Become a Foster Parent

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 fostering, and you could see the change in the children, yes, and also in your friend. Maybe you grew up around foster care. Maybe you’re already a foster parent with another agency, and you’re curious what it’s like with Ariel. Or maybe you’ve never been close to it, and something inside you still keeps whispering that this matters.

You’ve Googled it a few times. You’ve mentioned it to your partner or a 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 when a child leaves, the systems you’ll have to navigate.

And still, you keep coming back to the idea.

That’s a calling.

And when you’re ready to answer it, Ariel is here to walk alongside you as you figure out whether this is your path, with no pressure to decide before you’re ready.

New to foster care? Learn how foster care works and the different types of care Ariel offers.

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.

Nothing is wrong with these children. They’ve been through bad things.

Children and youth in care come from all circumstances, all ages, all backgrounds: newborns to young adults, days in care or years. The most common reason children come into care 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 every child in foster care shares is the trauma of removal itself, of leaving everything familiar behind. Everything else adds another layer.

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 along the way, and the home study is partly about making sure you can be steady for a child who needs you to be.

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

After three decades in this work, Ariel knows this much: with the right support, children heal. They find their footing. They learn to trust. They figure out what it feels like to be safe.

One Grand Junction foster parent talks about dividing and conquering at home, letting go of being a perfect parent, and the support that comes after a child arrives.

You’d be fostering as a family, in the home you already have.

Yes, we’re going to make sure your home is safe, with things like medications and firearms stored securely. And 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. Through all of it, 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.

Traditional, therapeutic, treatment, and proctor care are license levels for foster parents. Each level reflects the training, experience, and support structure you bring to the role. A child in your home is a child in foster care, whatever your level.

Most families start at the traditional level, with standard training and Ariel’s full support from day one. Some move to a higher level over time as their training and experience grow, and Ariel can help you get there when you’re ready.

There are other ways in, too. Relatives and close family friends caring for a child they already know can become certified for kinship care. If you have experience with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), from your own family, your work, or supporting adults, a Children’s Habilitation Residential Program (CHRP) foster home may be a natural fit, and Ariel is building that network. Proctor care is its own track, working with the Division of Youth Services (DYS) and youth getting ready for parole. Our Foster Care page explains how each kind of care works.

If a child stabilizes and thrives in your home, they stay with you, even as their needs ease. You’re their home.

We don’t talk about this enough: foster care changes YOU.

Yes, this is good work, and you can feel good about doing it. This work is needed, it matters, and you can feel good about what you’re giving. If that’s all you take from it, that’s a great thing.

And helping others this way grows you, too, 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, your own triggers, your own need for control. A child in your care might melt down over homework, and on a long day, you might notice your own fuse running a little short. That’s normal. It’s part of the work.

And you’re going to work through it. The things you notice become things you can heal. Your boundaries get clearer. Your empathy runs deeper. You get better at saying what you need, and at knowing when to put your foot down with love and care. You won’t be figuring it out alone, either. Your case manager and the rest of Ariel’s team are right there with 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. Navigating it on top of parenting a child can be a lot.

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

What support looks like in practice depends 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 (Individualized Education Program) 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.

The process moves as quickly as you do. Finishing each step promptly keeps things on track, and the pace is largely in your hands.

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