With Second Nurture, you're on this journey with friends at your side.
2N is here to create a place of belonging for you and other families. No one should feel alone on the fostering journey. And with 2N, we always have each other.
Imagine if members of your community joined together, encouraged one another to foster and adopt, and created a network of support for these families. We would see more children with families of their own, richer family life, more engaged communities—and a better society.
The Second Nurture Model
Cohort
We welcome you to join a 2N “Cohort”—a gathering of local foster families who meet monthly for discussions (and food!), with supervised kids’ activities in an adjacent space. The 2N Family Support Specialist (FSS) who is often a former or current foster parent, facilitates these informal meetings with foster parents sharing what’s happening in their lives, seeking advice, and everyone offering loving wisdom and knowledge. The Cohort soon becomes a caring and practical micro-community.
In addition to facilitating meetings, the 2N FSS holds specialty sessions to address shared needs whether bureaucratic (what’s more fun than sitting together to fill out dependency court forms?); or practical (like food and sleep challenges); or emotional (what do you need?) And arranges for field trips such as therapeutic animal farms or bowling for the whole family or a “kids’ night in,” so parents have a night out.
We empower and support each other—and laugh and cry in ways only foster and fost-adopt parents can when we’re together.
How It Works
Cohort
Whether a family is just curious about fostering and adoption or has already taken the plunge, nothing replaces the wisdom, comfort, and “I-see-you” sense of community than meeting others on the same path. Each month, Second Nurture helps families connect by facilitating a bagel brunch, where they share experiences and meet expert guests on everything from hair care to how to talk with kids about their birth families to trauma-informed yoga, and so much more. Between meetings, families keep up with each other via a private group Facebook page. A cohort is a safe, supportive place to navigate the journey through foster care and adoption.
Networks of Support
When members of the cohort face a challenge, they turn to each other first for expertise and support, developing a trusted group of volunteer experts over time. When a need can’t be met by the cohort members, the need is made known to their wider community. When needed, Second Nurture steps in to connect members with county agencies or private organizations that can provide the necessary resources and expertise like therapeutic services, diversity training, cultural opportunities, and more.
Community Culture
Second Nurture works with communities to develop resources that integrate fostering and adoption into communal traditions, rituals and events across a range of settings so that all families feel seen and held by the larger community.
By normalizing foster care and adoption as common, celebrated ways of growing a family and facilitating a network of trust, companionship, and support among foster and adoptive families, Second Nurture builds communities that a.) hold adoption and fostering as essential values b.) help foster and adoptive families see themselves reflected in the identity of the community.
Host Community and Care Collective
Each 2N Cohort is ensconced in a welcoming “Host Community” (HC) such as a synagogue, church or nonsectarian organization. Cohort families are not usually members of the HC, nor necessarily of that culture. 2N is nonsectarian. Cohort gatherings are held on the HC’s premises and their wider membership creates a 2N “Care Collective” through which members volunteer at each monthly gathering to welcome you, serve the meal, and assist with the kids programming.
And members of the community are available in open-ended ways to each family, leveraging their wide-ranging skills and capacities. Does your foster child need a tutor? Do you need help organizing a space in your house for a new placement? Or someone to sit with an elderly parent (grandparent) so you can have time with your child? Do you need help navigating the educational system? Therapeutic guidance or training?
Your Host Community will send out word to the membership to find a volunteer to meet your needs. Members of the HC’s Care Collective step up in weird and wonderful ways! (And normal ways, too.)
Social Service PARTNERS
Sometimes 2N families need the expertise of social service agencies—and that’s where partnerships with quality, reliable local organizations come in—to provide formal training and education. (Ask us about the possibility of CEUs through your 2N participation.) See “Our partners” under “About Us” to learn more.