We serve

• Foster Families

• Kinship Care Families

• Collaborative Care Individuals & the families that support them

• Adoptive Families

We call these folks the FKCA Community

We hold the Lantern for all of them them. We do not discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, ability or financial status. Lantern serves all.

In 2021, Lantern founder Sky Adams, LMHC, organized a discussion among a number of child-serving agencies and interested individuals to talk about the needs of foster, kinship, and adoptive families and ways to meet those needs. After this discussion and after hearing from foster families, he and Lantern founder Martha Nord, a former foster parent, began talking about getting hands-on help to families. In the fall of 2022 they formed the Foster Help Initiative as part of the Foster Closet of Monroe County, a project of the Center for Sustainable Living and over the next two years recruited volunteers to mentor and play with foster children in their foster homes, provided meals and household help from time to time, brought welcome bags to families when a new child came to their family, offered craft times for kids, and began a monthly support group for foster, kinship, and adoptive families and simultaneous children’s programming.

In spring of 2024 we incorporated as Lantern Support Services.