N.B. organization focuses on helping foster families province-wide

Fostering Closet NB looks to help foster families across New Brunswick by providing free supplies for children and youth who are in care.

Taking over one corner of Amanda Lepper’s garage is carefully labelled bins stacked on top of one another, but they aren’t filled with typical supplies, they’re filled with donations for foster families in need.

“We adopted a little girl when she was 3.5 [years old] and she has siblings that went into the system and it broke my heart because I really wanted to take them and I knew I couldn’t,” said Lepper, the Moncton coordinator for Fostering Closet NB.

“I’m a full time teacher, we have two other children and there was just no way and so I thought ‘I have to do something to help families, foster families.’”

Today, Lepper is apart of a growing organization called Fostering Closet NB – a group that aims to make things easier for both the foster families and the children and youth who are in care.

Co-founder and Owner, Kailha Winter-Smith, who is also the coordinator for the Fredericton area, says a lot of time the children that go to a new foster home are doing it empty handed.

“Although they do get funding to be able to get basic needs, it’s not enough to cover the things they require, so we fill that gap,” she said.

Adding, “I was a foster family many years ago, [for] six years exactly, up until 2020 and when I was a foster family I kind of started and did it my own, my garage was filed with bins because I always wanted to be ready for children and what I found was children were coming into care that afternoon and they needed items and I was trying to scramble to find things.”