The U.S. foster care system is in crisis – a crisis of capacity, stability and quality.
A crisis of capacity. Each year, nearly 500,000 children are temporarily removed from their parents’ care for reasons ranging from neglect and abandonment to abuse. There are only 240,000 or so foster families to care for them.A crisis of stability.
A crisis of stability. The average foster child remains in care for just over two years. One in three foster children lives in more than three homes per year. Compounded trauma occurs to an already traumatized child when moving from home to home.
A crisis of quality. Statistics and stories show that children in foster care have a much higher risk of very negative outcomes in adult life (poverty, homelessness).
Only highly screened, properly motivated, committed, well trained, and supported quality foster families can change this crisis. This requires doing something different.
PCHAS is working on a solution. That solution is the Church. PCHAS believes churches can act as a delivery channel for foster care, solving the problems of capacity, stability and quality that are endemic to the current system.
The church has a scriptural mandate to engage in a foster care ministry. Children in foster care are today’s modern day orphans that exist in the church’s backyard.
PCHAS believes the current crisis provides an opportunity to access the unique resources that only churches can offer. Important resources churches are known for are “paying, praying, and giving stuff away”. However,while these are important, they are not the most essential acts now required by churches to help hurting foster children. Hurting children need authentic, loving relationships with caring adults. Could this be a core ministry of your church?
PCHAS plans to pursue new relationships with congregations willing to solve and take ownership of their community’s foster care crisis. With these model congregations, PCHAS will equip them to establish their own foster care program. At its core, trained church members will voluntarily form a circle of support around fellow members willing to be foster parents. By recruiting quality foster parents from their membership, and surrounding them with strong support, the foster children they serve will experience the love and stability they desperately need.
These circles of support provide an unparalleled support system to their foster families and foster children. They help find resources, such as clothes and toys, and act as an extended family, providing respite services,mentoring, tutoring, special recreation and extra-curricular activities.
Providing this kind of support is critical if we want to encourage good, stable families to become foster families. Nationally, almost half of all foster families drop out every year due to foster parents feeling overwhelmed by a system that lacks the resources or personnel to help them. The circle of support this model requires ensures foster parents will have the help they need, when they need it.
PCHAS’ new Church Engagement Project plans to invest in local churches to do what only they can do…provide biblical “hospitality,” which translated from Greek is “welcoming the stranger”. Churches and church foster families will be invited to revive this ancient but powerful concept when they use the gifts of their families and the gift of their homes to welcome God’s hurting children into futures of hope and healing.
We are grateful for congregations whose essential mission is to share love, through relationships that, by God’s Spirit, heal and transform … the lives of foster children, church foster families AND the church!
(http://pchas.org/news.php)
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