LSS foster family named
state Therapeutic Foster Family of the Year
2007

With 11 children, every day is laundry day in the Coffey house.
“We do about four loads a day,” Brenda Coffey said. “It sounds like a lot, but in a house with 13 people, it just works out that way.”

On top of 120 loads of laundry each month, there are the 48 rolls of toilet paper, $1,200 in groceries, and at least one birthday every month of the year.

It is that sense of resolute calm that sets Brenda and her husband, Jim, apart from the crowd, and is one reason the Coffeys were named Texas Therapeutic Foster Family of the Year for 2006 by the Texas Foster Family Association.

Amanda Heitmuller, Austin-area director of family services for LSS, nominated the Coffeys for the award. Her partnership with the Coffeys over the past four years has been a privilege.

“Their jobs are the most difficult anyone could ever do and yet they make it look effortless,” Heitmuller said. “Their hearts are still like a child’s and they have fun with the children.”

The Coffeys originally became foster parents to adopt Davin, still a toddler, after his mother was killed in a car accident. Davin had been in the car at the time of the accident and required intensive therapy and rehabilitation.

Brenda, then a Certified Nurse’s Aide and already a mother of three, chose to leave her job to provide Davin with the full-time care he needed. The process of fostering to adopt took two years. In 2001 the final papers were signed.
Adopting Davin started the ball rolling for the next six years of adoption and foster care.

“In May 2001, we received another call about a child in need. Since then, we’ve never said no,” Jim said.

Jim and Brenda have fostered 42 children. In addition to Davin, now 6, they adopted Angel, a teenager. Their house has expanded from a modest three-bedroom home into a seven-bedroom, three-bath household to accommodate up to seven foster children at a time. They are fostering six children, ages six months to 17 years.

Many of the former foster children still keep in touch. “I get phone calls about graduations and letters telling us how they’re doing, and they still call us Mom and Dad,” Brenda said. “We still think of them as our kids.”

Brenda and Jim feel honored by the Therapeutic Foster Family
Award, “It’s nice to be recognized, but we’d do it, regardless,” Jim said.

Brenda singled out her silent partners in foster care: Her children. “They should make an award for the biological and adopted children of foster parents,” Brenda said. “They give up their space and their time, and they’ve never complained, not once.”

“There are all sorts of kids who need a home, but so few families stepping forward to help,” Jim said.

To learn how to become a foster parent or support parents like the Coffeys, please click here.

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