{"id":195460,"date":"2026-03-17T21:36:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T21:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/195460\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T21:36:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T21:36:38","slug":"new-life-village-aims-to-keep-kids-out-of-foster-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/195460\/","title":{"rendered":"New Life Village aims to keep kids out of foster care"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/newlifevillage.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">New Life Village in Tampa offers affordable housing<\/a> and aims to keep kids out of foster care while helping families heal.<\/p>\n<p>What You Need To Know<\/p>\n<p>New Life Village offers housing, healing and resilience programs<br \/>\n<br \/>The village aims to keep kids out of foster care<br \/>\n<br \/>Programs range from crisis intervention and family coaching to career readiness and financial literacy workshops<\/p>\n<p>The families who live at New Life Village have been affected by foster care and\/or trauma.\u00a0The village reports Hillsborough County has the most children in foster care in Florida.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t have enough adoptive families and we need more foster families to assist the youth that need that help,\u201d said Mariah Hayden, executive director.<\/p>\n<p>Roteashia Weathers is raising her four grandchildren, ages 8 to 17 and says she\u2019s grateful to live at New Life Village.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLife-changing, to be able to be happy, loving, and caring for my grandkids, and they can call something their own,\u201d said Weathers.<\/p>\n<p>Life-changing for about 170 residents who have access to a variety of resources and programs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere&#8217;s onsite therapy, there&#8217;s case management and there&#8217;s lots of events and activities for our kids, our caregivers and our seniors,\u201d said Hayden, adding other programs include home ownership and literacy classes and crisis intervention and family coaching.<\/p>\n<p>Weathers says the neighborhood is a nurturing one and caregivers lean on each other for support.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like a collective group of people that inspire your family because you help to inspire the family,\u201d said Weathers.<\/p>\n<p>An expanding village helping to prevent children from entering foster care or removing them from the system through adoption.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe hope that our kids get to dream really when they leave here, that they have the confidence and the healing to have accomplished when they were here to do that,\u201d said Hayden.<\/p>\n<p>And giving caregivers the tools and stability to help them succeed outside of the village.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey give you a lot of hope to know that you care for your children, they can still be okay,\u201d said Weathers.<\/p>\n<p>Senior citizens are also part of the community \u2014 they serve as mentors and surrogate grandparents to their neighbors.<\/p>\n<p>The community has units available.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0New Life Village in Tampa offers affordable housing and aims to keep kids out of foster&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[274,571,276,2200,1187,115,277,135,137,136,278,2032,835],"class_list":["post-195460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-top-stories","tag-health","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-melissa-eichman","tag-news","tag-public-safety","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}