Spread the Fostering Love
Currently, the United States is facing an extreme shortage of foster families. Across the country, there are over 400,000 children in foster care. Each year, over 250,000 children enter the U.S. child welfare system and over 23,000 children age out of foster care. The statistics reveal bleak futures for many of the children who end up in foster care:
HUMAN TRAFFICKING: 70% of human trafficking victims in the U.S. spent time in foster care. Learn what you can do.
INCARCERATION: In several states, 65% of inmates aged out of foster care
HOMELESSNESS: There are currently 2 million 18-24-year-olds living homeless in the U.S., many of whom spent time in foster care.
PREGNANCY WITHIN A YEAR: 71% of young women become pregnant within one year of aging out of foster care
Source: Promise686
Start Fostering Love in your community
Check out our list of 10 ways to support vulnerable children in foster care. Start a donation drive to provide backpacks and school supplies for kids in care, or set up a foster parent’s night out! There are so many ways to help. Download or print the PDF. And stay tuned for upcoming information about our Fostering Love support teams!
Featured Video: The Baird Family Story
Labor and delivery nurse Stephanie Baird saw the gap into which babies born addicted were falling. She and her husband, Joseph, started the process of welcoming foster children into their family of five. Watch their story.
Foster parenting: an education in love
“May is National Foster Care Awareness Month. In the 23 counties of the Columbus diocese, 7,097 children are in foster care and 655 await adoption. These children desperately need loving foster families who will show them the love of God.” Read the rest of this article by Springs of Love’s own Dr. Kimberly Henkel, featured in the Columbus Catholic Times in May, 2023.
Register for our Foster & Adoption Discernment Retreat Video Series
Have you wondered if God might be calling you to open your heart to foster or adopt a child? Register for our virtual “retreat” and receive a code for free access to our “Be Not Afraid” discernment video series. In this self-paced series, you will hear beautiful testimonials from couples who have answered the call to foster and adopt. Talks address fostering & adopting after infertility, adopting a child with special needs, international & domestic adoption, adoption from foster care, grieving when foster children leave, adopting older children, what to do when only one spouse feels called, and more. Register today!
Featured Story: The Daily ‘Yes’ of Foster Care and Adoption
It’s just an ordinary day in the life of a foster parent; at an unknown time and an unknown hour I am busying myself about with the tasks of life, and the phone rings, or a text comes through, and just like that, I have said ‘yes’ to welcoming a new person into my life. Read more from contributing author Danielle Dyann Abril.
Fostering Prayers: Novena Prayer to St. Joseph
We welcome you to get involved with foster care by taking part in our Novena to Saint Joseph. Saint Joseph is the exemplar of a “foster” father because, along with Mary, he loved, nurtured and instructed the Child Jesus. Although he was initially concerned about how this Child came to be, Joseph trusted the message of the Angel to “be not afraid,” welcoming Mary and her Son into his home.
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