Healed Hearts seeks foster families in Maricopa

Maricopa residents are a giving bunch, eager to help those in need and rise to the occasion when neighbors are in distress.

That makes Sheila Sudano an ideal fit here in town, where she moved from New York with her husband George in 2007.

RELATED STORY: How to become a foster family

Sudano founded Healed Hearts LLC in 2018 to find foster families for children who need care for a time. It’s a difficult process — and one that Sudano thrives on — but she knows it’s not for everyone.

“Not everyone is cut out for fostering,” she said. “That’s why it’s important to have someone like me with an agency who can weed out those who aren’t prepared for what it’s going to take.”

Despite a tremendous affinity for children throughout her life, she wasn’t quite sure how to have the greatest impact on them. “But I liked that I loved,” she said. “I knew I had the capacity to love these children and help make their lives better, and that’s what got me started.”

Prior to helping children, Sudano was an actress, working in New York and chasing the dream of stardom. But just when it looked like she was about to capture that success, she realized it wasn’t really what she wanted.

“I got into show business and started being seen,” said Sudano, a cousin of multiple Grammy Award-winning singer Donna Summer. “I became an understudy off Broadway and started getting noticed and I realized I didn’t like it. I didn’t like what it did to me, so I stepped away.”

She set out in 2018 to begin the process of starting a foster care agency in Maricopa and received her Division of Developmental Disabilities license that year.
It took about three months to get a contract with the state. Then she went to work to get her state license, writing programs for the services she wanted to provide. Assessments and behavioral plans were completed before approval and licensing. It was an 18-month effort.

“They gave me the information and I did my own training — that was hard,” Sudano said. “Once I got to know the people in the system, they were tremendously helpful and now I have great relationships there.”

‘I’M BY THEIR SIDE’

But getting the license is just the beginning.

According to Molly Mesaros, a supervisor in the foster and adoption division of the Arizona Department of Child Safety, one of the biggest obstacles to recruiting families is overcoming the misconceptions about fostering.

“A lot of the difficulty in recruitment of families lies in dispelling some of the unknowns,” Mesaros said. “People see our ads and reach out but may not understand that the goal is always reunification with the family. They don’t understand the difference between foster care and adoption.”

Getting certified as a foster family is a difficult and time-consuming process. Families interested in securing a foster-care license start with a five-part orientation video on the DCS website that explains the difference between foster care and adoption. Then the family works with Mesaros’ team to select one of about two dozen agencies, including Healed Hearts.

“The agency becomes the family’s guide throughout the process,” Mesaros said.

Agencies like Healed Hearts work with families and smooth the road to their foster care licenses.

“I’m their advocate,” Sudano said. “I’m by their side holding their hand through the process.”

A FOCUS ON SPECIAL NEEDS

Sudano’s agency will emphasize placing special needs children, she said. One of her programs prepares children with autism to go to kindergarten in traditional school and another teaches families to identify and manage different levels of autism.

A child’s care can also be furnished by a kinship provider, someone with a relationship such as a relative, teacher, coach or family friend. Sudano and her husband adopted three nieces who came to her as kinship foster kids. Sudano and Mesaros agree the fit between children and family is the most important element.

“We really need families for young adults. It’s similar to families who want kids with disabilities,” Mesaros said. “Just being removed from family is a traumatic event, so we want to be sure we get them with the right family.”

She said the idea is to turn what could be a really scary experience into something really positive.

“Most of the time it isn’t a situation where the parents don’t love their kids,” she noted, “it’s just that circumstances occurred that brought us into the picture. We do our best to get them back to their home environment. Those are our success stories.”

For someone who is so dedicated to helping other families, Sudano uses her own family as a reference point for all she is doing to help others.

“My husband and my kids are 100% behind this,” she said of her mission with Healed Hearts. “My husband is a man who has always allowed me to step ahead of him while he holds up the pillars for me to do what I need to do for others. I use the same framework of support that I get from my own family and put it to work for these foster kids.”

Healed Hearts, 646-250-2092
AZDCS foster/adoption line, 877-543-7633, option 3.