Wrapping Up National Foster Care and Mental Health Awareness Month

During the month of May, Friends of the Children celebrated National Foster Care Month and Mental Health Awareness Month across our network! This year, our campaign not only focused on foster care, but also on bringing awareness to our work in mental health and how our model provides stability, consistency, and intention around emotional, behavioral, and mental health support for youth in our program.

Each week we shared inspiring stories on email and social media about how our Friends – paid professional mentors – improve access, increase engagement, and expand capacity for mental health resources for the youth we serve and their caregivers. The stories shared from Klamath Basin, SF Bay Area, and Los Angeles highlighted the ways in which supporting children’s mental health is at the heart of Friends of the Children’s work every month, every week, and every day of the year.

To celebrate foster care and mental health, we also teamed up with youth advocate and Olympic gymnast Simone Biles! On May 11th, we were honored to welcome Simone as she hosted an interactive Q&A and gymnastics stretching session with youth across the nation. Simone shared her own story and talked about goal setting, the importance of education, finding your passion, and how to relieve stress. We are thrilled that Simone posted about the event with Friends of the children on her social media and the post has had over 22,000 engagements on her Instagram and Twitter accounts!

Throughout the month of May, Friends of the Children was featured on hundreds of billboards in 40+ cities across the country through a partnership with Billups, an outdoor advertising agency. Billups placed over 7200+ digital placements, which were seen everywhere from multiple screens a few blocks from NY Times Square, bus stops, huge billboards, taxi screens, electric car charging stations and more. We are grateful for these ads for spotlighting our hashtags #PutChildrenFirst, #MentalHealthMatters, and #FosterOurFuture that invited others to join our conversation and for bringing awareness to our work across the nation.

Thank you for celebrating National Foster Care Month and Mental Health Awareness Month with us. With the support of champions like you across the country, we are on our way to serving thousands more children and families across the country to be safe, well, and reach their full potential. Thank you for the work you do to amplify our commitment to empowering youth and their families!