Graduates

This spring has been an exciting time for the LSS Treatment Foster Care Program as four (4) foster care youth will be graduating from High School.  To add to the excitement, all four youth plan to further education or have already enlisted in the military!