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Woman fosters kids who have experienced trauma to help get them adopted

Marvin Funches is a specially trained therapeutic foster mom. She helps kids who've experienced trauma get adopted or be reunited with their families.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Fostering children is a great way to help an overflowing system filled with children who need homes. But there's a special type of foster parent that goes one step further, a therapeutic foster parent.

Marvin Funches is one such parent.

"Once you see the stories and you hear the stories you just want to reach out you just want to be a part of it," Funches said. "And that's the way it was for me."

Funches had a yearning years ago to become a foster mom and help as many children as she could.

Just last month, we featured her foster son jarred in our place to call home segment here at Chuck E. Cheese. He's one of the hundreds of children Marvin has nurtured over the years.

"I love them like they're my own child," Funches said. "And I treat them as their my own children."

Marvin was a mother of two when she decided to become a therapeutic foster mom receiving specialized training to help children with complex trauma until their adopted for reunited with their family.

Jeff Gwatney with Centers for Youth and Families has worked with Marvin for over 25 years and describes her as one of the most committed, caring people he's ever met.

"You can see the changes in their behavior how they've become a part of their family how they are able to connect with her," Gwatney said.

Her work is very important to the children she cares for.

“Ms. Funches has a very good blend of being able to give kids the nurturing and caring that kids need as well as providing a good level of structure," Gwatney said.

And she's done so for more than three decades, planting seeds into each and every child, getting them all involved in her church community. She's even committed to mentoring other foster parents along the way.

"She's willing to come to new foster parent orientation and give her insights on what she's learned over 31 years," Gwatney said.

And every week Marvin meets with her children's therapist here at Centers for Youth and Families to continue the therapy strategies at home.

"You can tell when the trust start building you get more smiles, you get more relaxing more calming," Funches said. "And that's what makes me happy. When I can see that happening."

Realizing that each child needs help in their own unique, Marvin is committed to finding ways to bring joy and love into their lives.

"Any little part that I can contribute to them to make them happy and to let them know that there is a better life out there," Funches said. "We just have to take our time to go step by step to get to it." 

But perhaps the most rewarding feeling she says is when she receives countless letters, calls and visits years later.

"I love the fact when they come back," Funches said. "Because when they come back, that tells me that I did a great job and we became a family at the time and they still think of us as a family."

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