The ARKGroup’s mission is to help adults provide the unconditional love that values children for who they are rather than for what they do. Over 30 years, we have registered a positive impact on the quality of parent-child and teacher-student relationships for more than 200 schools, 1200 teachers, and 32,000 students. We are now including foster care families in our mission outreach.
There are 28,000+ foster care providers and 26,00+ foster children in Texas. Foster care providers play an integral role in the lives of the children to whom they give care—providing a safe environment and emotional support. The quality of their care helps determine the life trajectory of these kids.
During COVID in 2020, The ARKGroup recognized the need for extra support for foster families and donated our ARK for Parents and Caregivers course pro bono to all the CPS offices in Texas. The course is in Spanish and English and has received the “Texas Governor’s Award for Program Excellence.” It was gratefully received by CPS workers across the state—with an investigator in Dallas calling it “the best parenting course” she has ever seen.
The current training for foster care providers or at/risk families does not include a course on parenting. The ARKGroup is currently working with Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) leadership to provide ARK for Parents and Caregivers pro bono to all parents in need of training. The course focuses on nurturing the emotional well-being of children. Our goal is to help kids to be emotionally healthy as they enter the larger world on their own.
One department under DFPS is “Family Support Services” (FSS). FSS case workers work with at-risk families and employ guidance and training/parenting courses to help the family provide an emotionally-healthy and physically-safe environment for their children. The goal is to keep the family unit intact and to avoid sending the kids to foster care. The ARKGroup has a special interest in augmenting the services of FSS.
