Seeing Deeper:
Helen’s eyes for hurt and a heart for healing.
With a background as a licensed mental health counselor, Helen Stephenson brings valuable insight to our community, and joined the Commission 127 team in May. She understands the heart of foster parents and the kids they care for in a unique and powerful way. She enjoys cooking and baking as well as hiking, but most of all she loves to connect with others and hear their stories- what passions rule their hearts and what struggles burden their souls. Her big heart and deep desire to truly see people amidst their challenges make her a wonderful addition to the C127 Family.
For most of her career, Helen worked as a clinician with children in the foster care system, many of whom had already endured severe abuse and neglect. Through working with these kids and interacting with their foster parents, she garnered a well-formed perspective of what their experience is really like.
“They’re exhausted,” she said bluntly. “The system is just broken.” Helen understands that the worn out state of most foster parents is due to several realities. Caregivers often feel so deeply alone. She recalls her conversations with foster parents, and how they would share, saying “nobody understands me,” and “no one gets what I’m going through.”
She remembers struggling to help those close to caregivers to try to help them understand the challenges foster and adoptive parents face. “Trying to describe it to people who have no connection to it at all, felt like I was speaking another language,” she explained. “The foster care world is a subculture; it has its own rules.”
Coming to Commission 127 marks an important turning of the page for Helen. Working as a counselor with kids in foster care, she undoubtedly helped many children in trying to heal from the trauma, but it was disheartening simultaneously. Helen says, “what excites me about C127 is I feel like I'm more a part of the solution than I am a part of the problem.” Not that her role as a counselor was contributing to the problem, but it was so heavy wading through all the sorrow. Now, with Commission 127, she is excited to amplify the whisper of hope that is already resounding locally through the world of foster care and adoption.
Helen is working in the role of FAM Specialist. She primarily assists our church partners’ FAMs with implementing CarePortal to ensure that struggling families, who are on the edge of having their kids placed into foster care, get the physical resources needed to care well for their children. She is starting out in her role with humility and eagerness, saying, “I feel like I’m stepping into a world where I belong, but I still have a lot to learn.”
In an organization that exists to serve and love vulnerable kids, and those caring for them, Helen certainly does belong. In her own words, “I don’t give up and I love problem solving. I love witnessing resolutions to things that could only have been resolved through the work of God.” Those kinds of resolutions seem to happen a lot around here! We are so thankful to have Helen on our team and in our C127 Family!