Provide Foster Families in Brazil

Dear Donor,

We share with you news about the project that has contributed to the full development of babies and young children who need to be separated from their biological families due to a court decision.

Our project offers family foster care to children between the ages of 0 and 6, who have had their rights violated in some way. In its seven years of existence, our project has taken in 104 children. The context of foster care is temporary and we try to minimize the impacts that institutionalization can cause in the lives of these young children. When they are in foster family care, their development is greater and the family environment, combined with the care of adults who are prepared to receive them, makes all the difference in this very difficult moment of their lives.

We work to protect children and to strengthen their biological families, which are also marked by countless forms of violence. This work is possible thanks to people like you, who believe in humanity and in overcoming situations of abandonment and neglect. Today we will share the story of a mother assisted by our project who, even after losing custody of her children, has been able to give new meaning to her own life, and her child´s life and rewrite their own story.

Inspiring stories

At 48 years of age, Carla lived on the streets for over thirty years. During this period she gave birth to eight children. Three were taken away from her while still in the maternity hospital, and others were taken in without her being able to understand why. She never knew the fate of any of them. During the fostering of her ninth child, Carla was heard in her pain, and over months of work and support, she has been able to rescue and record her own story in an album. In the narrative she created, she chose to recover the stories lived with the parents of each child. Supported by the team, she created her "healing story", recorded in a booklet in which the character is a mother rabbit who loses her babies in a very dangerous forest.

For each of the rabbit puppies, Carla created and performed a farewell ritual. For one she offered a prayer, for another a balloon filled with messages, for a third she wishes to plant a tree. She symbolized each loss that burned like an open wound that, little by little, she was able to elaborate her grief. At this point, Carla is already aware that she will not be able to regain custody of her ninth child, but faced with the elaboration of the loss, a choice was produced. Something has moved from the inevitable repetition: she no longer lives on the street and holds a job that brings her dignity and pride.

Thank you for your generosity.

Our best wishes,

Instituto Fazendo História

Dear Donor
We would like to share news about the project that has contributed to the full development of babies and young children who need to be separated from their biological families due to a court decision. And all this has been possible because we have counted on your support over the years.
Our project offers family foster care to children between the ages of 0 and 6, who have had their rights violated in some way. In seven years of existence, our project has already sheltered 99 children. The context of foster care is temporary and we seek to minimize the impacts that institutionalization can cause in the lives of such young children. When they are in foster families, their development is greater and the family environment, allied to the care of adults who are prepared to receive them, makes all the difference in this very difficult moment of their lives.
Despite all the difficulties, we continue strengthening ourselves and acting in our mission to protect and ensure the rights of children in such a challenging phase of their lives. This work is possible thanks to the help of people like you, who care and contribute to the search for a better life for our children.

Inspiring Stories
When her three children were taken in, Sheila was in her fourth pregnancy and had been using crack for over 20 years. She said she started smoking as a teenager, together with her mother, in downtown São Paulo.
She showed a great desire to take care of her children and get off the streets, but in the beginning of the support program she was resistant to the team's interventions, she couldn't organize herself to arrive on time for the visits, and didn't accept the sheltering measure.
One day she commented that she loved to paint napkins, so the following week one of the staff started painting a napkin next to her. Sheila soon became interested and started to come to the service twice a week to teach the social worker how to do the napkin painting. Little by little she opened up and told us her story.
Some time later she lost her partner, her main support network, who was run over by a bus, and she became very fragile, started to abuse psychoactive substances again, and stopped attending the service.
With the help of the street outreach team, the technicians managed to find her and brought to her a notebook that told her story: "Once upon a time there was a beautiful little girl with curly hair who was born in São Paulo. Her mother said that the baby was born standing up, because she was the daughter of the world. Her dream was to be a delegate and a ballerina, she loved to dance and sing. When she was five years old, her mother lost her job and ended up living on the street...." At the end of the story Sheila was thrilled. After that, she started visiting her children again, began treatment for drug use, started working, and was able to rent a house. Today, Sheila lives with her four children in the East Zone of São Paulo, went back to school to become a delegate, and says she still has her notebook with her story.
Sheila's story was transformed thanks to the caring eye of people who cared about her. The work of these people is possible thanks to your contribution! We can't change the world, but we can certainly contribute to change the story of more people like Sheila!
We are grateful to count on you!

Kind wishes,

Instituto Fazendo História team

Dear Donor,

We hope to meet you well.

And also, we would like to share the story of Bruno, a child assisted by the project you support, so that you can have a closer look at the positive impacts on his development.

The project you supported provides foster care for children between 0 and 6 years old who have had their rights violated in some way. Our service began in 2015 and since then has taken in 98 children. Our goal is to strengthen the quality of care offered in early childhood and minimize the consequences of an institutionalization process, and we know from scientific evidence that the best strategy to achieve our goal is family foster care. Because this allows children to be cared for daily by adults prepared for this function, feeling safe and protected in a supportive and affectionate family environment. It is a temporary context that can contribute in a favorable way to the full development of all children who need foster care.This is a work with a beginning, middle and end, but the results are forever.

Bruno, age 5, was referred to the Foster Families service in June 2020. He came transferred from an institutional shelter due to suspected sexual abuse perpetrated against him by six foster teens. Bruno was housed in this SAICA (shelter) due to suspected sexual abuse by his mother's partner.

The shelter said that he was a "bad, effeminate boy who teased the older ones".

The first few days in the foster family home were challenging. Bruno arrived frightened, showing a lot of fear and behaving aggressively in different circumstances. He had difficulty understanding what affection was, screamed and cried a lot. At times he verbalized that he was "a bad boy" and that nobody wanted him, and even asked him to "disappear and cease to exist". He also hit family members and broke objects in the house. In these moments he was taken in, being reassured that he was in a safe place and that he could trust people. Due to this situation, Bruno was put into psychotherapy. As time went by, he became calmer: the crying and screaming gave way to easy laughter. Moreover, he was able to verbalize that he was "beautiful, loved, and wanted to be happy", and felt comfortable to ask for affection from the members of the foster family.

The technical team discovered during the follow-up process that Bruno had a maternal grandmother, Sandra. Since the beginning of the first SAICA foster care program, she was requesting custody of the child, but her request was not considered by the service's technical team. After extensive research, coordination with the network for assistance to the mother who abused drugs and the grandmother at the Social Protection Service for Child and Adolescent Victims of Violence (SPVV), referrals to the Social Assistance Reference Center (CRAS), family allowance, and UBS (basic health unit) for the mother's family planning, the technical team decided that the best course of action would be to place the child in his biological family, and the grandmother was responsible for Bruno's custody. There were several interventions between the mother and the grandmother to define how the return would be and what each one's role should be. We understand that with the support of the foster family service, Sandra was able to get stronger to take care of Bruno.

Because we count on your support, stories like Bruno's are possible. Together we can transform many other harsh realities into healthy lives.

Thank you.

Sara and Instituto Fazendo Historia Team

Links:

• More about Foster Family in Brazil
• Foster Family in Brazil - video

Dear Donor,

We would like to share news about the project you supported a year ago and tell you that we decided to reactivate it because of its importance and impact for the full development of infants and young children who needed to be separated from their biological families due to a court decision.

To refresh your memory, this project provides foster care for children between the ages of 0 and 6 who have had their rights violated in some way. Our foster family service started in 2015, and since then, it has taken in 91 children. We aim to strengthen the quality of care offered in early childhood and minimize the consequences of an institutionalization process, and we know by scientific evidence the that the best strategy to reach our goal is offering foster family care. The foster Family service allows children to be taken care by the same care givers every day, feeling secure and protected in a supportive and affective family environment. It is a temporary context, which can contribute in a favorable way to the healthy development of all fostered children.

Even with the Covid pandemic and the need for social isolation, we continue to carry out all the planned actions and build new strategies to ensure the continuity of our work. Despite all the difficulties, we are stronger every day in our mission to provide quality care to children and families who need love in the most difficult moments of their lives.

Finally, we would like to share the testimony of a biological family member:

Stories that inspire

Abner, nine months old, arrived at the foster care service in June 2021. At that time, he was three months old and had been hospitalized since birth for tests and monitoring of health issues because he had contact with HIV and developed syphilis.

After Abner's arrival, the team went in search of his story. We got the information that Claudia, his mother, was in prison after being caught stealing food in a grocery store in downtown São Paulo. We were able, still in the month of June, to meet her through video calls and personal visits to the prison, and it was possible to get to know more about her story.

Claudia is 42 years old, besides Abner, she is mother of three daughters whom she hadn't see for over 15 years. She reported that she has been living for over 10 years on the streets in a neighborhood where drugs are sold and used and that she has been using crack for over 20 years. 

About her pregnancy, she said she was in love and decided to get pregnant to begin a new life. Unfortunately, her partner was murdered, and Claudia was left alone. She also told us about her desire to find her daughters again and see if they were all right. So, we started the search for the girls and after a month, we managed to find Abner's sisters: Julia, 20 years old, Joana, 18 years old, and Jussara, 16 years old.

At first, the sisters were scared, because they had no information about their mother. However, as the meetings went on, Julia began to show a desire to take over the custody of her brother.  We then began a process of rapprochement between them and a rapprochement with Claudia.

The first meetings of the youngers with their mother were difficult, there was a lot of suffering involved. But Claudia apologized to her daughters and said that she was "proud that they are beautiful girls and were on a good path".

We noticed that after this event, Julia, the older daughter, became stronger to make an important decision: she wanted to take care of her little brother. She finished her studies, started psycotherapy and found a job in sales. We have been noticing every day how Julia is maturing and preparing herself to be Abner's legal caregiver. Currently, they are spending the weekends together and soon Abner will officially live with her.

Julia wants to share some words with you:

" Thanks to Instituto Fazendo Historia’s support I found my mother again and met the love of my life, my brother. At first, I thought it was impossible to get custody of him, I thought: they won't give this boy to a girl with nothing like me. But it was the opposite, you believed in me and helped me not to give up”.

I promise I will take care of him with all my heart, I would really like to be taken care of by a sister who would love me and stay with me forever. I wasn't that lucky; I was taken care of by many people. I didn't feel like I had a family, but now I do. My brother gave me that, I found a place…  No, I think I feel that now everything is back in the right place."

Once again, thank you for your support.

Best regards,

Daniela and Instituto Fazendo História team

Dear Donor,

We would like to share the news about the project “Provide Foster Families in Brazil” we reactivated a few months ago and you kindly supported.

Our project offers foster care to children between the ages of 0 and 6years old who have had their rights violated and needed to be removed from their families. The Family Foster Care Program at Instituto Fazendo História started in 2015 with the goal of strengthening the quality of care offered in early childhood and minimizing the consequences of the institutionalization process, believing that the individualized care of a foster family contributes to the healthy development of foster children

But only 4% of the children who needed to be separated from their families in Brazil are living with foster family. The other 96% are in shelters. That’s why we urgently need to raise awareness and spread the Foster Family culture throughout Brazil. Since we started, we have fostered 84 children, published a guide to help other organizations to implement and train foster family care professionals, published a children's book about foster family and held seminars nationwide to multiply our work methodology. 

To explain a little bit more about our work, we would like to share a very special moment - a meeting between a biological mother and her young daughter living with a foster family selected, trained and supervised by our team:

This girl in the photo is called Maria, she is the mother of Julia, a girl who is living with one of our foster families. Maria grew up in an institutional shelter and when she turned 18 years old, she had to leave the institution and has been living on the streets. Last year, her daughter Julia was placed in an institutional shelter.

Maria was about to lose custody of her daughter and the judge decided to transfer Julia to live with one of our supervised foster families.

We began to monitor Julia’s process with the judiciary so that she could have her rights and full development guaranteed, while a judge decides if she goes back to her biological family or in the last case, to a substitute family.

While Julie is being very well cared by our foster family, our social workers are working to support and strengthen Maria, so that soon she can regain custody of her daughter.

Maria got a job as a manicurist in a shopping center in the East Zone of São Paulo and last week she was visited by very special client, Julia herself. Mother and daughter were very happy and proud of seeing each other so well.

We believe that soon they will be able to be together.

Thank you for helping us to better welcome early childhood in foster care: babies and children who need so much protection, love, and full conditions for their full development.

Instituto Fazendo Historia Team