Foster Alliance aims to serve rural Arizona, tribes with new Flagstaff location

FLAGSTAFF, AZ (AZFamily) — There are almost 400,000 foster children in the United States, and there are about 14,000 children in the Arizona foster care system.

However, many in rural northern Arizona’s foster care system don’t have access to the resources they need.

Matt Lipan lives and works in Flagstaff for the Foster Alliance, so he sees foster families’ struggles firsthand.

“As we speak, there are hundreds of kids in the foster care community as we speak in just the northern region,” Lipan said. “Including with some of the tribal nations, it’s over a thousand. So I think the challenge that we set out to kind of try and figure out is how to solve, how do we create better access.”

Navajo social worker Elsie Elthie said tribal communities also feel the lack of access in the form of long drive times and not enough foster families.

“It’s lots of challenges on the reservation,” Elthie said. “I live in Tuba City and Tuba City is lacking a lot of resources for children in foster care.”

Social workers and volunteers also faced challenges accessing these families from Phoenix, but now there are fewer barriers as Foster Alliance opened its first northern Arizona location in Flagstaff.

“We’ll have some inventory on hand,” Lipan said. “We’ll have some beds, some cribs things like that. What we’ll be able to do here in this space, what we’re really going to focus on is community engagement.”

They’re also focusing on meeting foster families where they are in our rural communities.

“Some things can be so hard and so stressful,” Karrie Steving with Mercy Care said. “All of a sudden to have additional kids in your home that if we can alleviate one ounce of stress and let them focus on the kids and their well-being, we want to be a part of that.”

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