Walk Me Home ... To The Place I Belong

by Corrie Lynne Player

Foster parents today are part of a great support system that keeps families together -- to love and nurture children while their biological parents have a chance to learn or be rehabilitated. If rehabilitation isn’t possible, foster parents either support the search for kinship care or adopt the children they love unconditionally.

Experts agree that if enough effective foster homes are found now, future needs for prisons and police will be reduced. More victimized children will be salvaged and turned to thriving, happy lives.

As a long-term foster/adopt parent and vice president of the National Foster Parent Association (NFPA)’s Region 8, I want everybody to know that fostering is a uniquely satisfying job, as are all jobs associated in any way with foster families.

I also want to invite you, my family, friends and colleagues to help raise awareness about the needs of foster children and the homes that help them not just survive awful situations but thrive.


Over the past decade, NFPA’s Walk Me Home ... To the Place I Belong campaign has given ordinary people the opportunity to join in accomplishing extraordinary things. Walk Me Home takes place around the nation: foster families and those who love and support them come together in their communities to walk, run, ride bicycles, and push strollers to raise funds that support local foster care groups.

This year, many members of NFPA’s board of directors have decided to conduct “virtual” walks -- an example anybody can follow. Raising funds allows us to be more effective in bringing communities together across state and regional boundaries.

Please visit my Walk Me Home page and see how you can support our educational and networking programs, as well as our scholarship and lobbying efforts.

My goals for my fundraising page are quite modest -- I hope to raise at least $500 which I will match with a scholarship for a foster parent in Region 8 to attend the NFPA conference in June 5-8, which is being held in Orlando, Florida.

Corrie Lynne Player, who has been an active member of the National Foster Parent Association (NFPA) since 1990, has made family issues and child advocacy her life’s work. She and her husband are the parents of nine children, including three adopted from the foster care system, and grandparents of 39.