Safe Families for Children
Our community is facing a real foster care crisis.
There are simply not enough foster care homes to meet the growing demand. A demand fueled by a number of factors placing families with children at risk of permanent separation. Safe Families for Children is an important and timely response to that crisis.
Safe Families for Children provides much needed support for parents in crisis, giving them time to get back on their feet while their children are cared for in a safe and loving environment.
Safe Families for Children is a professionally supported, but volunteer-driven movement. Volunteers from a growing network of churches host children in their homes, or serve as family friends or resource friends, and family coaches supporting families in crisis. Both the family in need and the Safe Family volunteers participate voluntarily, with no compensation or expectation of adoption.
In today’s world, we are surrounded by a growing number of distressed modern-day widows and orphans, and God is giving us, people of faith, a unique opportunity to care for them.
“ Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
— James 1:27
Let’s look at the basics.
A widow is a woman who has lost her spouse by death and has not remarried.
Are we prepared to see the single mom with no good man in sight as one of our modern-day widows?
An orphan is a child whose parents have died.
Are we prepared to see a child as an orphan whose mother and/or father are not really present because of a life controlling addiction, or because of the desperate, harmful choices they’ve made or are making on a daily basis, or because they’re overwhelmed by an unexpected crisis?
Most of these distressed modern-day widows and orphans are isolated. And when a parent is broken, addicted, and materially poor, or consumed by a crisis that they’re struggling to deal with, or just need space to care for themselves - that isolation can be devastating.
When your nearest relatives are not good for you.
When your friends are as broken as you are.
When you need help but have no one to turn to.
When you have no one but institutions and government agencies to lean on.
That’s when a parent really faces the consequences of their isolation.
But in our community, our institutions and government agencies are prepared to partner with us, the faith community, to solve a problem they can’t solve on their own. We’re on the verge of seeing something really unprecedented and beautiful happen in our community: our local government, non-profits, schools and others working together as a community united for families.
We know that the Body of Christ is called and equipped by God to care for the widow and the orphan. We know that when we hear the call of God we want to respond, and we can respond courageously and sacrificially, because we serve a God who shows us what that looks like. We know that God is showing this community that our biggest problems are not going to be solved without His people. Finally, we know that everybody can do something, because as the Apostle Paul reminds us, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
It’ll take faith and it will take sacrifice, but it will be worth it, because every child is worth it and every family is worth it.
Every family matters to God.