Our Art Workshop for Foster Parents
Despite the disruptions Covid-19 has brought into all our lives, we were so happy to partner and collaborate with Adoptive Families of Hong Kong to bring the healing power of the arts to walk with those loving sacrificially to children waiting for adoption. We were so encouraged by the loving sacrifice that foster families show by taking care of children in Hong Kong social services. Many times placement ranges from a couple of months to a couple of years. In Hong Kong, foster parents are not allowed to adopt the children that they foster. Regardless, foster families continue to care for children from all age groups and backgrounds, providing a home for them to thrive while they are in care. They support, empathize, encourage, and support children with the precious time they have with them.
Children’s waiting time for family reunion can be long, often years with no certain timeline for reunion due to the complicated family history. Foster children come from all age groups, from newborn to 18 years old, and from all backgrounds. What they all have in common is their need for a suitable foster home for them to thrive while they are in care. Foster children may have special needs because of a disability or emotional problem and require more care and attention than their family can provide. Whatever the reason for needing foster care, each foster child is special and unique. However, most are hurt and confused by the separation from their family. They need a lot of empathy, encouragement and support. They will not forget their own family and will want to stay in touch with them.
Quote from Mother’s Choice
Our custom Spread the Love workshop was for foster parents, providing a healing space to share experiences and emotions in their foster journey in Hong Kong. Our hope was to provide a safe and warm place for foster families to process their emotions and experiences, find support with one another, and from the art of creating together, be able to know that they were not alone. Art is more than just a creative process, but can bring about conversations and healing.
In our Spread the Love Art of Emotions Workshop, we invited foster parents to process the journey of fostering children in Hong Kong. There are some experiences that simple words cannot capture, and this is often true of the joys and sorrows encountered in the fostering journey. Through our creative workshop, foster parents could process the journey with an evening of art and hand-lettering! Parents and families were given the space to share experiences in the foster journey or hopes and concerns with future fostering. Through the act of creating, we hoped to help foster families find a new way to understand or explain what their experience as a foster parent, or just be able to get lost in the creative process.
