Actress Victoria Rowell to share her foster care upbringing with Atlanta foster teens, parents

July 26, 2007

ATLANTA (GA) Actress and best-selling author Victoria Rowell will speak to foster teens, foster parents and those interested in becoming foster parents at a breakfast Sunday, July 29 at 9:30 a.m. at the HJC Bowden Multipurpose Center in East Point. Rowell, perhaps best known for her popular role in the long-running daytime drama " The Young and the Restless," is lending her support and celebrity to an issue she knows much about – the need for more foster parents, mentors and community support for children in foster care.

"As someone who grew up in foster care, Victoria Rowell brings not only encouraging messages foster teens need to hear, but also critical conversation the community needs to hear. Dedicated foster parents and mentors bring about life changing experiences for children in foster care. Their significance cannot be stressed enough," says Mary Wilson, executive director of the East Point Community Action Team (EP-CAT) which is hosting the event in partnership with the Department of Human Resources’ Foster Families Initiative. EP-CAT is one of four community organizations selected by DHR’s Division of Family and Children Services to recruit, train and provide support services to foster parents. A primary goal is to increase the number foster families for sibling groups and teenagers.

Rowell spent her entire childhood in the foster care system and it is this childhood reality that is behind her 20 years of advocacy work on behalf of children in foster care and the inspiration for her recent best-seller "The Women Who Raised Me." In the book she writes about her experiences as a "ward of the state" and gives credit to "an unlikely series of women" who took her under their wings and guided her toward success.

For more information about DHR’s Foster Family Initiative visit www.dfcs.dhr.georgia.gov/ffi.

For information contact:
Beverly Jones, 4040-657-1387
[email protected]