Local nonprofit Rising Ground has helped connect loving couples to foster children that need a place to call home.  

For Bushwick couple Janelle Young and Dwyane Gittens, they used foster care as a way to create the family they always dreamed of. They say that they’ve noticed there is a stigma surrounding foster care while raising their 8-year-old foster son. Young wants to change that narrative.  

"When we tell people that we're foster parents they don't they get the oh really you know they get that look,” said Young. “You're giving someone an opportunity that they may not have had had they not met you.” 

Families like Young and Gittens are connecting with Rising Ground to become bonus parents to children that need a temporary home, forming relationships and building healthy ways for the biological and foster parents to communicate.  

"To offer the best support everyone involved has to be willing to communicate to get the child the best that they need,” said Tiffany Brissett, family support specialist at Rising Ground.  

Rising Ground says that these kids need people to show up for them, and while the fostering process isn’t easy, it’s worth every obstacle.  

“The fact that we show up for him, literally and figuratively, and he knows that we’re going to show up for him is pretty much everything you want out of a situation like this,” said Gittens.