When Staycee Dixon decided to hold the “Illuminating Hope: A Day of Honoring Foster Care Champions: Rise of the Champion” awards, she knew just who she’d nominate for the “therapist” category: Josie Arens.  

Staycee is an experienced foster parent and the founder of Rise of the Champions, an organization that recognizes the everyday heroes who work in the field of foster care. The awards span 11 categories, recognizing therapists, case workers, child advocates, and other professionals in the field. 

Josie, winner of the therapist category, is a clinician out of Cornerstones of Care’s Saint Louis outpatient office. She has her LCSW and an expressive arts/integrative therapy certificate, as well as a Master of Social Work with a clinical focus.

Staycee can’t help but gush about Josie’s skill and commitment as a therapist. “I experienced Josie with five of my foster children and her approach is unique. She always made it open for me as a parent to be involved [in the therapeutic process]. She kept things completely confidential between her and the kids but always gave me pointers. I knew she’d be there for me.” 

Josie underscores her commitment to care in her professional profile on our website: “I firmly believe therapy should always feel safe, empowering, and unique, so I seek to find interventions that are creative and meaningful to my clients.” 

Staycee had a few reasons for founding Rise of the Champions and its annual awards banquet. One of them was to celebrate the small, everyday wins happening at every level of foster care.

As a foster parent, Staycee noticed most of the accolades went to foster parents who had the longest placements or who had achieved other major milestones. This overlooked foster parents like her, who specialized in treatment foster care, which has entirely different milestones that kids and parents achieve in its care model. It also overlooked the everyday wins—like a child using positive coping skills for the first time, as Staycee listed as an example. 

“Foster parenting typically doesn’t celebrate the small wins,” Staycee said. “People who work in foster care say they do it for the impact, but they don’t talk about the small things because they feel like those parts are just their job. Well, I think they need to be celebrated.” That’s why she nominated Josie, and why she isn’t surprised Josie won over the other five nominees in her category. “It was never her or me against the kid,” Staycee said. “It was always, ‘how can we make it work?’ She was always very intentional. Past therapists, they came and went—they wouldn’t go into what the children had going on. Josie built a relationship with her kids so they felt seen, known, and heard. I saw a change in my kids who worked with Josie. When their perspective changed, the kids themselves changed, and my whole household changed.”   

Josie had this to say about the awards: “This is the first year of the awards so it was something special. I want the focus to be on the kids and the support they have. Foster care can be an isolating experience—so much of what we work on is connecting to other people. Putting foster kids in a room with other people they can trust is a big deal.” 

This is another reason Staycee created Rise of the Champions; she wanted people to come to the event to make connections and build relationships. 

Rise of the Champions can trace its roots back to small networking groups Staycee formed with other foster parents from different backgrounds. Staycee realized at other award banquets she’d attended that many traditional foster parents didn’t know much about treatment foster care—kinship foster care parents knew even less about it. Staycee recognized how beneficial it would be for different types of foster parents to meet and trade resources and information. For example, kinship foster parents could learn from treatment foster parents about additional support or training they can access.  

On that note—at Cornerstones of Care, we believe that every foster parent deserves support, connection, and practical tools to help them thrive—no matter their care model. That’s why we offer specialized trainings designed to empower foster parents with skills that reflect the real challenges and wins of everyday foster care. You can check our training schedule here.  

Staycee’s vision for Rise of the Champions is rooted in recognition and connection. By honoring professionals like Josie Arens and creating space for those working in and affected by foster care to share knowledge and build relationships, she’s helping reframe what success looks like in the field and for the kids. It’s not just about long-term placements or major milestones—it’s about the small, consistent acts of care and collaboration that make a lasting impact on children’s lives.