(ALTADENA, Calif.) July 30, 2020 – As a result of the COVID-19 crisis, Los Angeles County-based foster care/adoption agency and mental health provider, FIVE ACRES, is in need of resources for its critical Adoption Promotion and Support Services (APSS) program, which serves Altadena and the greater Los Angeles community.

“The Adoption Promotion and Support Services program cultivates an organic community of over 80 foster and adoptive families who are brought together by a common collective experience that is unique to them as individual families,” said Five Acres Division Director Cesar Gomez, who is a licensed clinical social worker. “These commonalities and relationships can be life-long in their duration and are at the heart of what makes an ongoing community of committed families.”

Five Acres is making an appeal for the following resources from the community for its APSS program: family needs (diapers, baby wipes), summer arts & crafts (glue sticks, crayons, coloring books), funds for streaming movie services (Netflix, Disney+), summer snacks (granola bars, popcorn, juice boxes), indoor games (board games, toy race cars), and outdoor games (chalk, scooters, bikes).

Gomez said, “Additionally, gift card donations to fost-adopt families can be most helpful right now. This is especially true for big box stores like Walmart where fost-adopt families can requisition different kinds of life necessities such as groceries, clothes, and cleaning/sanitizing supplies as needed.”

For an entire list of items needed, visit https://5acres.org/apss-covid-19-needs/. Donations will assist foster care and adoptive families who are supported by APSS and do not have the resources due to the pandemic.

Five Acres believes children thrive and heal best within healthy, permanent families. The pathway to permanency can include reunification with a birth parent, a relative or adoption by a foster-to-adopt family. The agency’s programs support families throughout the adoption process as well as during post-adoption. Five Acres strengthens existing families and works tireless to find loving, permanent families for children in need.

Gomez said, “Fost-adopt families provide unconditional love, safety, support, and grace to abused and neglected children who are in desperate need of all these critical qualities in their lives. All children everywhere require these life ingredients to truly flourish.”

To learn more about Five Acres or to support the agency’s efforts, visit 5acres.org.

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More About Five Acres’ APSS Program

APSS offers multiple regularly scheduled dedicated support groups for fost-adopt children, fost-adopt parents, and LGBTQ+ fost-adopt youth. Five Acres is proud of the caliber of its support groups, which are provided by dedicated facilitators who incorporate thoughtful group curriculums, and which are very well attended, including virtually under the current pandemic conditions. APSS client families can be referred for adoption specialty mental health services, including individual therapy, family therapy, and rehabilitation services to help adoptees and their families receive high quality client care. APSS also offers all fost-adopt families adoption specialty case management services that are in place for as long as the families need them for the purposes of needed ongoing support.

About Five Acres

Since 1888, Five Acres has protected the most vulnerable members of our community: children. Originally founded in downtown Los Angeles as an orphanage, Five Acres was initially created to offer safety to children who had no home. In time, our mission expanded to also focus on the well-being and mental health of our clients who were increasingly coming to us as a result of abuse or neglect.

Having grown to an agency caring for more than 10,000 children and family members annually across six counties, we now strive for permanency—a permanent, loving home—for all children in our care. The three pillars of safety, well-being and permanency provide the framework for all our programs and guide our steps as we develop even more effective means of caring for children and families in crisis.

Five Acres children take a break from remote learning and play video games in the new teen room in the auditorium while practicing social distancing.

ALTADENA, Calif., May 1, 2020—Children in foster care have been significantly disrupted by the global pandemic. Children living at Five Acres are placed at the residential campus in Altadena because of acute trauma they experienced at home. The impact of COVID-19 is another traumatic event that the charity’s workforce is helping the children navigate.

Division Director of Residential, Claudia Rice, said, “Clinicians have done an amazing job with sessions, in-person and telehealth services. They have decreased [the children’s] anxiety about not going to school or not being able to go on an outing.”

When the safer-at-home order was announced, the charity’s rehabilitation and residential team responded quickly by changing the children’s programming. “What takes weeks of planning and bouncing ideas with others was planned from one day to the next,” said Rice. “It was impressive to see how everyone worked together so quickly.”

Likewise the Facilities team hustled to convert one of the buildings to serve as a five-bed self-isolation unit, with the capacity to hold an additional 20 beds.

Besides having the standard emergency, non-pandemic supplies, Five Acres’ leadership was ahead of the curve when it began buying pandemic-specific inventory in late February. “This prescient action proved crucial in allowing the agency to obtain pandemic-mitigation supplies before they became nearly impossible to purchase,” said Facilities Director Jake Cashill.

Coordinating the emergency logistics, Cashill’s team also consolidated supplies from other office locations at their main facility, as these off-campus buildings quickly became nearly vacant, with employees working from home or remotely. According to Cashill, the goal was to get the supplies where they were needed most – at the residential campus – where the children were sequestered, and where operations continued.

“Working here is always a juggle,” said Cashill, who added that his team continues to maintain its everyday duties.

Five Acres mental health team and residential staff are also addressing the children’s emotional safety. They are having ongoing conversations around the pandemic and talking about their safety and that of others. Staff are encouraging youth to make better decisions to ensure everyone’s well-being.

In addressing the children’s emotions, staff also recognizes the need for predictability. The residential team has increased the amount of activities throughout the day, setting specific time for children to do their work, engage in fun activities, and participate in sports like basketball and swimming. “Having a routine and schedule allows the children to learn and grow,” said Rice, “So upon returning to school, their educational growth continued despite the suspension of actual classroom time due to Covid-19.”

Staff is planning activities from the moment the children get up to the moment they go to bed.

“As you can imagine, the need for educational and recreational supplies has increased a great deal due to the hours that have been added to the programming,” said Rice.

Increased programming requires additional supply needs. While public schools provided some of the students with Chrome books, not all of them received them. Rice encourages the community to come together to make donations. The charity is asking for donations to purchase school supplies, arts and crafts, math flashcards, additional Chrome books, mini projectors, Spectrum math books for grades 3 to 7, and middle school reading books.

To donate, visit https://5acres.org/givingtuesdaynow-2020/.