LINK nky 2025 readers’ choice for best nonprofit is a small, very personal shoestring operation that many people may not have heard of, but the work they do has an impact on many families throughout Northern Kentucky. Foster Adoptive Parents Association of Northern Kentucky is a support network for families caring for foster and adopted children.
Foster moms Amy Carder and Kate Morgan met through a local chapter of the Kentucky Foster & Adoptive Parent Training and Support Network. The network, operated through the state of Kentucky, is made up of parent-led teams that help provide training and support for foster and adoptive parents. They can provide training and resources for parents dealing with crisis or the unique issues that can come with caring for foster or adopted children.
The team was a great resource, and both women joined a team. Yet, Carder said she and Morgan felt more was needed. They wanted to reach more foster families and provide more opportunities for foster families to meet and get to know each other.
A journey to fostering
Carder said she had been aware of fostering when as a young woman she had to make a difficult decision. When she discovered her friend’s baby had been abused by a boyfriend, she decided to file a report. Ultimately, the child was put into foster care. Later, when she was working at a day care, Carder saw the child again and learned she had been adopted into a loving family.
She said this knowledge and understanding of foster care helped later when she was facing her own struggles to start a family.
“My husband and I were married about 10 years, and we were battling infertility and pregnancy loss…My husband had said he did not have any interest in being a foster parent. So then, a few years into this battle, it was just not going to work. We were at our end of attempts.”
The only option left, she said was to try in vitro fertilization or IVF.
“I just could not justify sinking thousands of dollars into having a miscarriage,” she said.
Her husband agreed, and said he would reconsider fostering. And so, the couple began their journey to becoming foster parents. It was not easy, and Carder said in the beginning they felt very alone.
“We had our first placement. It was very rough. We didn’t know what we were doing. We had two little boys. They had significant needs. They were 10 months apart, and they were both two. There were days I sat on the floor crying. I’m like, we can’t do this. I don’t know what to do. They were lead poisoned, and they had all kinds of things that I just I didn’t know about, and I didn’t know who to reach out to to get help, and no one understood,” she said.
It wasn’t a situation where she could just call up her mom or her aunt and ask what they did. They wouldn’t have experienced what she was going through.
“You feel really isolated and alone. We struggled through that first placement, and then ultimately we had to move those boys to a home that was better equipped to care for them. And then we had to really take a few months to think about if we were ready to do this or not. We took three months off, and then we got a placement of a little girl, and it was much easier this time for us, but there were still things that your general population just doesn’t understand.”
A new opportunity for foster families
Carder said she started looking around for support and found the state-run foster parent training network.
“I started going to those meetings, and that really helped. And then I met my friend Kate there, and we quickly bonded. We both decided to take a position on the support network team. So we worked together on that for a couple years,” she said.
They had discussed how so few foster parents seemed to know the network existed. They wanted to know how to get the word out, how to reach more people. They also noted that some of the private established foster care organizations like DCCH and Benchmark Family Services offered events and activities to bring families together, something their network did not have the financial resources to do.
“So, we decided, okay, well, why don’t we just form our own organization? Then, we can do our own fundraising, and we can throw together some kind of party and let these families come together. So that’s how we formed in 2016,” Carder said.
The pair decided to start with a Christmas party. The first one drew 100 people.
“It was a big deal for us with just two moms putting this together,” she said.
She noted it wasn’t hard to get to 100 because many foster families are large. Six foster children is the state’s legal limit. She and Morgan both have six kids.
“Our homes fill up very quickly…When you’re committed to these kids, your homes end up with six kids. You suddenly end up with a sibling group…So, a lot of families are big,” she explained.
The Foster Adoptive Parent Association
The Foster Adoptive Parent Association started with a Christmas party, but since then has added many more events, activities and resources for their member families.
Carder said they apply but rarely receive grants. They are what she calls “community funded.” In other words, funds mostly come from the families and from community donations. They do Facebook fundraisers and rely on the generosity of supporters. Much of the time, the founders will buy a few items, get a free room at the library and create an event.
For a St. Patty’s Day event, for example, Carder said she would buy a $14 blow up costume from Amazon, book a room at the library and invite families to join in a leprechaun themed craft.
“And we have 30, 50, 100 people come to these things. We had almost 300 people at our last Christmas event…It gets bigger every year,” she said.
In addition to fellowship and recreation activities, she said, the organization is in its second year of their “Care Closet,” providing clothing and other items to the families.
“When you foster, you never know what child you’re going to get at what age. So, we have a storage unit. We run out of it right now, and we do care bags. If a family says, ‘hey, we got a kid coming, and we need a car seat,’ we’re going to find that car seat …if, they call and say, ‘we have three kids we’re sending back home on a plane…They don’t have any luggage,’ I’ll find that luggage,” she said.
“I had a foster mom call us last week who has two boys that needed to play high school football, and cleats alone were $80 a piece, and so I put a call out to my community…and immediately the Amazon list was full, and her kids got their gear they need for football.”
This year a community member volunteered to help the group by collecting toys, books and games in good condition. A few times a year, they will add the contents of the care closet to the volunteer’s toy collection and host a “swapping shop.”
“We will find a space like a church…we’ll come and empty out our storage unit of clothing. Volunteers come in and sort it by size, and then he will set up all the toys he has. We have foster, adoptive and kinship families come in, and they can take anything they need for free. At the last one we did, we were only open for three hours, but we served 77 kids in those three hours,” Carder said.
Wrapping foster families in support
Carder has adopted five of her foster children and along the way gave birth to a daughter. She took a job in the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services and works in continuous quality improvement. She works with older youth in independent living arrangements. She said she uses the connections she’s made in the Foster Adoptive Parents Association to be able to help young people with whatever they need.
The goal, Carder said, is to wrap arms around these foster families and provide any help they need to let them be successful and focus on the most important part, the kids.
“We can bring them together to let these kids know each other and to let these families know each other. And by doing that all these almost 10 years now, we have built a big community of people, and I know, like myself, if I need help, I know I have an army of people who understand and are there to help me immediately,” she said.
Carder said she knows not everyone can be a foster parent, but anyone who wants to help foster families can do so through donations of time or funds.
The association also earned readers’ choice for best organization to volunteer for and Carder was voted best person who makes a difference.
For more information about Foster Adoptive Parents Association, go to fapaofnky.org.