Raise the Future works to connect youth, support families, and create hope. Laura is an adoptive parent whose family received support services from Raise the Future. She shares her family's experience below.

Raise the Future changed our lives. My husband and I are the parents of four adopted boys. In 2012, we adopted a 4-year-old boy from foster care. Knowing he came from a rough situation, we believed wholeheartedly that our love would be enough to navigate any challenges that came our way. We were wrong. We began seeing behaviors that we had never even heard of ⁠— let alone knew how to correct. So we read parenting books, went to therapy, took classes, and so on. These modalities worked temporarily, but nothing was sticking; our lives were careening out of control, and our family was crumbling. Nothing was working, and we had lost hope. We ended up putting our son in various day treatment programs from fifth grade until eighth grade. This also included a five-month stay at a residential treatment facility. While I am thankful that those options were available as they provided temporary relief, they weren't a long-term solution and, in some ways, perpetuated the problem.

Just as we believed all was lost, hope came in the form of Raise the Future's Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) parenting classes and family connection camp. It was through these programs that we learned how to parent differently. We learned that the key to correcting these behaviors was through connection. We hadn't been connecting with our son, and many of his behaviors ⁠⁠— maladaptive as they were ⁠— were efforts to find connection. It was TBRI® and Raise the Future's family camp where we learned the skills needed to connect with all of our children.

TBRI® has changed our lives. The energy is different in our home, and we finally have the tools needed to parent our unique children. We are just one of many families who face these types of challenges. Every adoptive family deserves access to the resources Raise the Future provides. These programs are needed and necessary as prevention just as much as they are needed for intervention. While we all have love for our children, kids from hard places just need more. I'm thankful for organizations like Raise the Future that provide specialized programs that help keep families connected and, more importantly, together.

Thanks to grant funding from the State of Utah, we are excited to announce that we are expanding our Family Support program in Utah to provide these life-changing services to even more children and families.