Mike & Shiela
Since joining Wesley Family Services, Mike and Shiela have fostered four children, two of which are siblings.
Their Story
Mike and Shiela have been resource parents with Wesley Family Services for two years, but they had been former resource parents for Families United Network. Since joining Wesley Family Services, Mike and Shiela have fostered four children, two of which are siblings.
They work well with the birth parents. Sheila is open to texting, phone contact and even face to face contact prior to a visit. Over the Christmas Holiday, Sheila provided the children the opportunity to buy gifts for their birth parents. Sheila is willing to transport for visits. She is also open to using Skype as a creative way for one of her foster children to interact with his birth mother when he does not have a visit or in the event something occurs that a visit is cancelled. Sheila, on her own accord, wanted to start savings accounts for the children in her home.
Sheila and Mike work hard to make sure the children have the support of the teachers and mental health providers. Foster children and biological children are treated equally in their home. Mike and Shiela have adopted two of those four children in 2016. Corey and Billy are now permanent members of the family. Mike and Shiela are willing to provide permanency for the children in their home while honoring the birth parents rights to visit and interact with their children.
About Wesley Family Services Foster Care
Wesley Family Services has founding roots in CATY Services (Center for the Assessment and Treatment of Youth – founded in 1975) and APA (Alternative Program Associates – founded in 1978), who merged to form Spectrum Family Network in 2000. Spectrum Family Network than merged with the Wesley Institute (founded in 1965) in January 2006 to form Wesley Family Services. Since its inception, Wesley Family Services has provided foster care services to county children and youth in Western Pennsylvania. The foster care services have expanded from traditional foster care services to include kinship, medically needy, pre-adoptive and (CRR) Community Residential Rehabilitation Treatment foster care services.
Wesley Family Services has served over 289 children since 2010. The program is child centered. A result of child centered decision making, has been our support of adoption by program foster families. Annually WS averages 10 foster adoptions. Additionally, our program strives to serve sibling groups; avoids sibling disruptions. Annually, WS foster care census is comprised of at least 50% of the children being a member of a sibling group. An area that we serve and wish to grow is foster care for older youth. The older youth we have been able to serve have accomplished high school graduation and enrollment in post secondary education programs. An instrumental part of our success is the program foster families. Our foster care coordinators work closely with our foster families to provide case management responsibilities and to provide support and education to our foster families. The cooperative teamwork between the foster families and foster care coordinators are a true testament of the program successes.