[00:00:00] Fuzz Martin: You know what I really love? Learning about cool things going on in our community for the first time. And this week I get to do that. This is one of those organizations that I recently learned about, and I am very excited for you to hear about. It’s called Washington County Foster Closet. The organization is run by Koaw Douderman and Shannon Siebert.
And on this week’s episode, Shannon joins me to talk about the organization and its importance to children and families. Within our local community, I was truly moved by our conversation, and I’m sure you will be too. For
those who don’t know, what is the Washington County Foster Closet? And can you give us an overview of the organization and how it helps our area children and families?
[00:01:12] Shannon Siebert: So the Washington County Foster Closet is an organization that, um, Supplies, gently used clothing, baby things, car seats, gift cards for certain items to children that enter foster care.
And the reason why we started is because us as foster parents know what it’s like to get a call to receive a placement and then have them come with next to nothing.
[00:01:41] Fuzz Martin: Right.
[00:01:42] Shannon Siebert: Instead of getting that call and getting that kiddo and then scrounging to get things together and you’re right around, we’re here to kind of get you started so that you can focus on the emotional, physical, mental needs of the child.
[00:01:58] Fuzz Martin: Absolutely. Children come in all shapes and sizes and ages and genders and, and such, and you can never be prepared. As yourself as a foster parent or family for that whole range.
[00:02:11] Shannon Siebert: Yeah, I mean, a lot of us obviously keep things on hand, but yeah, I mean, you never know.
[00:02:16] Fuzz Martin: Tell us a little bit about the team that you’ve got at Washington County Foster Closet, what you do there, who the other people are involved, like what does your team look like?
[00:02:27] Shannon Siebert: It’s myself and Coa Dauterman, we are pretty much a two man show right now. I think as we’ve evolved It’s gotten a lot bigger than maybe all of us were prepared to take on. So what do we do? I think the question is what don’t we do? It’s been a little hard to decide our major roles because this summer has been nothing but getting our buildings situated and organized and in, you know, really ready to, um, serve the county.
But I, I would say COA is in charge of donations. So if you want to donate something, you can. You would contact her. If you are a foster parent or a social worker, and you have needs that need to be filled, you would contact COA. Okay. She has also taken charge of our Christmas event where people sponsor kids.
To make sure that all of our kids have a nice Christmas, and this summer she took on our backpack drive to make sure that all the kids had new backpacks and all the school supplies for the school year. So, shout out to Koa, she is amazing. She’s a single mom, she is a teacher, and she’s a great teacher.
And when she’s not doing that, she’s doing this, and she does a great job.
[00:03:55] Fuzz Martin: Yeah. Well, I’ve seen from first hearing about Washington County Foster Closet, and maybe it’s kind of like when you are looking at a car and you see that same car everywhere, but from the first moment that I heard about it, now I see you guys everywhere.
[00:04:09] Shannon Siebert: Well, that is really good to hear. That’s awesome.
[00:04:12] Fuzz Martin: Uh, and, and I’ve been hearing about it on social media and went to the gym the other day and at Anytime Fitness. And I saw that. There’s a donation box there, and you’re looking for athletic gear for, for foster, uh, kids in foster care?
[00:04:27] Shannon Siebert: Mostly teens, I believe, yes.
Yeah, yeah,
[00:04:29] Fuzz Martin: so. Yeah, that seems
[00:04:30] Shannon Siebert: to be. I thought that I had a pretty good idea of what cool kids wore. Um, turns out I’m a lot older than I realize and I really don’t know what kids like. But it comes to be that athletic, sporty type clothes is.
[00:04:46] Fuzz Martin: That’s what, yeah, that’s what they, you know, what, yeah, my, I have a 17 year old and so I know, I don’t know how it goes.
[00:04:53] Shannon Siebert: I know, I took my daughter shopping and I get her all this stuff and she just looks at me like, what? What are you thinking? I don’t know. I’ve turned into my mother.
[00:05:01] Fuzz Martin: Yeah. Yep. No, I know exactly how that goes. And luckily, um, my wife gets to have that, uh, uh, piece because I don’t buy the clothes. So, but we do have a number of things that we did buy that are gently used and we will be donating those.
So.
[00:05:15] Shannon Siebert: Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah.
[00:05:16] Fuzz Martin: You’re very welcome. What drove you personally to get involved with this cause?
[00:05:21] Shannon Siebert: Well, I’ve, I’ve been known to be A bit impulsive. Those that know me are probably laughing at this. Sometimes it’s hasn’t been so good and other times it’s been really great. And what happened was a friend of mine shared a new story with me about a similar organization down in Kenosha.
And she’s like, Hey, you should do this. And I. Barely gave it a second thought and I said, yep, I will. And I reached out to our private county page. It’s, it’s, um, just a private Facebook page for all of us foster parents that are licensed in Washington County. And I said, hey, this is what I want to do. Does anybody want to hop aboard?
And entered COA. Um, so we started in my basement and then we kind of divided up amongst Other basements, and then we had storage units, and now we are here in our, our own building, and we have heat, and a bathroom, and lights, and so much more space, and it’s truly amazing. But the biggest thing for me was, you know, we, we taking these kids, and when I started, I was a fairly new foster parent as well, so I was still kind of learning the ropes, but you get a call, and a half hour later, your doorbell rings, and.
You just don’t really know what to expect, only to find out that they don’t have anything. And my husband travels for work, and oddly enough, every placement that we have received, with the exception of one, he’s been out of town for. We had, we had a situation where he was out of town, we had a little boy, we got a call to take in, uh, a sibling group of three.
And 45 minutes later, my doorbell rang and in walked in these three kiddos and they had nothing. And my husband was out of town and I’m, I’m on the phone. I’m calling my, my parents and my in laws and my friends. And I mean, thankfully everybody kind of came to my rescue, but that’s not always the case. And we.
So what I tell people for me personally the the best part about the foster closet is Not only just knowing that we can help these families But also the relationships that I’ve built while doing it prior to the Washington County foster closet I didn’t know any other foster parents and Even though my husband and I have a great support system, sometimes you can feel very alone.
Sure. Because there’s things that, unless you’re doing it and you’re living it every day, you just don’t quite understand. So, for me, it’s getting to know other foster families, sharing our stories, sharing our struggles, and really having that sense of community.
[00:08:04] Fuzz Martin: You were struggling as a foster parent to connect with other foster families in the area.
Those who aren’t. Probably don’t see it at all. And so what, what, how, how great is the, the need for foster families in, in our county? What does that look like?
[00:08:21] Shannon Siebert: It’s very, very high. It, it fluctuates typically, and I will, I’m sure it’d be corrected if I’m wrong. So I do apologize. Typically the beginning of the school year and the end of the school year are usually like the busiest times when a lot of calls are coming in because kids are Around teachers and other professionals, other mandated reporters.
We could have a lull where maybe we do have a couple open homes, but then in a matter of two weeks, we’ll have every home that’s full. So the need is very high, especially coming off of the coronavirus and, and all the havoc, you know, that, that, that brought. We are sadly expecting to, Get pretty busy over these next couple months, but the need is high.
The thing with being a foster parent, which is great, is that you really can kind of pick and choose who you want to care for. So we have some foster parents that are like, I’m only doing ages three and under or They have other children in the home, so they’re only open to one, or some are open to multiple.
So, I will say for certain that the need for taking in teens is extremely high. As far as I know, it’s my, my family and I think one other home in the entire county that’s open to taking teens. We have a lot of people that are no longer taking toddlers, so we need homes to take toddlers. And then the other biggest need for sure is homes willing to take in sibling groups.
Okay. Because what happens is They’ll get split up.
[00:09:52] Fuzz Martin: Yeah.
[00:09:52] Shannon Siebert: They get moved to other counties. We never, ever, ever want that to happen.
[00:09:56] Fuzz Martin: Right.
[00:09:56] Shannon Siebert: You know, if we can help
[00:09:57] Fuzz Martin: it. I mean, you couldn’t imagine that happening to you and, and you’re like, it’s very eye opening because it’s, again, it’s not something that a lot of families who aren’t foster families think of all the time.
[00:10:06] Shannon Siebert: Exactly. I, I had no idea. My husband and I became foster parents. We saw like a commercial for it. And I, I, I kind of thought about it and I’m like, Huh. Maybe we should do that. I, I was adopted myself. So, you know, I have a little bit of personal experience with that, but you know, we had a big house and we had a lot of love to give.
We love kids. We’re great with kids. And we thought, why not? But it wasn’t until really getting into it, into the licensing that we realized. How dire it was. I mean, we got a call to take our first placement before our license was even finished yet. Wow. The need is so high. And, and yeah, like you said, it’s just so easy to just kind of not think about it.
[00:10:46] Fuzz Martin: If somebody wanted to start, where would they start?
[00:10:48] Shannon Siebert: Well, there’s lots of different options. So we are licensed through Washington County. My husband and I don’t live in Washington County anymore, but we’re still licensed, but we were living in West Bend at the time. I just reached out to the local human services department and they mailed me some paperwork.
And that’s kind of how we started, but there’s different organizations that you can foster through. St. A’s, Foundations, Children’s Hospital, they all do foster care. We just chose to work with children in our county.
[00:11:15] Fuzz Martin: Thank you for doing that. It’s, uh, it’s very important and yeah, I
[00:11:18] Shannon Siebert: could talk about this all day.
[00:11:19] Fuzz Martin: I’m sure I’m certain you could, um, and, and again, it goes back to showing the passion that I have seen on social media and I’ve heard, uh, from people who’ve talked about it, uh, what you and COA have at this point. That’s at the Washington County Foster Closet. What do you need right now? What’s what’s a need that that you guys have?
[00:11:38] Shannon Siebert: A vacation. I would say our biggest need right now, honestly, is. It’s volunteers, particularly maybe one or two people that share the passion that Cohen and I have to really kind of be a part of our team, like that, that want to take part in like the ins and the outs of, of kind of what we do every day.
We’re busy.
[00:12:01] Fuzz Martin: I bet.
[00:12:02] Shannon Siebert: Um, also volunteers needed for special events. I’m kind of in charge of fundraising and recruiting volunteers. So, once the building is, is officially done, then I can kind of focus on, on, on that. My main goals, we need volunteers for our grand opening. There is a sign up genius link on our social media.
[00:12:21] Fuzz Martin: They just search Washington County Foster Closet. Is that how they find it?
[00:12:25] Shannon Siebert: Yep. Everybody in the community has been so great with getting us the things that we need. And as far as our inventory goes, we are, we are doing great. We have just about all that we need. Monetary donations are the biggest thing right now.
We need gift cards because we don’t. store things like undergarments or shoes. Walmart and Kohl’s are pretty much the gift cards that we carry. So like a teen comes into care, has no shoes. They get a Kohl’s gift card, they can go get themselves a pair of shoes. Awesome. An infant comes into care, we will give them a Walmart gift card to get diapers and formula until they can get their WIC benefits set up.
Gotcha. Those are, those are huge things. Other things that we do, if the funds are available, is provide outings and gatherings for our fellow foster families because as, as Cohen and I know, it’s just so important To have people that understand what you’re going through. I mean, our motto, what we say almost daily is, it takes a village.
And I, I, I believe that through and through. We want to have adult friendly outings where foster parents can be Breathe a little. Yeah,
[00:13:36] Fuzz Martin: a little bit of that vacation that you were talking about. Right, exactly.
[00:13:40] Shannon Siebert: Exactly, um, and then kid friendly things, Breakfast with Santa, uh, things like that. Eventually we would like to get to the, to the point where we could have speakers come in for educational things, like we have to have so many hours of trainings within a two year licensing period, so we would like to be able to cater to some of those things.
And actually, uh, the newest thing that we are now going to be working on, it was just brought to our attention today, in fact, that we have quite a few kids in out of state care. You know, that could be a whole nother podcast. Sure. But, um, it, it was something that I was not even aware of and it’s heartbreaking, the things that I heard.
So we are. In the next week or so, I’m going to be posting looking for families to sponsor these children that don’t get any state help whatsoever. Not only are they out of state, but there’s, you know, very little family support and really, really could use our help.
[00:14:40] Fuzz Martin: Okay, certainly. And again, You’ll post a lot of information on social media, on Facebook, is it a page or a group?
Well,
[00:14:48] Shannon Siebert: we have both,
[00:14:49] Fuzz Martin: um,
[00:14:49] Shannon Siebert: I know it’s really, really confusing. I started by making a Facebook group. Our group is what has the most members in it, but we, a couple of months ago, started a page. So we’re trying to get people to hop over to the page, but we check and post on both. And we also are in the midst of getting our website up and running as well, so hopefully that will be out for everybody to check out too in the next couple weeks.
[00:15:14] Fuzz Martin: Very good. Uh, well, check out Washington County Foster Closet on Facebook, on the page preferably. And Shannon, thanks for coming on.
[00:15:24] Shannon Siebert: Thank you for having me.
[00:15:25] Fuzz Martin: Thanks for all that you do for the community. Kids in our county and the families who support those kids. It’s a very important resource and we should all be proud that we have an organization like you that’s helping people out and also the foster families like you and others in our area that are helping children who need your help.
Yes, thank
[00:15:43] Shannon Siebert: you.
[00:15:44] Fuzz Martin: We’ll, uh, we’ll talk again soon.
[00:15:45] Shannon Siebert: All right, sounds good.
[00:15:49] Fuzz Martin: Thank you so much for listening to Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz. I want to be sure our entire county is well represented, not just the things that are in my immediate area. I want to be able to branch out and see the things that I don’t see every day.
So if you know of something going on that’s grayed in. Hartford or Richfield or Germantown or Hustis Ford is Hustis Ford in Washington County or Dodge County. It’s on the edge, but if you know something great going on there, I don’t, I That’s fine. Even if it’s not in Washington County, let me know. Aspen is that Washington County?
Let me know. Not if Aspen’s in Washington County. Just if there’s something great going on there, send me an email 15 with [email protected]. That’s 15 F-I-F-T-E-E-N. Spelled out with fuzz at gmail. com or visit visit 15withfuzz. com. New episodes every Monday. Be sure to like and subscribe. Leave a comment positively on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and or Google Podcasts.
And we’ll talk to you next week on 15 Minutes with Fuzz.
