Ep 75: Care Communities Impact

In this episode of Fostering Conversations, host Amy Smith welcomes Tami Jenny, Jenny, and Lexi to discuss the growing impact of the Care Communities program. Together, they explore how groups of volunteers provide meaningful, trauma-informed support to foster families across Utah.

Listeners will learn:

• What a Care Community is and how volunteers support foster families.
• Why people who are not foster parents can still make a significant difference.
• How trauma-informed training equips volunteers to better support children and caregivers.
• Real-life examples of providing meals, transportation, childcare, emotional support, and practical help.
• The importance of reducing isolation and building trusted relationships around foster families.
• How communities, businesses, faith groups, and individuals can get involved.

To learn more visit carecommunities.org

The conversation highlights the power of surrounding foster families with consistent support and demonstrates that anyone, regardless of life stage or experience, can play a role in strengthening foster care in their community.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] On today’s episode of Fostering Conversations, we’ll be talking about the Care Communities program, how to get involved, and how great it is to be a part of.

Amy: Welcome to Fostering Conversations. I’m your host, Amy Smith. Today we have Tami Jenny and Lexi joining us, who all work for Utah Foster Care. Thanks for joining us, you guys.

Tami: Thanks for having us

Jenny: Glad to be here

Amy: All of you are involved in the Care Communities program. Lexi’s the director over communications, but she is the leader of a Care Community, so she’s joining us with that perspective today. So maybe let’s have, Tammy or Jenny just explain to us briefly what Care Communities is, and then we’ll dive [00:01:00] into how people can get involved, Lexi’s experience as a care team leader

Tami: I would love for Jenny to introduce the Care Communities program. She’s one of our coordinators and our statewide trainer for the program

Jenny: Absolutely. So the Care Communities program is a program that gathers eight to 10 individuals in a community, whether it’s faith-based, just community-based, business-based, to be able to surround one foster family with support, practical, emotional, and, physical supports to b- help them be able to better provide, care for the children, that come into their homes that come from hard places

Amy: Yeah. So what I love about Care Communities is that it gives the opportunity for our community members to participate in the foster care experience without being a foster parent, because not everybody can be a foster parent.

It is quite taxing, and you do need to have the time and ability to be able to do that. But Lexi is a care team leader. Lexi, tell us a little bit about [00:02:00] why you wanted to become a care team leader

Lexi: Yeah. So I was actually already working at Utah Foster Care when I decided I wanted to be part of a care community or a care team. and I’ve just always had such a soft spot in my heart for, foster families and kids in care and just wanting to help and be involved and, have lots of really cool, great opportunities to do that, obviously through work.

But, my position’s a little more behind the scenes, l...