Sharon Annett’s eyes are now wide open to what’s really going on behind closed doors.
“I didn’t understand there are people out there mistreating children so badly,” said Sharon Annett. “It’s just horrific the stories you hear about what these little kids have been through.”
Sharon Annett is a treatment foster care parent, meaning she and her husband Jim Annett care for children with the most severe emotional and behavioral problems. The Annetts cared for more than 25 foster kids in the last 20 years.
“A lot of these kids are just misunderstood,” she said. “Adults have not taken the time to really figure them out.”
For decades, Sharon Annett provided foster care through Oregon Community Programs (OCP) in Eugene. If she’s learned anything as a foster parent, it’s that every child is different.
“We see potential in all the kids we take, so we try to tap into it and show them they are worthwhile,” Sharon Annett said.
OCP uses the evidence-based treatment model, Treatment Foster Care Oregon (TFCO) to help stabilize youths in a homelike setting and then prepare them to return to their families.
Researchers at Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC) in Eugene developed the TFCO model nearly 40 years ago, and it’s now well-known in child welfare circles across the United States and countries around the world, including Australia, Sweden and Norway.
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