There are many ways to support children in foster care and their families! Check out projects for Springs of Love Foster Teams, as well as ideas for small groups and individuals. Everyone can do something!
Springs of Love Foster Teams support local foster families
Springs of Love Foster Teams support foster families with wrap-around support. Each team finds a family to support with:
- Prayer: Check in with your family weekly to see how your team can pray for them.
- Material Needs: Help your family with needs for children when they first arrive. Offers to bring clothes, diapers, or even a crib can mean so much to a family scrambling to provide for a new child who may arrive with nothing.
- Occasional Rides: Find out if you can help your family with a carpool schedule or occasional transportation.
- Weekly Meals: Set up a schedule and take turns bringing easy, one-pan meals to your foster family.
- Childcare: Set up a schedule to provide regular childcare – it could be twice a year, once a month, or every week so your family can have a break or much-needed date night! You can even plan a “Parents’ Night Out” with free babysitting at your parish.
10 Ways to Support Children in Foster Care
There are many ways to get involved, flexible to fit your resources, time, and ability to help! Check out our list of 10 ways to support vulnerable children in foster care and the families that care for them.
1. Pray! The most important thing we can do is to pray for the children in care and the families who love them. Try the Novena to St. Joseph if you need a place to start.
2. Use Social Media to help increase awareness of the foster care crisis. Check out Springs of Love on Instagram and feel free to share and repost any photos you find inspiring!
3. Register at www.CarePortal.org to find out about the material needs of foster, kinship, and birth families in your area.
4. Raise Awareness. Host a “Family for Every Child” event at your parish. Show a Springs of Love video and invite your local foster care agency to speak about the needs in your community.
5. Support a Foster Family. Offer prayers, food, childcare, rides, and material support, or start a FosterLove Care Team for them. Care Teams help increase the retention rate of foster families from 50% after 1 year to 90%.
6. One-Time Service Projects. Provide backpacks, sensory toys, blankets, heatable stuffed animals, and school supplies to local youth in care.
7. Host a Foster Parents Night Out. Provide restaurant gift cards for the parents, and fun activities for all of their children.
8. Become a Respite Provider. Host children occasionally to provide breaks for foster parents.
9. Become a Foster Parent. Pray and ask God if He might be calling you to foster. Attend the virtual discernment retreat on SpringsofLove.org. (All content is free, just register to gain access!). Go to an information session at your local foster care agency.
10. Support Springs of Love through prayer, volunteering, and financial donations to continue the mission of encouraging, educating, and equipping more Catholic families to foster and adopt.
