Foster Care

Children and youth in foster care can move an average of seven times before the age of 18. Usually, they leave abruptly and with very few personal belongings. In some cases, there is no time to find a backpack or suitcase, so they collect their items and compile them into a trash bag.  Imagine the …

Foster care is a silent epidemic that is overtaking so many lives. Over 440,000 children and youth have been removed from their homes and experienced immense trauma. Children being born into a survival situation. Youth who are susceptible to moving schools more than seven times before they graduate. I have wept for the souls of …

As Jacob handed his apartment keys over to me, I beamed. On this sunny May morning, Jacob was completing Olive Crest’s program for Transitional Age Youth, or former foster youth aging out of foster care. After spending four years studying and working after high school, he was ready to launch onto his own, having secured …

If you have had the opportunity to care for a child or children from foster care or adoption, you know the trauma they have experienced. It is difficult to look into the eyes of a child affected by trauma and not want to find help for the child. For seven years, A Home For Me …

We were sitting on the edge of our seats. Our hearts were beating a little faster by the minute.  We exchanged nervous smiles. I had rehearsed what I was going to say…in the car, in the mirror, during my evening walks. Still, I had a checklist to make sure I didn’t forget anything.  Finally, I …

Working in foster care is both rewarding and extremely challenging. It reaches out to the most vulnerable children. The children who have been disappointed by their birth parents. The ones who should care for them the most, helping them to know and believe that they are precious and valued! Foster Care establishes hope in a …

Not everyone can be a caseworker or a foster family, but everyone can do something.  Growing up in a pastor’s home, I believed God had called me into full-time ministry. I went to Bible college, thinking my ministry would be as a pastor’s wife. (It was 1979, and there weren’t a lot of opportunities for …

I heard a slap, followed by an infant’s cry, as I approached the front door. The voice on the other side of the door said, “There. That’ll give you something to cry about, Chloe Renne”.    The voice belonged to Stacey, a 20-year-old single mom. The child was 8-month-old Chloe. Chloe didn’t have a bed, …

Often, the experiences that bring children into foster care are frightening and traumatizing. They have never a experienced a love that never fails.

The couple sat nervously in my office, and the wife held a tissue to her eyes. They had come to talk to me about becoming foster parents.   The concern is always the same.  They have felt God pressing on their hearts that they should become foster parents for more than two years.  They hear story …