HELP Us, HELP Foster Kids... Please!

This campaign is to raise funds to build stronger families and strong communities. We do this by getting foster children out of foster care and into a real, forever home with caring family members instead of being forced out into the streets at 18 years old, alone and with no family support. We build strong communities because we save foster care agencies millions of dollars that can now be redirected to community infrastructure improvements such as streetlights, sidewalks and fire stations.

Why Finding Relatives Is So Important

The process of looking for family members of a foster child is called family finding. This process is critical because it is the first step to moving a child out of foster care. Once enough relatives have been located and notified, social services works with them to find those who are willing to be involved with the foster child. A permanent home for the child is the ultimate goal.

Without family finding, many children stay in foster care for years bouncing from one place to the other. Once they aged out (become too old to stay in the foster care program), they end up on the streets with little or no support. 

A Foster Child's Story

Let me share one of our cases. Veronica is 15 years old. She’s your typical teenager.  She was living with her father and thinking about her senior year, dating and going out with her friends. Boom! Her whole world just changed because her dad was sent to prison for 10 years. Veronica was moved out of her house and placed into foster care. She was moved to a new school and away from her friends. At 15 years old, there is almost no chance that Veronica will be adopted. On her 18th birthday, Veronica will be essentially put out on the street, alone and with no support and no family. 

Once on the street, she had an 80% chance of becoming homeless, turning to drugs or prostitution, getting raped, becoming pregnant or ending up in prison all before her 20th birthday unless something happened to change her future right away! 

Foster children are resilient, smart and adaptable. They just want a chance to have the same life as other kids. There are thousands of foster youths just like Veronica who need someone to help give them that chance at a better future.

Why We Advocate for Foster Children

Forever Homes for Foster Kids believes that all U.S. foster children deserve to live happy, healthy lives in a permanent home. By locating foster children's family members, we become the primary method to move these kids out of foster care and into forever homes. We help build stronger families and strong communities.

Our Goal for 2017

Our goal is to reunite 200-225 foster children with their families. There are 400,000 children in U.S. foster care today. Although half will return to their parents, this still leaves about 200,000 foster children, many who stay in foster care for years, while about 24,000 will be forced out of the system this year with no financial or family support.  

And What About Veronica?

Within a few weeks we found Veronica's grandmother who then let the foster care agency know about two aunts living in Chicago. Because of our success, Veronica has gone from a very likely future of being on the streets and homeless, alone and with no family, to living with her aunts, being back with her family, and having a chance to get to know her grandmother, cousins and other relatives.

Because of the support of caring people, our organization has helped move dozens of foster children out of the foster care system and into forever homes with family members or adoptive parents.

You can make a difference right now and help these children before they are forced out into the streets.