Can you help?

Can you help? Children from our community need sanctuary.

Our community continues to lack enough support for children taken into foster care. Too often, kids are being sent out of their school district and community because no local homes are available. Too often, siblings are split up because there are no homes that can take in a sibling group. Too often, foster homes quit fostering because they get burnt out. These children are so precious and they deserve every opportunity to have a healthy, safe childhood.

Ways you can help:

1. Childcare options in our community are few. Foster parents may be able and willing to take in young kids, but need daycare so they can still go to work. Consider becoming a state registered or state licensed child care provider. More information can be found here: https://dese.mo.gov/childhood/quality-programs/child-care-subsidy/in-home.

2. Become a respite foster parent. Have a foster child stay with you for 1-12 days (most often just 2-3 days). You pick and choose when you would be open to having a child stay with you. For more information, please contact Theresa Dennison with Children’s Division: 417-682-3531.

3. Become a foster parent. We need more homes in Cedar county for all ages, and most especially for sibling groups. Foster parents provide love and a safe home for these kids while supporting reunification efforts with the child’s family. For more information, please contact Theresa Dennison with Children’s Division: 417-682-3531.

4. Become a therapeutic foster home. Typically this is an option for experienced foster parents who are willing to get advanced training to care for children with elevated medical or behavioral health needs, but people with appropriate background experience can be considered. For more information, please contact Theresa Dennison with Children’s Division: 417-682-3531.

5. Fostering Hope is a regional group that provides support to foster kids and families. Watch their Facebook page and take advantage of opportunities to help: https://www.facebook.com/fosteringhope.swmo/.

We opened our home as a respite provider in 2019 and became a foster home in 2020. If this calls to your heart, maybe 2022 is the year you get involved.

Thank you,

Christina Casey