The Garcias looked into several programs before discovering Neighbor to Neighbor. “What we liked was that it kept kids together and—so instead of having a lot of different families in your home—you had one family,” she says.

In 2001, after going through family interviews, the application process and eight weeks of rigorous training, the Garcia family welcomed their first foster kids, a group of five siblings; the youngest a newborn, the oldest eight years old.

“The beginning was our most challenging time, because the kids were learning how [to] respond to us,” says Garcia. “But we always had the support of Neighbor to Neighbor to keep us together and to ensure that our family was a success.”

Since the beginning, Garcia has kept an open line of communication with the birth parents and has even come to consider the children’s mother as a sister. “It’s better for the kids if you can have a good relationship with the family,” she says.

The hardest challenge they faced was the realization that one day, they would be separated from the children they had come to love. But on July 5th of this year, Joshua, 5, Eric, 6, Russell, 8, and Beatrice, 10, were legally adopted by the Garcia family. 13-year-old Ashley remains in their guardianship.