From our CEO, CFO, cleaning staff, accounting department and clerical staff, tutors, therapists and social workers, the one word that defines Penny Lane is encouragement. We are graced to have all of our professionals including behaviorists, psychiatrists, (our team), under one roof (makes for less disruption in a child’s life), but the defining quality we are most proud of is our mutual and combined efforts to express encouragement to our families, children and each other.
Families that find their children in the foster care system are temporarily broken, due to financial times, mental illness, drug addiction or domestic violence. Individuals that become foster parents learn that their goal is to nurture the children, as if their own, until the children’s family can find the way to becoming whole again. Were any of us to find ourselves in a challenging time, we would wish that the values of our elders of decades past could come forward, as they probably would have, and lend some fostering. This type of support system is not as readily available as it was after WWII. Families, when families lived closer together and familial relationships were valued differently. Informal arrangements amongst families were replaced by protective agencies to secure the personal rights of the children, families and foster families.
Penny Lane provides you with the education and 24 hour handholding, to become a foster parent. Whether you parent a child for two weeks or a year, you plant seeds with each child, as you share with them, how your family works, how you make time reading with them, planning meals, listening to them talk about school, as you acknowledge to them, that their life matters. Many children have never seen the ocean or been to a library, so planting seeds… is pretty easy.
Whether we know another’s life story or not, we are all social workers when we engage with people in public, be it Target, the bank or Walgreens. The one smile to the elderly man or child peering out the car window at you is a gift. Albeit, a seemingly little gift, but it could be huge to the recipient to have your attention. Who made that difference in your life? Please join us “to encourage” everyday.
To receive more information, please contact: Laurie Bennett at lbennett@pennylane.org or call 818-894-3384.