Sotera Youth & Family Services Collaborative

09/01/2026

💜 September is National Kinship Care Month! 💜

Sometimes, when a child cannot safely remain with a parent, family steps in.

A grandparent becomes a parent again.
An aunt or uncle opens their home.
An older sibling takes on a new role.
A relative, or someone who feels like family, says, “You can stay with me.”

That is kinship care.

Throughout September, Sotera Youth & Family Services will be recognizing the grandparents, relatives, and kinship caregivers who provide stability and connection when children need it most and sharing information and resources that can help support these families.

To every kinship caregiver who has rearranged your life, opened your home, or simply said “we'll figure this out together”:

We see you. We appreciate you. And we're glad you stepped up.

08/14/2026

⭐ Come count starfish with us tonight! ⭐

Sotera is set up and ready for the Cade Thompson concert tonight, hosted by South Dakota Kids Belong! 🎶💙

If you're here, stop by our booth, say hello, learn a little more about what Sotera is doing for children and families in our community, and grab a starfish bookmark!

We believe that while we may not be able to help everyone, making a difference for one child or one family still matters. ⭐

We'd love to see you tonight!

08/07/2026

What an incredible evening!

Tonight, Sotera welcomed over 50 children and 20 adults for our end-of-summer bowling night at Lariat Lanes!

Families enjoyed an evening of neon bowling, arcade games, pizza, door prizes and time together before the start of a new school year. Every child received a gift bag, 22 backpacks were distributed to help kids get ready to head back to school, and 8 teen hygiene kits were provided to local youth.

Events like this are about more than bowling. They're about creating opportunities for foster, kinship, adoptive, and other families to connect, build relationships, and make positive memories together.

We are incredibly grateful to everyone who helped make this evening possible, especially:

Venture Communications for sponsoring the event. Lariat Lanes for your generosity and hospitality. South Dakota Urban Indian Health (SDUIH) for donating teen hygiene kits for our youth. The Gail & Dolores Miller Foundation for supporting Sotera's family programming and helping us continue opportunities like this throughout the year.

And thank you to all of the families who spent your evening with us. Seeing children laugh, play, and simply enjoy being kids was the best part of the night.

We look forward to seeing you at our next family event!

07/10/2026

🎳 Registration is NOW OPEN! 🎳

Sotera Youth & Family Services is excited to invite foster, adoptive, and kinship families from across Central South Dakota to our Strike Into the School Year Family Fun Night!

📅 Thursday, August 6, 2026
🕕 6:00–8:30 PM
📍 Lariat Lanes | Pierre, SD

💜 This event is FREE for foster, adoptive, and kinship families, thanks to the generosity of our community sponsors and supporters. Join us for a FREE evening of black light glow bowling, arcade games, pizza, sweet treats, door prizes, family connection, and fun as we celebrate the end of summer together.

🎟️ Registration is required so we can reserve enough bowling lanes, food, and prizes for everyone attending.

👉 Register by August 3 at:
https://soterayouth.org/strike

📣 Help us spread the word! If you know a foster, adoptive, or kinship family in Central South Dakota, please share this post with them or tag them in the comments. We want every family to know they're invited!

A special thank you to Venture Communications and our community partners for helping make this event possible. 💙

07/02/2026

We're excited to share some wonderful news!

Sotera Youth & Family Services is honored to have received a $35,000 grant award from the Gail and Delores Miller Foundation of the South Dakota Community Foundation.

This generous investment will help us continue providing safe, child-focused supervised visitation and strengthen the support we offer children and families throughout central South Dakota.

We are incredibly grateful to the Gail and Delores Miller Foundation of the South Dakota Community Foundation for believing in our mission and investing in stronger families, safer connections, and brighter futures for children.

Thank you for helping make this work possible. 💙

06/25/2026

06/05/2026

June is National Reunification Month.

At Sotera, reunification means hope.

Every day, we have the privilege of providing supervised visitation services that help children maintain meaningful connections with their parents and families while they work toward stability, healing, and positive change.

Reunification is rarely a single moment. It is a journey made up of small steps. Showing up consistently, rebuilding trust, learning new skills, overcoming challenges, and putting a child's needs first. Behind every successful reunification are countless hours of hard work by parents, children, foster families, caseworkers, service providers, and supportive communities.

While not every family's path looks the same, we believe children benefit when safe, healthy family connections can be preserved and strengthened.

We are honored to walk alongside families during some of their most challenging seasons and to celebrate the progress, growth, and reunification successes that happen along the way.

This Reunification Month, we recognize the resilience of children, the dedication of parents working toward change, and the many professionals and caregivers who support families every step of the way.

06/01/2026

As Foster Care Appreciation Month comes to a close, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the moments people don’t always see.

The school activities.
The extra laundry.
The difficult conversations.
The visitation exchanges.
The outgrown shoes.
The routines, patience, and consistency that happen quietly every day.

This month reminded us that foster care is rarely made up of big headline moments.

More often, it’s people continuing to show up for children in ways that may seem ordinary to everyone else, but mean the world to a child.

To the foster parents, kinship caregivers, biological parents working through difficult circumstances, supportive family members, volunteers, and community members who continue showing up for kids in our community:

Thank you.

05/14/2026

Some of the most important moments in foster care don’t look big from the outside.

Sometimes they look like:
🩵showing up for the last middle school concert of the year
🩵sitting in the crowd at graduation
🩵walking across a field day with sunscreen and water bottles
🩵rearranging a work schedule to make it to just one more school event

Small moments.
Ordinary moments.
The kinds of moments kids remember anyway.

As the school year comes to a close, we’re especially thinking about the foster parents, kinship caregivers, and supportive adults who keep showing up — even in the busy, everyday moments that often go unseen.

We think that matters. 💛