Grab your headphones or your Bluetooth and check out this awesome interview with April HIght and Jessie Howell on the Foster Parenting Process. This interview was alarming, educational, & fascinating. April & Jessie shared with us:

🎧 April Hight works with FamiliesFirst Network as a Foster Home Recruiter - raising awareness of the need for foster homes in our community.

She was a foster parent for 10 years and adopted 3 children during that time. Her heart is to see her community standing in the gap for vulnerable children and families in her area.

🎧 Jessie Howell For approximately 10 years Jessie Howell has served her community as a foster parent, fostering over 150 children.

She has fostered 7 years in the Pensacola area and 3 years in Georgia. Jessie has also adopted 5 children.

Since fostering, she has helped over 30 children be reunified with their biological families.

She strives to have an open relationship with many of the childbirth families’ that she fosters. She has had the opportunity to mentor and encourage other people looking to foster and adopt.

Jessie currently helps to train NTDC for prospective foster and adoptive parents in Circuit 1. She has also taught the QPi curriculum. Jessie has recently started teaching parenting classes for court-ordered families. The goal of this curriculum is to help teach parents how to live in healthy communities.

In 2020, Jessie started a food drive to provide meals to foster parents who were under extreme stress from losing all support due to Covid.

She served monthly meals to an average of 100 foster families in Escambia, Santa Rosa, Walton, and Okaloosa, since then.

This food drive consisted of a partnership with 12 different restaurants,12 churches, and 6 other organizations. Jessie continues to run Feed Fosters NWF supporting both foster families and local restaurants.

Website:

April Hight www.facebook.com/FamiliesFirstNetwork

Jessie Howell www.feedfosters.org