As the world celebrated Interna-tional Mother's Day with carnations and various events, the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) and Taiwan's Fund for Children and Families (CCF) held a ceremony honoring foster families and professional foster-care centers for providing love to troubled children.
Recommended by social welfare departments nationwide and selected by social welfare experts, 56 foster homes and social-welfare personnel from local foster care centers were honored yesterday in the "Alternative Mother's Love" award ceremony.
Presented with a medal on the stage along with 20 other excellent foster homes, Lin Li-yuan (林麗圓) and her husband Yeh Hao (葉灝) shared their experience of providing foster care to two mentally retarded children for four years.
"Children who receive foster care are traumatized and need a place to make a long-term recovery. So we [foster homes] have to put in great efforts as a family to embrace the kids and walk them through the darkness," said Yeh, who decided to join a foster-care program after seeing an article in a newspaper four years ago.
Lin supported her husband's enthusiasm and love for unwanted children, but acknowledged that it took her some time to fully embrace the foster children.
"Because our foster children are mentally retarded, I did not know how to take care of their special needs at first. Then I started to attend classes on special education and discussed their issues with their school teachers," Lin told the Taipei Times.
"I received financial assistance from World Vision International when I was a child. So even though it takes a lot of patience and love to be a foster parent, I think it is time for me to make a contribution to society in return," she said.
Yeh said that besides having passion, providing a foster home is a full-time job that needs professional knowledge. People who want to provide foster care should realize that foster children are traumatized and troubled. It is crucial for foster parents to make great efforts to help them recover.
Since the founding of the foster-care service as supervised by the MOI in 1984, the ministry has worked with social welfare groups, including CCF and World Vision Taiwan, to arrange foster care for children and teenagers from dysfunctional families.
With the establishment of the Domestic Violence Prevention Law (家庭暴力防治法) in 1998, domestic-violence reports and cases have increased along with heightened public awareness. More children from such families have been entering the foster-care system, with 35.8 percent of foster children last year having been abused at home, according to a report by World Vision Taiwan in 2003.
According to statistics from the MOI, there are 995 foster homes and 77 public or private foster-care centers that caters for more than 3,800 children.
The MOI and all the foster homes and foster-care centers encourage more people to join their efforts and become foster parents.
"Take Taipei City for example, where there are only 60 foster homes for 560,000 families in the city. In addition to calling on more people to extend their love, strong support from schools and the community will also help those children heal," said Yeh, who founded the Taipei Foster Home Association with other foster families in Taipei earlier this year.
People interested in becoming foster parents can call the CCF at (04) 2206-1234 or (02) 2727-8001, World Vision Taiwan at (02) 2585-6300, or the association at (02) 2309-4364.
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