In the Community: Teach Your Children Well – Friends of Children and Families, Inc. is a Friend Indeed

A 14-year-old Central Florida child's missteps could have easily ended in tragedy, but thanks to the mentoring program at Friends of Children and Families, she was pulled back from the edge, and her young life is now happily back on track.

With her father in jail and her mother working and attending school, the restless and alienated child, unable to find the love and direction she needed at home, naively looked for it in all the wrong places – and with the worst sort of people. She eventually landed in juvenile court, which then steered her to a private agency called Friends of Children and Families, who enrolled her in their mentoring program.

Friends Residence Foster Home Girls participating in a Therapeutic Art Project painting and decorating their initials. They loved using their creativity and creating a new item to decorate their room.

Friends Who Mentor

Paired with a mature, professional woman, the troubled child got the attention and guidance she needed. That counseling quickly sparked a new self-respect and determination in the child. "After about five or six visits, this little girl said, ‘I'm not going to court anymore,'" says Gloria Esteban, director of the mentoring program.

Such stories help drive Friends of Children and Families. The Orlando, Florida, nonprofit's mission is to provide troubled children and their families, whether in foster care or at home, "the opportunity to have the resources and tools every other child would have to reach their full potential," says clinical director Donna Berry. Friends of Children and Families also provides in-home counseling, operates foster care group homes, and conducts psychological assessments of children in the child welfare system. The mentoring program, begun in 2011, currently provides mentors 85 children.

For the last three years, a Subaru of America Foundation grant has helped support the program, touching the lives of 700 children over that time, says Friends of Children and Families executive director Desmond Taylor. Mentors help teen foster children learn skills they'll need at 18 when they leave the system: how to find a job, education and a place to live, and how to navigate future life choices.

Mentors are diverse – many speak Spanish or Haitian Creole or other languages in addition to English – and commit to at least a year of spending time with the children in their charge. "We don't want a situation where someone says they want to be a mentor for three months and then they're out of that child's life," Berry notes. They don't undermine parents, but instead work as a team.

Friends Who Tutor

The grant also helps support a Friends of Children and Families tutoring program. Because they often are moved from one home to another, "many of the children in foster care have fallen behind academically," Berry explains. "They have sometimes had to change schools several times in the school year. As a result, their math and reading levels are often below grade level."

Education is a core commitment for the organization – "the key that unlocks the door to opportunity," she says. "We want to ensure that children in foster care, despite disadvantages that they may have encountered earlier in life, are given a fair chance." Tutoring, she adds, helps teach them "the value of education and builds their self-confidence."

Begun in 2012, the tutoring program aided more than 40 foster kids in grades K-12 last year. The organization reports that 77 percent of the children who have taken part in the last couple of years have improved school attendance, 86 percent have improved in at least one school subject, and 93 percent have developed a more positive attitude about school.

"Some of our successes have included having children make the honor roll for the first time and for many of them to realize that attending college is a possibility," Berry says.

Seminole County Students Working Against Tobacco (SWAT) which FRIENDS has an active club that participates in activities that educate teens on the dangers of smoking.

Friends Who Care

And they forge strong bonds. A 16-year-old child, no longer in the program, still kept in touch with her mentor 75 miles away. About to run away from her foster home, she first called her mentor, who listened and helped redirect the child to a better outcome.

As for the 14-year-old child from Central Florida, Esteban reports that her mentor's patience and commitment continue to pay off. The mentor recently took her on a college tour and got her to think of her future. "She's not in trouble now," says Esteban, "and she's starting to do better in school."

Learn more about the good work of Friends of Children and Families, Inc. and how you, too, can make a difference.