Get Too Attached

This 4th of July, join the fight for kids!

Just two more days until release day, but you can watch "Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot" tomorrow night, 7/3, at many of our area theaters.

For trailer, showtimes, theater information, and tickets, check out this link: https://angel.com/equippedandencouraged

(A portion of your tickets purchased at the above link will be donated to Equipped & Encouraged and used to support foster and adoptive families right here in Brevard County.)

May is National Foster Care Month! Throughout the month, we'll be sharing information about foster care in our community, along with ways that you, your church, or your business can help equip and encourage the foster families in your neighborhood.

National Foster Care Month is a time to bring awareness, a time to offer support not only to those who foster, but also to those who work in the child welfare space, and a time to focus on what each of us can do to help ensure that children in foster care have the best chance at bright futures.

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, and we're joining the Child Abuse Prevention Task Force of Brevard in planting pinwheels to help bring awareness to ways that all of us can work together to support families and help prevent child abuse and neglect. Blue pinwheels symbolize playfulness and joy, and they represent the happy, healthy childhoods that all children deserve.

Equipped & Encouraged hopes to see at least 20 local churches plant pinwheels this month. We would love to bring them right to you! Give a shout if you would like to be included!

It's our hope that in the month of April and throughout the year, all of Brevard County's churches will join us in advocating for the children in our neighborhoods by offering support to families, learning the signs of abuse and how to report suspected abuse, and praying for the safety and well-being of all children.

We had an amazing Foster Family Appreciation Week last week!! Each weekday we held several giveaways for local foster families, asking questions for entries. On Monday, we asked foster parents to tell us in one to three words, what fostering means to them. Their words made this beautiful word art!

Huge THANK YOUs to Brevard County businesses, Cookieliciousbykellee and The Proper Bounce Company, for donating two of Monday's prizes!

Next week, the State of Florida will celebrate Foster Family Appreciation Week, and we need your help to show Brevard's foster families how very much their community appreciates them!

Over the next few days, we'll be sharing some of our favorite ideas for how you can encourage your friends and neighbors who foster! We hope you'll follow along and then join us in showing them support.

There are several events planned to celebrate our local foster families next week, and we'll be joining in the festivities! If your family or your business would like to help with donations, we would be so grateful. Please drop us a line!

As Giving Tuesday 2023 draws to a close, would you consider donating to fill a Brevard County foster family's Christmas wish? We have a list of 50 foster families who shared ideas for places they would love to go have fun together! We're hoping to give these families the gift of beautiful memories this holiday season.

You can sign up to donate a gift card, admission, tickets, or funds right here - https://form.jotform.com/233173344260146

Thank you so much! Merry Christmas!

Trinity Fitness Beachside is hosting an Out of This World Silent Disco on Saturday, December 9th, and you're invited!! What's the cost of admission, you ask? It's a new set of pajamas for one of the local foster families that Equipped & Encouraged supports!

You can sign up and find more information right here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/siient-disco-pj-christmas-party-tickets-766533300737?aff=oddtdtcreator

Can you help fill a Foster Family Christmas Wish?

Can you help fill a Foster Family Christmas Wish?

We've asked foster families to tell us places that they would love to take their families - restaurants or experiences - where they would have fun together and enjoy the opportunity to connect with each other. We have a list of 50 families who need someone in the community to help make their Christmas wish come true!

There are a few ways you can help:
Sign up to donate a gift card, admission, tickets, or funds right here - https://form.jotform.com/233173344260146!

Sign your church or business up to be a drop-off location by dropping us a message!

Finally, share this post so others can help, too!

If you're a foster parent in Brevard County, we would love for you to join us this Thursday evening for "The Power of Play!" For location and registration information, drop us a message or send an email to [email protected].

Pure Religion Sunday (Orphan Sunday + Stand Sunday) is one week from today!

Each year, on the second Sunday in November, churches around the world turn their focus to God’s heart for vulnerable children and invite their congregations to respond in deep and meaningful ways.

For information on how your church can help, reach out to us or check out the resources at this link: https://cafo.org/purereligion/pure-religion-sunday/

Some exciting changes are happening!

Though the work hasn't stopped, things have been quiet here on social media as we've been working behind the scenes to make some changes. We're confident that these changes will lead to better support for families and better support for the churches, organizations, and businesses that partner with us!

Today, we are excited to announce that the Get Too Attached programs that work in partnership with churches, organizations, and ministries, as well as those that provide peer-to-peer and trauma-informed training, are now Equipped & Encouraged!

More information will be coming soon, but we would love for you to follow the new page and check out the new website at

Home - Equipped & Encouraged Parenting can be difficult. Foster families, adoptive families, and families in crisis often find parenting exponentially more difficult. We engage the church and community to offer support.

There was a great turnout at Brevard Family Partnership's Back-to-School Bash, and Get Too Attached was there again to hand out our Back-to-School Foster Parent Survival Kits! This year, thanks to Love Bugs Bakery, we were also able to gift a free donut, muffin, or bagel to the over 200 kids that came through!

Support for foster parents, even through something fun like a Back-to-School Survival Kit, can make a difference in the stressful lives that foster parents lead. Foster parents shared over and over that they loved the kits they received last year and looked forward to getting new ones this year. Thank you to our supporters for making this possible!

Add some one-on-one time to a treat like a donut, and you create a perfect connection opportunity for a child in foster care who has experienced trauma, and connection leads to healing. Thank you, Love Bugs, for blessing so many of the children in foster care in our community!

We want to say the biggest THANK YOU to the two churches who have hosted our Uplift Brevard Foster Families Support Group meetings over the past year, CenterPointe Church and Brevard Christian Church Merritt Island! Your childcare volunteers are some of our absolute favorite people!! Our kids get so excited about support group night, and so do we. You are a huge part of what makes these meetings so impactful for local foster parents. We are so grateful for you!

Thank you, Brevard Family Partnership, for allowing GTA to set up a bubble station at yesterday's Foster Parent Appreciation Picnic!!

It was so nice to connect with the foster families who attended, watch the kids play in the bubbles, and share a bit about how bubbles can be used to help children (and grown-ups!) with regulation.

We are so thankful for our community partners! Marie’s Sweet Treats Ice Cream Truck and River Road Coffee and Popsicles treated our foster families to popsicles during this month's Uplift Brevard Foster Families in recognition of National Foster Care Month! Our foster families so appreciate these businesses and their generosity!!

The moms in our groups were also honored by an anonymous donor who gave Mother's Day gift bags for each of them. Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness!

Prepping Game Night Boxes for tonight’s PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information, Development, and Education) graduates!

We would love to see you and your family at Tijuana Flats for dinner on May 24th from 5-8 pm. Be sure to mention the spirit night to the cashier, so that Get Too Attached will receive 20% of your purchase in support.

It's , and we're sharing whys and hows: Why should we support foster families? How do we support foster families?

One of the biggest ways you can support your foster parent friends is to simply be present.

Life as a foster family can be lonely and isolating. There are so many things that foster parents experience day in and day out that are unique to the lives that foster parents live, and for confidentiality reasons, there are often things that they're not allowed to share. It can feel like you're in this all alone.

A text message, a phone call, a coffee or lunch date, an invitation to dinner or a party, stopping by to chat ... Proactively check in, and you could be the life line that a foster parent needs. Be sure that your foster parent friends are seen and heard and valued.

It's , and we're sharing whys and hows: Why should we support foster families? How do we support foster families?

The biggest why? The children, of course!

When you support a foster family, you're not just babysitting or cooking a meal or offering encouraging words, you're strengthening and equipping that family to continue fostering and providing a stable, loving home for the children in their care. Stable, loving foster homes help children heal, they minimize additional trauma, they build supportive connections with the child's family, and they advocate for the child's best interest. Stable, loving foster homes increase positive outcomes for children.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms that we serve. Thank you for all you do!

It's , and we're sharing whys and hows: Why should we support foster families? How do we support foster families?

Today's support suggestion is one you might not have thought of. It's easy, though, and it's so helpful! Bring food!

Toddlers and teenagers alike eat food ... a lot of food. It sometimes feels like that's all they do! How can you help feed foster families?

Here are some ideas:
*Bring a hot meal every other week on the same day (or once a week or once a month - whatever works for you)
*Deliver several freezer meals that the family can keep on hand for busy nights when they don't have time to prepare food
*Set up a meal train for the foster family that has a new placement (Friends do this all the time for families with new babies. It just makes sense to do it for foster parents, too!)
*Ship snacks! (This is perfect if you have a relationship with a foster family who lives far away from you, or if you're just a busy person and still want to help.) Choose a case or two of a favorite snack food from an online retailer and have it shipped to the family. If you want to help on a regular basis, most online retailers will allow you to set up a monthly autoship.
*Donate restaurant and grocery gift cards. (This option is even easier than the last one.) Just purchase some gift certificates and drop them off to the family or drop them in the mail.
*Share your abundance! Do you raise chickens, have a backyard garden, own a fruit tree that overproduces? Your friend that fosters would be so blessed with a dozen eggs, a bunch of carrots, or a bag of mangos!
*Invite a foster family for dinner. Dinner in or dinner out, your foster family friend would probably love to be invited to eat and enjoy conversation with you!

We all know the importance of food to the health of our bodies, but food is also incredibly important to the health of our minds and the health of our relationships. Feed a foster family, and you're helping with all those things, and giving foster mom or foster dad a few extra minutes to rest or get chores done, and that's such an amazing gift, too!

Thanks to COSTA and CocoSol being Business Impact Partners we were able to provide a relaxing day at the beach. Opportunities like this allow our foster families to feel the support of the community and create incredible memories in a fun and therapeutic way for all.

One of the foster parents and the little ones in her care were so impacted by the day they spent at the beach and the generosity of the sponsors. She said, "I'm just overwhelmed with joy right now. We have never been so blessed!"

If your business would like to partner with us please reach out.

Don’t forget to place your Panda Express order today!!

Place an online Panda Express order from anywhere across the nation today, Thursday, May 11th using the code below, and GTA will receive 28% of your total!

What an amazing turnout at Saturday's Yard Sale Fundraiser in Palm Bay! Over 35 families in the community rallied together to donate items, and fourteen foster families were impacted by being able to shop for free!

Thank you so much to The Pearl Project for working with GTA to present Children & Trauma: How Can the Church Serve Well? on Saturday morning! The event was sponsored by the Christian Foster Care Collaborative of Brevard and attended by children's ministry staff and volunteers from area churches. It's our hope that this training will give Brevard's churches the knowledge and practical advice they need to serve children who have experienced trauma and support their families and caregivers.

Thank you, also, to Freedom Christian Center for hosting us!

The yard sale is going on today, Sunday, May 7th as well! We still have lots of great goodies.
Please visit the yard sale/fundraiser at 1030 Peacock Ave NE, Palm Bay, FL from 7 - 1 today. All proceeds go to the nonprofit, and foster parents shop FREE with their Foster Parent Discount Card!

It's , and we're sharing whys and hows: Why should we support foster families? How do we support foster families?

BABYSITTING! Oh, how foster parents need a break now and then!!

When you ask a group of foster parents what they really need, the most common answer you will get every single time is babysitters. It's hard for us to ask, though.

If you know a foster family, babysit for them! Offer a once-a-month date night, or offer to watch some of the kids while the foster parent takes another to appointments, or maybe offer to come play with the kids once a week so mom or dad can catch up on housework. Know a foster parent who has a newborn? Offer to come hold baby while foster mom or dad takes a nap!

If you're a part of one of our local churches, reach out to us and let's work together to organize a foster parent night (or day) out where your children's ministry staff and volunteers entertain a group of children while the foster parents enjoy a few hours to themselves. Give foster parents an opportunity to catch their breath and come back rested and re-energized. We'll walk you through step-by-step. We even have a printable guide!

If you're a part of a church small group, consider joining our soon-to-launch WRAP program where you'll wrap around a single foster family for a year. Our WRAP teams will provide babysitting at least once a month, along with other personalized supports for the specific foster family assigned to them. If this sounds like something you would like to do, drop us a line!

A few hours of your time playing with and loving on the children in a foster home may not seem like a huge deal to you, but it absolutely can make a huge impact!

It's , and we're sharing whys and hows: Why should we support foster families? How do we support foster families?

Let's talk NUMBERS.

As of March 2023, there were 796 children in out-of-home care in Brevard County.

There are approximately 150 licensed traditional homes in Brevard. (That number doesn't include relatives and nonrelatives who are caring for children who are sheltered, but it also doesn't reflect how many licensed homes are on hold or only taking temporary/respite placements.) The need for foster parents is great.

Across the nation, 50% of foster parents quit before the end of their first year fostering. Many cite a lack of community and social support. Fostering is hard. Foster parents need the community.