Campaign Encourages LGBTI Community Members to Consider Foster Parenting

For the first time, the province is reaching out to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) community through a social media campaign to encourage members to consider becoming foster parents.

Foster Parents: It Takes All Kinds is running during this month's Pride celebrations, until Sunday, July 26. The campaign also features posters, ads and recruiters marching in the Pride parade.

"Our hope is to encourage responsible adults in non-traditional families to consider becoming a foster parent," said Community Services Minister Joanne Bernard. "We hope that same-sex couples and others will be encouraged by this campaign to find out more."

Nova Scotia has about 800 children living with safe, stable and caring foster families. Nova Scotia, along with many other areas in North America, has experienced a decline in the number of foster families in the past five years.

"As gay foster parents we can offer a valuable perspective to parenting children-in-care, because we have often been scared, and have experienced stigmatization, too," said Kevin French, who is a foster parent with his partner David Woodhall. "Offering support, being an advocate for, and guiding vulnerable children, requires skills that we developed in our own struggle for equality."

Community Services encourages couples, singles, two working parents and recently retired people to apply, as well as members of the African Nova Scotian and Mi'kmaw communities.

To learn more, visit fostercare.novascotia.ca .