Bridgeway Program Philosophy

A HEALTHY FAMILY UNIT IS THE BEST WORKING MODEL OF PARENT/CHILD RELATIONSHIPS

Bridgeway strongly believes that a family is the best environment to promote warmth, nurturing, normalization and structure for a child in need. It is Bridgeway’s philosophy that this approach is the foundation for healing and for establishing a sense of security for each child. From the family experience, a child can reach out to form meaningful interpersonal and social relationships within the school or community, and then return to the support, safety and comfort of the foster home.

The family unit is also the best working model and example of parent/child relationships and this serves as an effective model for the child to draw upon when he or she enters a future parenting role.

Based upon Bridgeway’s philosophies, Bridgeway looks for unique qualifications in its Foster Families in the consideration process and stresses the importance of stable, mature, and healthy family dynamics. Families must present a sense of commitment to a child’s needs along with a willingness to gain an understanding of a foster child’s difficult and often traumatic life experiences which necessitated the need for protection, and admission into the foster care system.

Bridgeway strongly believes in the necessity for ongoing and consistent Foster Parent training and development to empower our Foster Parents with the knowledge base required to gain the depth of understanding into the foster child’s background and needs. In addition to ensuring the optimal training and development of our Foster Parents, Bridgeway has strategically designed and implemented three distinct foster care programs based on the intensity of needs of the children/youth placed into foster care. Within the three distinct programs, there are customized support services available with high flexibility to meet the Plan of Care needs of every child/youth in foster care.