Wood’s Homes looking for Home Fire Keepers to give troubled youth a second chance

Youth services are now available in the Lakeland area for vulnerable children that need a foster care home.

Wood’s Homes offers Therapeutic Foster Care services in Lac La Biche and now the Cold Lake area, designed with a focus on culturally-sensitive, clinically-supervised wraparound care for youth aged 12-17. 

Based originally in Calgary, the expansion to the north is to help those who have complex needs requiring stability or are in transition for independence, returning to the community and family, or for family reunification.  

“It’s foster care times ten,” says Geoff Strong, regional program manager for Therapeutic Foster Care with Wood’s Homes. 

“Foster care which offers a service therapeutic foster care, is a conglomeration of clinical service, of providing shelter, providing support. Wood’s Homes therapeutic foster care includes an Indigenous component, so it is a cultural therapeutic approach to providing service.” 

Looking for “firekeepers”   

Wood’s Homes is actively looking for Home Fire Keepers.

In Indigenous cultures, the term fire keeper was given to elders and knowledge keepers as a showing of connection to history. They are symbols of security and knowledge.

As Indigenous youth-in-care are overrepresented, that’s why a lot of the therapeutic care offered is delivered through Indigenous teaching, ceremony, and cultural guidance for those in the program? 

They are recruiting up to eight Home Fire Keepers, six in Cold Lake and two in Lac La Biche, to help maintain the “fire” in these troubled youth.

“We don’t expect our Home FireKeepers to be great huge masters of all knowledge,” said Strong. 

“What we do expect is if in some way, shape, or form, you have the history of youth care or you’ve worked with youth in some fashion, or even if you’ve raised youth in your own house. Maybe you’ve got some Indigenous heritage or you’ve got some alliances and understanding of cultural implications and interactions, and you would like to be an agent of change helping young people.” 

Ideally, Home Fire Keepers are people with youth care experience (teachers, youth care workers, health care, etc.) who can provide home supervision, are open to Indigenous culture, and aren’t opposed to $101 per diem tax-free per day (with an increase of $5 per year over a three-year contract). 

Home care typically lasts in intervals of 8-12 months but is assessed situation by situation. 

All youth placed in Therapeutic Foster Care are referred from Children’s Services.

In each community, recruiting is also taking place for Indigenous Elders and knowledge keepers to provide teaching guidance. Woods Homes has an Indigenous Advisory Team and a council of advising Elders. 

The teachings are facilitated by youth care specialists who do the “Big Brother” youth worker approach daily with the youth during their time in Therapeutic Foster Care, seven days a week. 

Holistic approach

Wood’s Homes has two youth care specialists from the Lakeland area, and are called as such based upon the extensive training that they’ve all been provided. 

The Therapeutic Foster Care program is structured to be holistic in approach. The focus is on building relationships and supporting relationships between the youth and the Home Fire Keeper in hopes of creating lifelong advocacy and connection.

Home Fire Keepers are expected to work from home and will go through training before accepting a teen.

“They will be expecting the call from somebody applying for a home fire keeper,” says Strong about those interested in being a Home Fire Keeper. “And that call will then get directed to me and we will start a discussion.” 

Those interested can call 403-863-1892 to start the process.

*A message from Wood’s Homes.