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Fostering connection: Utah Foster Care highlights voices and images of those with lived experiences

By Curtis Booker - | May 13, 2025
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Attendees observe artwork during the "Faces of Foster Care" event at Entrata in Lehi on Thursday, May 1, 2025.
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Speakers engage in a panel discussion at the "Faces of Foster Care" event at Entrata in Lehi on Thursday, May 1, 2025.
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Speakers engage in a panel discussion at the "Faces of Foster Care" event at Entrata in Lehi on Thursday, May 1, 2025.

As Utah Foster Care looks to continue highlighting the need for families who are willing to give a child a safe and happy home, the organization is stressing the importance of connection, culture and community in building a sense of home.

At the recently held “Faces of Foster Care” event at Entrata in Lehi on May 1, marking the start of National Foster Care Month, community members heard personal stories from people who shared different aspects of foster care as those who’ve lived it.

Jennie Shepard, director of recruitment at Utah Foster Care, said the panelists included voices from diverse backgrounds — people of color, LGBTQ+ people, single foster parents, a former child in care, a birth parent and a kinship provider — each offering a different perspective to the conversation.

“Just to be able to represent all sides of foster care experiences, and they were able to share what it means and how foster care affects their identity and belonging,” Shepard said.

Visual stories were also shared via submitted artwork that displays the feeling of what it’s like for a child living in foster care.

“You are not in charge of your own life for a time, and it is absolutely to the core telling you who you are, and yet at the same time, you still get to decide what resilience looks like for you,” Shepard described. “And some of these artists had some incredible imagery to kind of show the emotions behind that.”

One image particularly stood out to Shepard. She recounted one woman’s piece of artwork displaying a black and white photograph taken of a young child sitting in front of an empty refrigerator in an apartment in disarray.

“I was able to talk to her about her photograph, and she shared with me that this was a representation of what it felt like for her as a child before she came into foster care and what the feelings were of just kind of this abandonment and emptiness,” Shepard said.

The woman went on to explain that she had been in foster care as a child and is now a foster parent, and the experiences she had in her youth has enabled the love she now pours into her child.

Overall, Shepard said the event is another step in reducing the stigma around foster care by amplifying the stories of young adults who have overcome challenges.

“And as we share their stories, and as we show what this looks like, and talk to the foster parents who are doing it, it helps to just reduce those barriers,” Shepard told the Daily Herald. “These are just normal people doing some hard things, but it doesn’t require a superhuman, you know — like these are just normal kids, normal families being foster parents.”

Currently, there are roughly 1,700 children in foster care in Utah, according to the organization.

In 2024, 620 Utah children were placed into a home through foster care.

Shepard said the need for families to adopt remains critical, specifically parents or people who are able to take in older children.

“I mean, it’s a little scarier to take on a teenager. They have a lot of their own thoughts and ideas and everything like that, (but) that’s where our biggest needs are,” Shepard said. “It’s a beautiful way to be involved and it’s a beautiful way to impact a human being that changes the trajectory of their lives.”

Shepard said while Utah continues to see population growth, the numbers of children coming into foster care has slowly declined over the past four years, but the number of families becoming foster parents took a nosedive following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It has been disheartening to see, because I know that we have amazing families,” she noted. “We have amazing individuals who, if they fully understood what the needs were and understood the impact that they could have on the lives of these children, they would be stepping forward.”

Shepard and Utah Foster Care said they are aware of the economic challenges many people are facing, and even if the time is not right for families to adopt, there are other ways to get involved.

She encouraged community involvement through respite care, volunteering and the Care Communities program, but ultimately, taking the time to listen to the voices of youth in foster care and focusing on their needs.

“As we consider what we want to do to change a child’s life, look at it from their perspective and what it means to them, not just our own reasons for being involved,” Shepard said.