Today we’d like to introduce you to Dorothy Daniels.
Hi Dorothy, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Orange County right here in California. My father delivered Wonder bread as a truck driver, and I can remember always seeing the pride he had in his work. My mother worked at a bank but was also the primary caretaker of my 4 siblings and me. I was the youngest and while we looked like a traditional “All-American” family, we, unfortunately, held on to a dark secret that lingered for years…abuse.
The surviving I had to do from the trauma and the hard work I put in to grow and heal, I am thankful and take pride in how it has shaped me into the person I am today. I channel these experiences, and my healing, into the work we do at Fostering UNITY every day. Ensuring resource families are well equipped to help children in foster care heal and grow is one of our main goals of Fostering UNITY so that these beautiful children can grasp onto a hopeful future.
I started my journey within foster care as a kinship caregiver over 30 years ago. I have since continued this journey by becoming licensed first with Children’s Bureau and then Los Angeles County DCFS in 2014. Like so many, I was drawn to continue fostering children in order to provide a home that wasn’t just an open bed but rather an environment to be met with love, support, and encouragement so that each child had the ability to feel safe enough to begin the healing process.
My desire to start a nonprofit that focused on helping others was deeply inspired by Eunice Kennedy Shriver. I worked for Mrs. Shriver’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, focusing on a set of core values called Community of Caring. As her Western Regional Coordinator, I had the unique opportunity to travel with Mrs. Shriver and visit k – 12 schools all over the nation and experience just what it means to serve our community through beneficial programs and how the impacts create systemic change. During our time working together, she instilled in me a sense of humility & empowerment that one can only get from a great servant leader such as her. I wanted to channel this work ethic and sense of servitude for our community into the foster system and our Los Angeles County community so that I too could create sustainable systemic change. While these ideals and hopes were in the air, I still hadn’t had the “moment” where I knew it was time to start such an endeavor.
In October of 2019, I had two precious foster children in my care and there were decisions being made regarding their future that reduced me to the rawest emotions I have ever felt. I found myself on my knees in the middle of my family room, in tears and utterly heartbroken. I loved them so dearly and felt that the decisions that were being made were not in their best interest, but I had nowhere to turn. I had no one to support me in this advocacy. I had no number that would put me in contact with a person who has been in my shoes and could help guide me. I was alone.
That realization was the moment that I relentlessly made it my mission to try and bring awareness to the situations that resource families go through so no one had to feel the way I felt again. I prayed for direction and knew that in order to achieve this, I needed to take one step to move forward, even if it wasn’t immediately starting a non-profit, I had to do something for my foster community. I felt a strong conviction that this step forward would be through a Christmas Party designed for foster children in Los Angeles County. Hardly knowing another soul that did this hard work, I channeled every Hallmark movie I knew and set out to bring the holiday joy to children in foster care and their resource families. With every intention of creating a small, intimate holiday party, 2 months of planning led to a holiday Winter Wonderland event that would serve 400 foster children in the front yard of my Acton home.
Youth in foster care are often given used items, or “hand me downs,” to fulfill their immediate needs but I wanted this event to be created just for them. They were the focus of this event and would be prioritized with every decision. For our California youth who had never thrown a snowball or taken a ride down a hillside on a sled, I started with 10 Tons of fresh powdered snow! I had volunteer Airmen from Edwards Air Force Base help with all the snow activities and The Los Angeles County Fire Department brought their shiny trucks for kids to climb in and play with the lights. Bank of America passed out candy canes and the Southwest Carpenters Union built the most beautiful Santa’s Workshop befitting of the North Pole. I wanted our community to come together to make this moment magical and ensure that no one felt alone. Each child received a hand-wrapped gift that was not handed to them by a social worker but rather slid down to them from the magical slide and presented by the very Elves that made them.
This single event inspired a very special funder that had witnessed the magic that night to ask me a simple question; “from your perspective, if you could change the Child welfare system, what would you do?” Over the next few months of prayer, planning, and outreach, Fostering UNITY was born.
Fostering UNITY was named out of my deep desire to UNIFY the Child Welfare System. So often, I felt that everyone within the field of child welfare were on different pages. While our hearts had good intentions, no one seemed to know what the other was doing. Resource Parents were simply getting too many messages that often conflicted and families were feeling burnt out and frustrated with the lack of unification. It was important to me that Fostering UNITY not become just another Community-based organization but rather become the glue that brought ALL child welfare workers together including DCFS and resource families.
In the beginning, it was lonely in my chair. With the help of a few individuals who saw the light and encouraged me to keep going, I was able to build capacity and make tremendous strides toward change. Now, Fostering UNITY is a strong & passionate team of eight which feels like a dream come true. We have eight individuals who have a heart of service and a passion to improve the lives of thousands of children who they have never met. I would rather work with this small group of veteran resource parents and individuals with lived experience in foster care than with 100 people who simply go to work just because they must. The importance of building a broad “community that cares” was first and foremost in the development of Fostering UNITY. I believe we are stronger together in our diversified uniqueness that we will intentionally build a foundation that cannot be broken.
My long-term vision for Fostering UNITY is to continue to build capacity so that every Kinship, Resource, Adoptive and Guardian Parent feels intentionally supported, mentored, educated, and ultimately empowered to sustain each placement in order to serve our children and youth toward Healing & Joy. Secondarily, I envision tangible “Resource Centers” in each of our 8 SPAs in Los Angeles County, dedicated to serving not only our resource families but also the biological or “birth” families of our youth while they aim to reunify. We want a safe place that provides resources, education, and outreach to ALL families in the child welfare system or those at risk of becoming part of the system. I imagine a beautiful family room-like setting, unlike the lonely one I had when I was broken and alone, stocked with age-appropriate developmental toys that will provide a kind place for monitored family time visits. Both the resource parents and birth parents will be encouraged to join and share in the joy that the child brings to their lives. Each parent will learn how to respectfully communicate and build a strength-based relationship that supports the child’s growth and healing.
I believe Fostering UNITY has brought about a new concept of healing and raised the bar on meeting the needs of those within the foster care journey right to the center of the Child Welfare stage. By coming together with a spirit of wellness, resource parents and families are uniquely supported in ways that have not been realized in the past. When resource parents feel supported and valued, they are more likely to persevere when times get tough. Children in turn do not feel disposable and thus are given the time needed for healing. This ultimately encourages relational permanence so that no person journeys alone.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Anytime you enter a world of established systems with new ideas, you are going to find resistance, Fostering UNITY is no different. Fear of change, concern for the unknown, and territorial issues all become part of growth. But with perseverance and a light of passion to guide you, change happens.
Community Support and funding have been the hardest hills to climb. People truly do want the best for youth in foster care but understanding how they can utilize their talents and stability to help create sustainable change without becoming a resource parents themselves has been a journey in and of itself.
In order to provide modern and innovative support through family-strengthening programs and employ a group of dedicated individuals who are willing to drop everything for a resource parent in need, funding is crucial. We have had to build our connections, inspire continued support from our community, and present our impact data to support the fact that Fostering UNITY is creating change and benefiting our foster community. We have been blessed to be supported by the community partners we have now, and we are always striving to increase connections to continue providing services. Opportunities for new connections, more funding, and overall community support is an obstacles we will gladly face because it means we are putting our roots down into this incredible Los Angeles County community and making an effort to impact the lives around us.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Fostering UNITY is a charitable organization that serves the 58,000 foster children in Los Angeles and the resource families (foster parents) who care for them. We aim to unify resource families and the child welfare system to create sustainable change for youth in care. We achieve this through family-strengthening programs, community support services, and family events. While other organizations typically partner with one side or the other, we aim to unify both sides in order to create a harmonious system for consistent care.
While Fostering UNITY is a young organization, we are proud to have achieved some massive projects to date. Winter Wonderland is a holiday event we host every year for youth in foster care and their families. This event is completely free and made possible by our staff and our community partners. Kids get to enjoy twinkling lights down candy cane lane, play in real snow, and get a very special gift from Santa Clause!
This year, we partnered with the Reproductive Health Equity Project to create a podcast for resource parents to help them learn how to talk to their foster youth about topics relating to sexual health rights and education. The podcast, Fostering Parenthood, was developed with the guidance of resource parents to ensure that we were meeting the gap in education that they are seeking support in. We launched this project on September 1st, 2022 for season 1 and are preparing for season 2.
In May 2022, we held our first annual resource parent appreciation event, Foster the Moment. Foster Parents were nominated by their peers for being outstanding resource parents and were honored at a virtual event during Foster Care Appreciation Month. This event will occur every year so that we take the time to recognize the hard work and dedication each resource parent in Los Angeles makes to provide homes for our youth in care.
Fostering UNITY is comprised of employees who have been involved in foster care in some shape or way, as well as AmeriCorp members who served two years with us during their program. Having a team who has lived experience with foster care gives us an advantage when providing resources and support.
It’s important to remember that the youth who are in foster care rely on their community to support them in ways a traditional nuclear family can’t. We are always looking for community partners who want to use their talents, skills, and connections to impact the lives of youth in foster care and their resource families.
At the end of the day, Fostering UNITY will continue serving youth in foster care and their resource families through innovative programs and events so that they can focus on providing safe, educated, and supportive homes for youth to heal and grow.
Our Vision: Building better tomorrows for children in out-of-home placements through direct caregiver support and family strengthening.
Our Mission: Fostering UNITY will improve outcomes for children in foster care through child-centered family-strengthening programs, enhanced community partnerships, and intentional caregiver support.
How do you think about happiness?
The driving forces behind Fostering UNITY are undoubtedly the thousands of kinship and resource parents, adoptive parents, and guardians who wake up each day and unselfishly serve children in need. They are my heroes. There is no reward greater than watching a child who was broken become whole and these very special people work tirelessly to make this a reality. When it comes to the foster care system, this is the happiness I seek and find in its purest form.
When I look at my life outside of Fostering UNITY, I find that my happiness comes from sitting out on my front porch every day and rejoicing at the beauty that surrounds me. I say good morning to the 7 hummingbirds that visit us with my husband of over 30 years. We enjoy sharing the moments we have created by raising our OG6 (original six birth children) and our second generation of our six post and pre-adopted children. After fostering dozens of precious children and youth, we have learned to strategize on best parenting practices and laugh at the ridiculous things our four current teenagers and two infants are doing. We embrace the situations that could easily infuriate us and find ways we can learn, grow, and most importantly laugh. Recently a kiddo of ours pulled the school fire alarm just to see if it worked and instead of letting this moment chip away at us, we aligned our perspectives and found the nuggets of positives to help get us through it. We remember that the ultimate goal is to help build a confident child of character.
Pricing:
- Free!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://fosteringunity.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fosteringunityla/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FosteringUNITYLA
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/FosteringUnity
- Other: https://fosteringparenthood.buzzsprout.com/
Image Credits
Fostering UNITY
