About Moms Adopting Moms

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Moms Adopting Moms is based out of Athens, Georgia and will begin taking referrals from three county DFCS offices starting in September of 2024.  These counties are Jackson, Clarke and Oconee.  The remaining counties of region 5 and several select counties from region 2 will be added by the end of 2026.  Our goal as an organization is to build a replicable partnership parenting model that can be rolled out in other counties across the state of Georgia before moving nationwide.  

The mission of Moms Adopting Moms (MAM) is to offer advice, encouragement, mentorship and resources to biological moms (and dads when possible) who are doing everything in their power to reunite with their children and thrive post reunification. We do this initially by creating and maintaining a relationship between the bio mom and bio dad with peer mentor moms and dads that have "been there, done that" so to speak. These mentors have had their children taken away by the Department of Family and Child Services but have since been reunited and they have also been addicted to one or more mind altering substances and are now in long term recovery.  Across the board we are finding their greatest goal is to help other parents in similar circumstances achieve the freedom and the hope they now feel. 

Secondarily we help support a loving and nurturing relationship between the biological and foster moms. By asking the foster family to "adopt the whole family" instead of the children away from their birth parents,  we ensure children will experience less trauma, biological parents will be given more "forever" support and foster parents won't have to grieve the loss of the children they have grown to love upon reunification.  It's a win, win, win for everyone involved.  

Mary Rathbone (Founder, Executive Director and current Chairman of the Board) is a wife and mother as well as a former Technology and Hospitality director.  She and her husband lived seven and a half years in Europe when they first married and have now settled back in Mary's hometown of Athens, Georgia.  Christina Carter(Co-Founder, Addiction Peer Counselor & Bio Mom Mentor) is a mom of four and a recovery specialist.  The two founders  have worked together for the past six years to encourage reunification and continued connection post reunification between biological and foster moms. Christina is engaged, excited to move into a new home and works full-time while looking after her three sons and one daughter. She has received her CARES certification and is always trying to improve herself and assist others in doing the same. She and her fiance' enjoy fishing and traveling. Mary loves spending time with her daughter and husband and extended family, speaking German to anyone that will listen, playing with her dogs, traveling and listening to audio books.  Christina and Mary and their families attend Nations Church in Athens.

Moms Adopting Moms partners with a variety of organizations and businesses in our community to provide comprehensive A-Z assistance and resources to our clients in their local area.  This includes detox and rehabilitation centers, food banks and clothes clothes, counseling offices, work placements and training college, childcare options.  transportation assistance and housing referrals.  We want to connect (in order) the baby steps a bio parent must take to complete their case plan, achieve reunification and thrive post reunification through a fun and engaging resource app that keeps track of and rewards mom for steps in the right direction. The aim of this app is to free up valuable human resources (like peer mentors, case workers and foster parents) time so that they can  provide the love, care, encouragement and support that  each case desperately needs. 

We imagine a time when life is just easier for everyone involved in the foster care process.  We imagine a day when the crisis has ended and the system is no longer broken.  We imagine a day when case workers are not overwhelmed, foster parents aren't ready to throw in the towel and biological parents aren't asked to achieve the impossible and if they don't they are faced with losing their children forever.  

By developing a machine learning and AI driven approach to the collection and dissemination of data relevant to fostering and family preservation,  we hope to develop a model, easy to replicate nationwide to streamline the entire process from the identification of a family at risk to those who already have children in the system so that families are helped faster, kids are returned quicker and families are no longer at risk but are thriving together.  

Two additional key pieces that we are exploring now but will expand upon later is the legal assistance component of our work and the transitional housing need that is so apparent - especially in the area within which we work.