By Amy Bower Doucette
Thursday, October 02, 2008
When kids are in the foster care system, moved from house to house and caregiver to caregiver, they have little faith in anything. The only constant in their lives is uncertainty.
Stacy Gormley, 24, is out to change that. An accomplished equestrian with a deep faith, Gormley started the Fidelis Foundation five years ago. Fidelis is Latin for "faithful." The organization received its nonprofit status a year ago, and has since helped 1,000 kids through equine therapy.
The idea for the Fidelis Foundation came to Gormley when she was only 20 years old and became a foster parent herself.
"I was volunteering with my church," Gormley said, "and people kept telling me that I was good with kids and that I should consider working with 4KIDS of South Florida, which is an organization that our church supports. Eventually, I found myself interviewing and working for 4KIDS. I ran the emergency shelter for them."
Gormley, an Olympic bronze medalist who lives in Delray Beach, has a bachelor's degree in child psychology from Florida Atlantic University.
"Child psychology has always been an interest of mine. I took that passion for helping kids, mixed it with my talents and my love of horses, put it all together and came up with the Fidelis Foundation," she said.
Gormley works with foster care organizations, both government-run and privately financed, to provide an alternative means of therapy for needy children.
And the need is immense. The Florida Department of Children and Families estimates there are more than 26,000 children in the state foster care system.
"A child is in foster care because of something that has been done to them, whether it was abuse, neglect or trauma," Gormley said. "They are never in foster care for something that is their fault. One hundred percent of the time, unless the parent has died, someone betrayed and abandoned them. The relationships in their lives have not been ones where the parents have been faithful to them.
"Their whole concept of what a relationship should be is skewed. Using a horse, we teach them what a healthy relationship looks like. We build trust, which builds their confidence."
The Fidelis Foundation has 13 horses, all trained to work with emotionally fragile children.
"The horses go through six months of ground training, voice training and therapeutic training before they work with the kids," Gormley said. "Our horses are specially trained to be able to interact with the kids. The horses understand how to be compassionate toward them and show them love, even if they don't receive love immediately in return."
Equine therapy has many benefits for foster kids.
"Riding unlocks them," Gormley said. "When you're riding, and you can just be with a horse, everything else in your life fades away for that time. It's like this simplistic mindset for them. They're able to forget about what's happened to them. They can take a deep breath and let that wall down."
One of the Fidelis Foundation's success stories is the Romeo family, a big, blended clan from Broward County.
"Jan and Bill Romeo have made it their mission in life to take in hurting kids and love them and nurture them into being productive, successful young adults," Gormley said. "They have six kids. Three of them they have adopted out of the foster care system. The other three are in the foster care system and under their care. They have no kids of their own."
Jan Romeo is grateful that her children have an outlet for their emotions and another way to help them build trusting relationships. Even after years in a stable home, the Romeo kids still had emotional difficulties.
"As adopted children, they still had issues," she said. "Even though they had been in our home for five or six years, in a loving environment, there were still real struggles with attachment disorder. So we brought them here."
Like all the children that come through the foundation, the Romeo kids were put into an intensive program.
"They do a 10-week regimented therapeutic schedule," Gormley said. "Once we've seen emotional improvements in their lives, we graduate them into developing them as a rider. These kids are learning how to walk-trot-canter. In certain cases, they're learning how to jump. Some will learn the basics of dressage. We try to help them define a healthy goal and assist them in going for it."
With help from donations and sponsorship from Kristin Schuttenmeyer of Sporthorse International, who lets the Fidelis Foundation use her barn at Sunshine Meadows, west of Delray Beach, Gormley hopes to grow the organization and help as many kids as she can.
"The kids are often very touched by the efforts that our horses make to interact with them," she said. "Our horses kiss and hug the kids. They love on the kids. The kids are very touched that anyone would want to be around them, love them and look to them for guidance and leadership. It's very empowering for a child."
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