At LSI, our top priority is ensuring high quality care for the children and families we are privileged to serve. LSI Foster Care and Adoption leaders have had recent detailed discussions with the Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS) regarding Iowa’s response to the novel (new) coronavirus, COVID-19, and the increase in cases across Iowa....
Children have been referred into foster care more than 600 times this year in western Iowa alone. They enter foster care through no fault of their own, and there is no one specific reason why children enter care in the first place. Many children have experienced abuse or neglect. Some enter foster care when their...
November is National Adoption Month. At LSI Foster Care and Adoption, we’re busy celebrating and thanking the many families who are providing kids with loving forever homes. This month, we’re also compelled to remember the hundreds of Iowa children currently in need of a temporary foster home – and to remember that foster care is...
Children are placed in foster care through no fault of their own. Most children enter foster care when their birth parents are not able to care for them appropriately, which could be due to abuse, neglect, substance use, or mental health concerns. For many Iowans unfamiliar with foster care, this might make birth parents sound...
Mallory Berkenpas has been with LSI for nine years and is a Service Coordinator for LSI’s Early Childhood Services. What inspired you to start working at LSI? Before LSI, I thought I wanted to work with patients in a hospital setting or with the elderly population but in reality, I found that child welfare and...
We are so grateful for LSI supporters like you!
We are so thankful for the generous support of LSI donor Karol Sturm, of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Cedar Falls. Karol gave a memorial gift to honor her parents, Wally and Shirley. Karol’s paternal grandmother, Anna Lenius Burman, was raised at the Lutheran Children’s Home – now LSI’s Bremwood Residential Treatment Center – along...
If you haven’t been exposed to foster care, you might think that the best thing for children is for them to be “rescued” from their bad environment and removed from their parents and their home permanently. But that’s not true. Foster care isn’t a quick, easy avenue to adoption. It’s loving, temporary care for children...
When families decide to become licensed foster parents, many choose to open their homes solely to younger children. And while these families are providing critical care to hundreds of the most vulnerable children in Iowa, this also makes it more difficult to find loving homes for a population often overlooked: teenagers. It’s understandable that families...
