Open your home. Change a life.

You’ve been thinking about this for a while now.

Maybe it started two years ago when you saw a movie that got you thinking. Or a sermon at church that wouldn’t let go. Or a friend who kept talking about their foster kids and you could see the transformation—in the children, yes, but also in your friend. Maybe you grew up around foster care. Or maybe you’ve never been close to it, but something inside you keeps whispering that this matters.

You’ve Googled it a few times. You’ve mentioned it to your spouse or friend. You’ve wondered if you’re the right fit, if your home is big enough, if you have what it takes. You’ve thought about the hard parts—the behaviors you’ve heard about, the heartbreak of kids leaving, the systems you’ll have to navigate.

And still, you keep coming back to the idea.

That’s not an accident. That’s a calling.

And when you’re ready to answer it, Ariel is here—not to convince you, but to walk alongside you as you figure out if this is your path.

What Being a Foster Parent Actually Takes

Foster care isn’t easy. The children and youth who come into your home have experienced trauma—real, layered trauma that shows up in ways you might not expect. A toddler who startles at small things … a door closing, a voice rising … because in their world, those sounds meant something scary was coming. A child who hoards food because meals weren’t something they could count on. A teenager who can’t sleep through the night because bedtime carried its own kind of danger.

These aren’t children with something wrong with them. They’re children who’ve been through bad things.

They come from all circumstances, all ages, all backgrounds: newborns to young adults, days in care or years. The number one reason is abuse and neglect, though that umbrella is wide. Sometimes it’s severe. Sometimes it’s a parent in a coma, unable to care for their child through no fault of their own. What’s consistent is that every child who comes into foster care has experienced the trauma of removal alone, being taken from everything familiar. Everything after that is additional layers.

The work asks something real of you. You can’t love a child conditionally based on their behavior. You’re going to keep showing up on the hard nights, hold onto hope when it’s difficult to hold, and trust that healing is possible even when the evidence is slow to arrive. Your own history will come up: your triggers, your need for control, the things you haven’t fully worked through. The home study process is partly about making sure you’re solid enough to hold space for a child who isn’t.

And you won’t be doing any of it alone. Your case manager, therapists, family time supervisors, behavioral specialists, and the rest of Ariel’s team are with you through every placement, every hard stretch, every breakthrough.

Here’s what Ariel knows after three decades in this work: with the right support, they heal. They find their footing. They learn to trust. They figure out what it feels like to be safe. They become who they were always meant to be.

What Foster Care Actually Is (And Isn’t)

We’re not licensing you as an institution. We’re not coming in and turning your world upside down.

Yes, we’re going to make sure your home is safe—guns locked up, medications secured, that kind of thing. But it’s still your home. You still take this child and do life together.

There will be added appointments. New adjustments. New school routines, new rituals. But you can still go fishing and hiking in the summer. Still do concerts in the park. Still live your life—you’re just adding another person to your home to do it with.

Your world will turn sideways, but not upside down.

Understanding Foster Care License Levels

Here’s something worth understanding early: traditional, therapeutic, treatment, and proctor care are classifications for foster parents, not children.

What varies is the level of training, experience, and support structure the foster parent brings, and that’s what the license level reflects.

  • Kinship Care | Placement with a relative or close family friend is often the best option for keeping children connected to people they already know and trust. Ariel works exclusively with certified kinship families (versus uncertified kin placements, which are managed directly by the county).
  • Traditional | The starting point for most families. Standard training, with Ariel’s full support alongside you from day one. Works well for families newer to fostering or building their experience with children.
  • Therapeutic | More training, more frequent contact with the support team. For families with some experience or a genuine readiness to take on more complex behavioral and emotional needs.
  • Treatment | Extensive training and the highest level of coordinated support — typically one child at a time. Families who reach this level usually come with significant experience, often transferring from another agency or stepping up after years at the therapeutic level.
  • Proctor Care | A distinct track that works alongside the Division of Youth Services (DYS). Proctor homes support youth who are preparing to transition to parole, not children in the traditional foster care system. The home licenses as a foster home with additional training specific to this population. The focus is on reintegration: helping young people build employment skills, continue their education, access mental health support, and develop the habits and routines that make independence possible. Child welfare isn’t involved; the judicial system is. Compensation is higher, reflecting the nature of the work.

One thing worth knowing about all of these: if a child stabilizes and thrives in your home, they don’t get moved to a “lower level” placement. They stay with you. You’re their home. And if you want to pursue additional training or move toward a higher license level over time, Ariel supports that too.

The Growth is Yours, Too

Here’s something we don’t talk about enough: Foster care changes YOU.

Not just because helping others makes you a good person (though it does). But because you will expand and grow in ways you can’t imagine right now.

You’re going to practice patience like never before. You’re going to notice your own stuff coming up—your own trauma around bedtime, your own triggers, your own need for control. And you’re going to work through it.

You’re committing to your own growth and development as a human.

And that? That’s beautiful.

How Ariel Supports You

Colorado is a county-run foster care state. Counties hold custody of children in care and make the decisions about their wellbeing. That system has a lot of moving parts by nature: rules, timelines, forms, jargon—and navigating it on top of actually parenting a child can be a lot.

That’s Ariel’s job. We’re your liaison between your family and the county. We sit at the table with you when your caseworker visits so you have another set of ears in the room, share resources for finding daycare, enrolling kids in school, and locating therapists, help make sure you have your the various forms you need, and advocate when something the county requires doesn’t make sense for your family. We can’t always change the answer. But we can soften the edges of the bureaucracy while staying inside the rules.

How much support looks like in practice depends entirely on what you need. A family new to fostering and navigating a complex first placement will hear from us far more than a family ten years in who has a rhythm and only needs to touch base once a month. We meet at soccer practice or over coffee if that works better than your living room. We text. We show up at IEP meetings. We taper off when things are steady and lean in when they’re not.

What we don’t do is add to your load when you’re already carrying enough.

Your Journey to Becoming a Foster Parent

The process moves as quickly as you do — timely completion of each step keeps things on track, and the pace is largely in your hands.

  • Step 1: Reach out. Just that. You’ll connect with a real person on our team who wants to hear where you are in this: your questions, your hesitations, what brought you here. This isn’t a sales call. It’s a conversation about whether this is the right fit for you, and what that could look like.

  • Step 2: Come in. We want to meet you in person. You’ll learn about Ariel’s history, how we fit into Colorado’s foster care system, and what day-to-day life as a foster parent actually looks like. We’ll also start getting to know you: your experience, your support system, what you’re open to, what you’re not. Matching isn’t just about availability. It’s about fit.

  • Step 3: Application. You’ll complete the foster parent application and submit required documentation: health evaluations, personal references, background information, and signed agreement forms to continue in the licensing process. Ariel walks you through everything that’s needed — nothing should be a surprise.

  • Step 4: The home study. This is where we really get to know you — and we don’t apologize for going deep. We’re going to ask about your history, your household, your own experiences. Not to find reasons to rule you out, but to make sure you’re solid and ready. Because the children and youth who come into your home have been through real things, and the best foster parents are people who’ve done their own work too.

    We use the SAFE tool, a standardized home study methodology used nationwide. It includes a detailed questionnaire that walks through realistic scenarios: medically fragile children, significant behavioral challenges, children from difficult circumstances. It gets you thinking clearly about what you’re ready for. And it helps us make a match that works for both of you.

  • Step 5: Training. Colorado requires pre-service training before you can be licensed. Ariel covers all costs. You’ll complete the state-mandated curriculum at your own pace, plus a short orientation with our team that covers Ariel’s approach, your case manager’s role, and what to expect once you’re licensed. Training topics include trauma-informed care, managing behaviors, working with birth families, and navigating the child welfare system.

  • Step 6: Background checks, home inspection, and licensing. Background checks are run for all adults in the household. Your home will be inspected to confirm it meets safety requirements. Once everything is complete and approved, your information goes into the state system and you receive your license number.

  • Then: Matching. Once you’re licensed, we start looking for the right fit. You’ll be informed about a potential placement before any decision is made and have the chance to ask questions. Timeline varies: some families are matched quickly, others wait longer depending on what the right fit looks like. Keeping an open mind about age range and circumstances generally shortens the wait. In the meantime, providing respite care for other licensed Ariel families is a good way to get your footing and stay connected.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

If you don’t find what you’re looking for below, feel free to ask your question via our Contact Form.

Let’s find out together. You must be at least 21, but beyond that: age, income, whether you own or rent, what’s on your background check — these are all things we talk through. The heart of it? Do you have a genuine desire to support traumatized children?
If yes, let’s talk.

Staying connected is the best thing you can do. Providing respite care, short-term care that gives other licensed foster families a break, is a practical way to stay active, build experience, and get a real feel for what foster parenting involves. It also puts you in relationship with other Ariel families, which matters once placements begin. Your case manager can help you get connected.

If a child in your family has been removed from their home, you may be eligible to become a certified kinship foster home. Ariel works exclusively with certified kinship families, not uncertified kin placements, which are handled directly by the county. Getting certified means Ariel can support you through the same case management, training, and team resources available to all foster families. If you’re in this situation, reach out and we’ll walk you through what the process looks like for your family.

Yes, children in foster care are covered by Medicaid.

Generally yes. Children over age 5 typically need their own room, or can share only with a same-gender sibling. Younger children have more flexibility. The specific requirements depend on the ages and genders of the children in your home; your licensing worker will walk you through what applies to your situation before anything is finalized.

That’s fine, many foster parents do. The key is having reliable childcare and enough flexibility to make it to appointments: therapy, court dates, medical visits, school meetings. Daycare can be genuinely hard to navigate, especially mid-placement when you need something quickly. That’s part of what Ariel helps with: finding openings, figuring out what’s covered, making calls until something works.

Then you say so. Not every placement is the right fit for every family — and saying that out loud is okay. We’d rather you be honest than take on a situation that isn’t going to work for anyone.
We’re not going to be mad. We’re going to find a better match.

It’s real. It’s hard. And we offer support: one to two therapy sessions to help you process the grief, because your wellbeing matters too.
What foster parents tell us, over and over: staying connected is possible. Some maintain relationships with children long after they’ve returned home or moved to a permanent placement. The grief and the gratitude tend to live side by side. That doesn’t make the leaving easy — but it’s part of why people keep doing this.

Sometimes, yes. When a child cannot safely return home and parental rights are terminated, they become legally free for adoption. Foster parents who have built a relationship with that child may be considered as adoptive parents if it’s in the child’s best interest. It’s not guaranteed, and it’s not the goal going in: the goal is always reunification when it’s safe. But it happens, and when it does, Ariel’s adoption program is there to support the process. If adoption is something you’re thinking about alongside fostering, it’s worth bringing up early in your conversations with our team.

That every kid in foster care is a “bad kid” who’s going to destroy your home and your life.
Truth: These are kids who’ve been through bad things. With support—yours and ours—they heal. They thrive. They become the kids they were always meant to be.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

You don’t need all the answers. You just need to be curious enough to have a conversation.

All five regional headquarters are currently recruiting foster parents: Grand Junction, Delta-Montrose, Denver Metro, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. Find the office nearest you and reach out. Our team is ready when you are.