Get Involved
Churches, Organizations, and Individuals can ALL Get Involved in our three core areas of focus – Awareness & Prayer, Support Services, and Resource Networks.
These areas of focus are specifically designed to combat the lack of support, isolation, and defeat that foster, adoptive, and kinship families often experience by providing a reliable and consistent network of care that creates lasting stability.
BRING AWARENESS
Fostering the Family holds awareness and recruitment events to educate the public. The purpose of each event is to raise awareness, recruit foster families, recruit Guardian Ad Litem volunteers, and most of all ask The Church to pray.
7-Day Prayer Guide
Fostering the Family believes prayer is powerful! If you have a few minutes a day to spend in prayer for vulnerable children, foster and adoptive families, child welfare employees, volunteers, churches, healthcare workers, and the sick and struggling in our community, it makes a BIG difference.
Annual Stand for Children Prayer Walk
A 2017 study by the Barna Group revealed that while 82% of Christians who pray do so silently, only 2% regularly gather to pray with others. Yet, in moments of national tragedy or crisis, we’ve seen people come together—uniting their voices in urgent prayer, crying out for God to move.
What if we treated the foster care crisis with that same urgency? What if we recognized it as the immense tragedy it truly is—a tragedy so great, a problem so big, that there is an undeniable need to for believers to join together and pray for God Himself to intervene?
We invite you to join Fostering the Family’s Annual Stand for Children Prayer Walk. Let’s come together, step out in faith, and lift our voices on behalf of vulnerable children and families.
Stand Sunday
In 2002, Bishop Aaron Blake, Sr. initiated the first “Stand Sunday” in the United States, calling the families at his home church in Brownwood, Texas to stand-up to care for children and families impacted by the child welfare system.
Today, churches across the nation join forces on Stand Sunday to declare war on inaction when it comes to children and families facing abuse, abandonment, and neglect. Traditionally, Stand Sunday is observed on the second Sunday of November during National Adoption Month.
SC Steps Up for Foster Care Challenge
Join Fostering the Family’s Statewide Virtual Challenge – SC Steps Up for Foster Care! Walk as many miles as you can to raise awareness for vulnerable children and share photos on social media with the hashtag #SCStepsUpforFosterCare. Our goal is to have participants in ALL 46 counties in South Carolina, as well as from all over the United States, and the world, in order to raise awareness about the foster care crisis.
Annual Fight for Families 5k
This race is held at the beautiful Allison Creek Park and brings awareness to the local foster and adoption crisis. While this race is a true 5k, it also has some elements that offer an interactive insight into the life of a child traveling through the child welfare system. Join us as we experience the reality of foster care and come together as a community to bring about change!
BRIDGE RESOURCE NETWORKS
DSS requires a safe living space for families, following the biological parents’ treatment plan. To alleviate children avoiding foster care, many times this includes providing very simple needs that are met. This includes items such as beds, cribs, car seats, and adequate food. Additionally, children often enter foster or kinship care with only a few items.
Fostering the Family works with local church ministries to bridge Resource Networks in SC. Together we can create a network that focuses on meeting the needs of the general population BEFORE disruption of the family happens!
Tangible Needs Portal
Fostering the Family enters needs from biological, kinship, foster, and adoptive families into our Tangible Needs Portal as we learn of them so volunteers can view and search for opportunities they have the resources and availability to meet.
Volunteers from your church or organization, or individual volunteers, can sign up to be notified of new needs as they are posted.
This kind of tangible support is a transformational source of relief and strengthing for overwhelmed biological, kinship, foster, and adoptive families!
BUILD SUPPORT SERVICES
Family Advocacy Ministries (FAMs)
Learn how to care for vulnerable kids and their families through a step-by-step model called Family Advocacy Ministries (FAMs). FAMs create much-needed support for foster, adoptive, and kinship families in crisis.
This model is designed for churches to implement, but if you are an individual who would like to serve on a Family Advocacy Ministry, we can get you in touch with an existing FAM!
FAM Care Communities
If your church would like to provide regular, ongoing support for one or more foster, adoptive, and kinship families, this level of engagement may be right for your church.
A Care Community is a wraparound support team of 4-8 committed volunteers who support a foster, adoptive, or kinship family and their children. This team provides regular and ongoing practical help such as weekly check-in calls, meals, babysitting, transportation, tutoring, help with chores, yard work, respite care, and more – whatever kind of help would be most beneficial to the family.
Your church’s or organization’s Family Advocacy Ministry (FAM) may have one or multiple Care Communities.
Did you know that 90% of foster families who have a Care Community are still fostering at the 2 year mark, versus a 50% drop off rate in the first year of fostering for families who are called but have no support?
FAM Basics
If your church is limited in volunteers but you have a desire to build a Family Advocacy Ministry, this level of engagement may be right for your church.
Can you serve in ANY capacity at least one time a year? It takes a commitment, but the commitment level is flexible based on the capacity you have to serve.
Whether it is providing through a diaper drive, backpacks, beds, clothing, or providing respite care, date night babysitting for foster parents, or Christmas gifts – the options to serve vulnerable families and children are limitless.
Need ideas on how to serve? Download this infographic to learn more!
This level of engagement often utilizes our Tangible Needs Portal, a platform that connects families with tangible needs to people looking to help as they are able.
Support Groups
Bring a support group to your community! Our local support groups provide adoptive, foster, and kinship parents a place to connect with one another. Offering support and a safe space for parents to develop relationships, give advice, and share their parenting journey.
HOW can your church begin the process of building a Family Advocacy Ministry? Glad you asked!
The first step is to attend a virtual FAM Care Community Clinic or FAM Basics Clinic. Then, you’ll be ready to begin building a sustainable Family Advocacy Ministry in your church or community. Choose the date that works best for you and begin your adventure!
(Don’t let costs stop you – scholarships are available, so let us know if you need financial assistance!)
Bring a FAM to your church. What is a FAM?
A FAM = a Family Advocacy Ministry
How Care Communities Support Families
Promise Serves Resources
An Online Resource Database for our Support Services Churches with FAMs
By becoming a Support Services Church Partner with a FAM, you will have access to all Fostering the Family resources, training videos, event planning tools, and much more through our portal called Promise Serves!
Have Questions? Let's Talk!
Conctact our Director of Outreach and Partnerships, Susie Boyle. Alternately, you can submit a message via our contact form below and someone will be in touch with you shortly!