 May is National Foster Care Awareness Month. Woodford's Family Services offers information and support for those individuals and families who are eager to bring a foster child into their home. Leslie talked with resource coordinator, Beth Simmons, about their program. Well, Beth May is Foster Care Awareness Month. Yes, it is. And what a wonderful thing for a family to do, to be a foster family. Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about what some of the needs are for your organization in finding foster families and why you dedicate a month to this very important subject. Because it's truly needed. You know, we currently have approximately 1,500 kids in foster care in the state of Maine at any given time and we always need families who are willing to take them into their home, into their hearts and to help raise them. And sometimes people are a little confused about what it means to be a foster parent, a foster family. You can be of any age. You have to be 21 or older. You have to be self-sufficient and able to support yourself. You have to like kids. That would help. And the greatest need right now is for teenagers. Right now there is a great need for foster parents who are willing to take in teenagers. That's the biggest need. And you have support for families who've decided to be foster families. Yes. Woodford's Family Services offers a lot of support to our therapeutic foster parents from case management to in-home support. We have a 24-hour pager. So you're never alone. We have behavioral consultants and a small team that we work with so you know everybody. That sounds wonderful. And you mentioned therapeutic foster care. Yes. Tell us a little bit about what that means as opposed to just general foster care. Right. There is two forms of licenses. One is family foster home where you take in regularly, typically developing children. And then there is therapeutic or treatment foster care where you work with children who have moderate to severe disabilities and have a higher level of need. And those foster parents have a specialized license and require more training hours and they have to connect to an agency to be able to have that support and like an umbrella that really wraps around them to help them with these children. That's wonderful. And when you say disability, it can be many. It can be emotional or developmental. It can be many. Oh, that's great. Now, if somebody really was interested in doing this, is the training difficult? What does one go through? Yes. You do need to go through an 18-hour training. It's called pre-service training that kind of prepares and gets you ready for this. And then once you get your license, you need to have ongoing training hours. And if you have a specialized license, that looks like 36 hours for a two-year period. And if it's a two-parent home, then it's 24 hours for the primary parent and 12 for the secondary parent. Well, that doesn't sound like very much. It's not. It's not. I did it to something very wonderful. I did a little bit of it myself several years ago in another country. That's awesome. It was awesome. And I still have contact with my little boy. That's very nice. It's very special. Now, you have a film coming up that puts a face to some of these children who are either out there looking for a family or have found a family and they tell their story. Tell us a little bit about the film. I work with the Southern Maine Foster Family Recruitment Team, which is myself and several other agencies here in Southern Maine who recruit foster homes. And we are going to be showing this documentary. It's called Ask Us Who We Are. And it's Friday night, May 18th at 7 p.m. at the USM Wish Camper Center. And it should be a very powerful moving film that was created in Vermont based on kids that are in the foster care system there. And then there's going to be a panel and a discussion afterwards. Oh, great. We thought that would be a wonderful thing to do to honor the fact that it's, you know, foster care month and really show appreciation. And to also give a forum there for people who may be interested but not quite sure. That's right. Yeah. That's right. And I think there are probably, how many children are available right now for needing foster homes? There are many children that need foster home placements. And I can't give you the figures. There are many that have been cleared for adoption, and they're looking for adoptive homes as well. There's something called the Heart Gallery. And there will be a display there at this filming of children who are currently cleared and looking for placements. That's wonderful. Beth, if people want more information about this, how can they find it? Okay. There are two different ways. The first one is, you could call your local Department of Health and Human Services and ask to speak to somebody in the foster family licensing division. Or you could contact myself, at woodfordsfamilyservices, which is woodfords.org. You can find us that way. And my phone number is 878-9663, extension 4160. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you.