[music] KAREN STEINBACH: Our mission is to always put children and families first and the mission of the foster care program is to recruit and license foster parents who are available to take in children who are removed from their homes for safety related reasons who cannot go to other family members or relatives and to provide them a safe place to reside, to live, until it is safe for them to return to their families.

So that's the mission of our program.

We're out here to try to spread the word that more foster parents are needed especially in the Hispanic and Latino community as we have a lot of children who need to feel like they are still in their, can be with their culture, be seen, be heard.

So in 2023, the numbers were a little over 6,100 kids in the whole state of Wisconsin that were placed in out-of-home care.

That number decreased from 2022, which is a very good sign.

Of those 6,100 kids, a little over 1,700 of those were from Milwaukee County.

Two hundred, approximately, 205 of those children identified as Hispanic/Latino.

The good news is that a lot of those children were able to be placed with relatives, so they were able to stay within their communities with family members.

The children that could not be placed with families.

That's where our foster parents come in.

PATRICIA ÓMEZ: You comment of a very successful home that is housing several siblings.

KAREN STEINBACH: Yes, we have a new foster parent actually, she was just licensed within the last year, who happens to be bilingual, and because of that we were able to keep a sibling group of children together which is very important.

Based on her ability to speak both Spanish and English, it has allowed her to engage with engage with family members, and also to help the children feel like they're again seen and heard and can speak whatever language they're comfortable speaking and that has really allowed them to stabilize in their placement seeing that the foster parent is working towards a relationship with their family of origin and working to reunify them because that is the goal.

The goal is not to keep kids into foster care.

The goal is not to adopt them out.

The goal is always reunification.

PATRICIA ÓMEZ: Do you see these kinds of opportunities for those parents who are looking to adopt a child in within the foster care program?

KAREN STEINBACH: So since I've been at La Causa over 17 years, we've had over 50 children adopted within our program.

So while that's not the main goal because returning home is the main goal, foster parents are put in positions where they can choose, if a child needs permanency, they can choose to keep them as a permanent member of their home.

Children are a full-time job, and when children come into care, they are also dealing with some trauma because just the fact that you're taking them out of their homes, we're traumatizing them because they're taken away from their family, their friends, their community, in addition to any other safety issues that were occurring in the home.

So it takes a great deal of patience.

It takes a great deal of care.

It takes a sense of humor, you got to be humble because we're all human, we all make mistakes, and it's also incredibly rewarding.

PATRICIA ÓMEZ: What is the average of homes that you serve in La Causa in any month or year?

KAREN STEINBACH: So right now we have 20 foster homes that we license.

We're a small program.

The largest we've ever gotten was 34 homes over my 17 years, and we've always been quality over quantity.

It's really our goal to provide the best foster homes possible versus having a very large number of homes.

PATRICIA ÓMEZ: If people would like to know more about this program and to become prepared to be or licensed to be a foster home, where do they, can find information?

KAREN STEINBACH: They can go to our website that www.LaCausa.org.

If you go to our website, you'll be able to find a lot of information.

If you're interested, there is an inquiry that you can submit, and we will call you immediately to talk to you about this journey.

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