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Foster Kids Charity
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Our Children home is now open!

Ongoing needs: snacks for children, diapers, items for teens, deodorants, gift cards to retail and grocery stores, funds for ongoing operation

Children sleeping in CPS office

The Need

  

Hundreds of Foster Kids are sleeping in hotels and offices. Over the past year, hundreds of foster children in Texas and other states in the USA slept in hotels and offices because no foster placement was available, according to Department of the Family and Children’s services.

Child removals are often fueled by conditions “endemic to poverty” such as lack of food, housing, and childcare, and disproportionately affect families of color. During the pandemic, many homes have stopped accepting children due to concerns about the coronavirus. However, the problem goes well beyond the pandemic. Over the course of a year ending in August, 220 Texas kids spent 1,863 nights in hotels and offices. As in previous years, Black children were overrepresented in this group compared to foster youth as a whole.


Over the past years years, DFPS has hosted increasingly larger numbers of children in hotels and offices overnight. For some of these youth, the experience does not end with one overnight, but rather can extend for days, weeks, or even months. Each morning these children leave the hotel or office where they spent the previous night, taking all of their belongings with them, with the expectation they will not be returning to the same room, or perhaps even the same hotel. Frequently, due to staff shortages and logistics, these children also spend their evenings transporting other youth who are out of placement. Their meals are consequently improvised as well, and they frequently eat fast food or food from grocery or convenience stores. They also endure ever-shifting arrangements of both the other children and the supervising staff that they spend the night with, a remarkable lack of continuity for the intimacy of these arrangements.


In addition to being traumatic for children, the stays are expensive for taxpayers: In 2017, DFPS estimated each night at a hotel cost $2,100, most of which covers caseworkers and working overtime. Foster youth in general, are far more likely than others to end up in jails, prisons and hospital emergency rooms, where taxpayers foot the bill.

 

The causes for the shortage: 


1. State officials attribute the stays to lack of resources! With nowhere else to go, the state’s most at-risk kids — and their caseworkers — are faced with limited options. 


2. A persistent chronic shortage of people willing to take in the children who end up in the state’s care as a result of abuse, neglect or just plain poverty. During the pandemic, the number of foster parents offering their homes, dropped down in over 30%. Another disturbing trend we have seen: foster parents surrounding foster children back to foster care, after losing a job, experiencing a financial difficulties or getting sick. 


The solution

 Increasing the number of beds for foster children awaiting placement by establishing a temporary home-style shelter. Our goal is to open our first home in DFW by the end of 2021 and expend to other regions in Texas, facing shortage of homes.

Please support this program to provide children sleeping in offices, a better home!

Now serving children without placement thanks to the generosity of our DFW community! Thank you for helping us start a wonderful year 2022!

Special thank you to: 

Transamerica

Mrs. Jones 

Mrs. Lovelace 

Mrs. Friere

foster kids children center

Foster Kids Charity is partnering with Child Protective Services to establish a temporary home for foster children who need emergency placement. The house will have six bunk beds (max 12 children) and provide a temporary home for children and teens up to 18 years of age until they are placed with a foster family. 


Foster Kids Charity's CEO, Michelle Brown, has found that facilities all over DFW and Texas regions are struggling to find placements for foster children - especially teenagers. The crisis is caused by a shortage of foster homes and placements available. This is a long-term and ongoing issue in DFW.


Between placements, foster children sleep in cots in Child Protective Services offices, which do not have basic living utilities such as showers or kitchens. Foster Kids Charity wants to provide a real living space for children and teens to call home until they find a more permanent one. 


We graciously ask you to support this project and help us provide foster kids and teens safe housing.  Foster Kids Charity thank you for your generosity in supporting our efforts. Contributions can be made via the link below or on our home page www.fosterkidscharity.org.

Conversation with CPS about the need for more beds in Texas!

Check out this great video from team spirit - teens supporting foster children in state care, December 2021

A child slept on a beanbag next to a cabinet in a government office for days. Let's fix this!

Your support and contributions will enable us to support foster children and teens in the DFW area. We are so grateful for your generosity in allowing us to help our Texas community!

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