This month we have been highlighting various stories on our social media in conjunction with National Foster Care Month. We will begin to wrap up the month with a life change story from a foster parent, Carol Ann Denyer, a single woman at our Downtown Campus (video below), and ways you can serve foster families. While not everyone is called to be a foster parent, we are all called to support the vulnerable children in our community. Here are seven ways for you to get involved.

1. Volunteer for the volunteer-run Parent’s Night Out that we host once a month at the Pelham campus for Grace Church foster and adoptive families.

2. Donate to or volunteer at the Foster and Adopt Resource Center which provides various necessary items to adoptive, foster care, and kinship care families within days of receiving a placement and as seasons and sizes change.

3. Use your own unique gifts to serve foster children or families (e.g. providing free haircuts, bringing them food, helping with legal services, and several other ways). Click here to scroll through our social media and learn about the ways some of our church family has been serving with their gifts and talents.

4. Consider signing up with your community group to serve as a wraparound group. These groups serve together to provide meals, childcare, lawn maintenance, and other general support to help families who have opened up their homes to provide foster or kinship care or to serve those who have recently adopted. If you are interested in learning more about how wraparound groups function and are interested in serving in this way, let your community group leaders or community group pastor know.

5. Help support DSS workers: these people are often the most consistent in the lives of the children but the burnout rate is extremely high. Contact your campus staff about how you can help.

6. Participate in this summer’s Backpack Drive for Children in Need. Stay tuned for information at your campus!

7. Fostering is a primary way to serve children in the foster system. Grace has staff support in place to walk alongside those who want to be foster parents themselves. If you have any questions or are interested in being a foster parent, let us know.