A Campaign to Recruit 60 New, Loving Foster Homes by May
DePaul Community Resources has officially launched their Fostering Everyday Love Campaign after making four simultaneous press conferences across Virginia on January 30th. The nonprofit organization announced a rapid increase in children and teens entering the foster care system due to multiple types of abuse and neglect. DePaul is launching a targeted outreach program to find at least 60 homes for hundreds of children over the next four months.
“In the far southwest portion of Virginia, there are more than 600 children and teens in the foster care system,” said Stephanie Jones, Interim Regional Foster Care Director at DePaul. “These children and teens are in need of safe, loving family homes to help them heal from neglect, abuse, or other trauma.”
Virginia is ranked the worst in the nation for children and teens in the foster care system aging out before they can find permanent homes. The statistics are looking even more dismal due to the rapidly increasing number of children entering into the system due to multiple forms of drug abuse, especially the opioid epidemic. Addicted parents are sent to rehabilitation or treatment centers, incarcerated, incapacitated, or even found dead, leaving children and teens to fend for themselves.
“The repercussions of this runaway opioid epidemic are felt community-wide, maxing out the foster care system, as children are removed from homes in chaos,” said Nancy Hans, Executive Director of the Prevention Council of Roanoke. “Addiction is an intensely local problem that hits families and children the hardest, so we rightly focus from the ground up in community engagement.”
DePaul specializes in recruiting foster homes and providing training to create safe places for local children with specific needs to heal and grow. In 2017, the organization placed nearly 100 children in loving homes, many of which ended up adopting the children they fostered. DePaul representatives will go before church congregations to distribute information about the organization’s need to find 60 or more foster homes for children. DePaul hopes to reach their Fostering Everyday Love goal by May.
Interested in viewing the videos that accompany our Fostering Everyday Love campaign? Click here to view.
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