Season 2, Episode 8: Biological Children and Foster Children

Healing Hearts: Parenting with Purpose-Support for Resilient Families, Support for Parents, Childhood Trauma Advocacy

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In this episode, Rylie Heck and Sofia Scher interview Pam Heck and Brian Heck. They discuss topics surrounding fostering with biological children and how to foster a strong family dynamic.
Brian and Pam met in college and came from completely different backgrounds. Pam was raised in a two parent home. Brian’s parents were divorced when he was just an infant and his mother remarried. He jumped between mom and dad’s house throughout his childhood. Through divine intervention, they ended up at the same college with the same group of friends. Through many years of friendship they married in 2004. They welcomed their daughter, Rylie, to the world in 2007 and their son, Cason in 2011. Pam and Brian both had careers in helping people. Pam was a director of In Home Family Services for Boys Town. She led a team of consultants who worked with families to intervene and to help prevent their children from going into foster care. Brian was a teacher. He worked in a Title 1 school with kids with severe behavior problems that were voted “most likely not to succeed.” Even though they were helping kids, they had a desire to work together and in a different setting. An opportunity arose for them to become family teachers for Boys Town in Tallahassee, Florida. They would be responsible for their two children as well as 6 teenage boys who were in foster care. They had a home setting with their family, while also teaching life skills to be successful in the future. This was an incredible opportunity that will forever impact Brian and Pam as well as Rylie and Cason. They stepped away from family teaching a few years ago in order to focus their time and attention on their biological children.