“My heart has always been at St Joe’s.”

Lisa and husband Roger.

Lisa Barber-Atwell, then a 40-year-old University of Louisville college student, recounts a surprising moment from her St. Joe’s interview in 2006: “I applied to be a residential youth worker, because it was the only position I could find and in the middle of the interview, the human resources director said, ‘You don’t want to work in residential. Give me a minute’ and then brought out the director of foster care to finish the interview. I interviewed for a case manager position that hadn’t been posted yet,” she says. The turn of events came at the right time for Lisa, a former foster parent who had been searching for another way she could help at-risk children. 

“My heart has always been at St Joe’s. It is a part of who I am. I have always had nieces, nephews, and sometimes neighbors’ kids who needed support and I’ve tried to get them back on the right track.”

Lisa, who is Lead Recruitment/Certification Specialist for St. Joe’s, and her team focus heavily on recruiting foster-only parents for some of the children who live on the St. Joe’s campus and others in out of home care.

Keeping families together is an important part of the work St. Joe’s does, and foster-only parents play a huge role in a family’s success, says Lisa. “We need families who are going to do what is in the best interest of the children. Our goal is always reunification with the family. The foster parent will work with the foster care team to return the child to their home. As a foster parent, they will advocate for the child and supervise them.” 

Lisa, her son Chris, and daughter-in-law Christine.

But they are not doing it alone. All St. Joe’s foster parents go through extensive training and the foster child will be paired with a therapist they see at least twice a month.  There are support groups monthly, on call support, and access to a team with interventions and strategy suggestions. “All of the support is meant to be a package to wrap around those kids and their families to help them heal from the trauma. Stepping into this role isn’t easy, but it’s about the desire to give back, the desire to help children be successful, and the desire to make the world a better place.”  

Ready to take the first step with us as a foster parent? Contact Lisa Barber- Atwell at alicab@sjkids.org.

This post was supported by funds made available by the Kentucky Department for Public Health’s Office of Health Equity from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for STLT Public Health Infrastructure and Workforce, under RFA-OT21-2103.

 The content of this post are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of or endorsement by the Kentucky Department for Public Health or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.