EUGENE (KMTR) – May is National Foster Care Month and one local group is looking forward to helping the 1,019 foster children in Lane County.
Jamie Hinsz attends the University of Oregon and started the
Foster Care Advocacy Team, also known as F-Cat.
F-Cat is collecting socks for foster children and hopes to have at least one pair per foster child in the county. Because they already have more than 800 pairs, Hinsz says now they aim to collect enough packs to give to each child in need. If they aim short for a pair per foster kid, they only need 257 more. They mostly need toddler and small sizes, those ranging from 2 year old sizes to 8 year old sizes.
Hinsz was in fact a foster kid herself before she started college and knows what it means to go without. She says foster kids jump around house to house, specifically in the middle of the night, with little time to pack. The moves can be due to a variety of reasons, and sometimes leave with only a grocery bag of belongings. Sometimes, a child even returns home to the original caretaker. Most of the time, they have no say in where they go or when.
When talking to Hinsz - the question had to be asked - “Why socks?”
“One of my friends who also goes to the University of Oregon and grew up in foster care noticed a lot of kids come into foster care without any socks just in Lane County. We do a duffel bag drive every may for the Oregon Foster Youth Connection and last year she was distributing duffel bags to people around the county. They told her foster kids around here don't need duffel bags they need socks. They come into care they have cold feet and no socks,” she said.
Hinsz also suggests anyone who wants to go the extra mile to write a note of encouragement and attach it to their donation(s).
Hinsz continued with some shocking statistics both applicable in Lane County and nationwide. In June, her group will host a workshop conference for anyone interested. They will create awareness about the systems dealing with foster kids and more. Foster youths from around the state will also be there for first-hand accounts. Local welfare professionals will also be there. Hinsz hopes they will learn something as well.
To attend the conference, those with interest will need to register. They can pick from a number of workshops, including “Days of our Lives,” “Parenthood,” “It Takes a Village,” “Law & Order,” and “90 By 30.” Each has their own key points, which can be found
here. In addition to the number of projects F-Cat is doing, the main goal is to advocate awareness. Hinsz believes the system is in fact flawed. Stereotypes still exist, she says, because people allow them to. She is a class-act, however, that those stereotypes can be broken. As a former foster child, Hinsz will attain her degree from the U of O this spring and continue onto graduate school in Utah. She will continue to work with youth in need.
The need for community involvement is the biggest point she wants to make. More than 600 kids circulate throughout a small number of foster homes because they are required to stay within the county.
“It’s up to the government to provide for the children – housing, food, that type of thing…education. They also need care and love, and that is the community’s responsibility. Just realizing that foster kids need support because they don’t have support from their own families,” she said.
Hinsz said hopefully through the actions she is taking foster kids will get a better life than what they have now. People can get involved in a variety of ways, like mentoring a foster kid or participating in
CASA. “Society thinks this is a done deal, there’s nothing wrong with foster care how it is,” Hinsz said. Yet, she explained, because most people are removed from the system, they do not directly acknowledge the problems within that system.
To donate socks, there are drop boxes everywhere. A list of those sites can be found
here. Also, visit F-Cat's
Facebook Page.
