One Church One Child (Foster care/adoption)

I spent this week starting up a FACEBOOK account for my band and setting up a new blog for our church ministry. It is called the Kings Park Orphan Ministry but the blog is http://www.thekingadopts.blogspot.com . I also went to an event to promote foster care in the county our church is in (DURHAM county) . I represented KPIC along with my friend Bob Price at the ONE CHURCH ONE CHILD luncheon,sponsored by the Durham County Social Services office.
This is what we learned: Currently in Durham county there are 266 children in foster care, 51 are available for adoption, 19 are in need of homes and the remaining are in foster care but not available for adoption. 35% of the children in their foster care system are 0-5 years of age, 27% are ages 6-12, 36% are ages 13-17, 2% are 18 and over. 82% are African American, 10% are white, 7% Hispanic and 3% unknown.

According to the Durham County SS representative, Montina Swift there are 500 churches in Durham county. The main premise for ONE CHURCH ONE CHILD was to aspire to place all of the foster kids into care and have the available children adopted. If each church just supported one family to adopt or foster one child then all of the at risk children would have a family.

They encouraged the churches to help collect items, support social workers, possibly train potential families from their churches and community, and/or focus one month toward foster care and the needs in our community. They really really need families.

We were welcomed warmly. I also got the impression that KPIC was a church they really wanted to have participating and partnering with their agency. We also learned that although Durham county places adoptable kids from their county only with families residing in their county, they also are connected to both the Chatham County and Wake County DSS. This means that if we did want to sponsor training sessions or offer resources to our church members we would not have to exclude any interested parties. There could be one training but then the trained families would just have to go to their county agencies for placement and support.

One thing that really touched me was the genuine love and passion that these men and women have for the at risk children in our community. I was really touched when Montina reminded us of years ago when churches truly did reach out to the community and participate in helping at risk families. She said it is really becoming harder as fewer churches are involved. They had hosted a walk for foster children recently and the numbers participating were cut in half from the previous year (from 100-50).

When I see the statistic "51 adoptable kids" in Durham county it really doesn't seem to me to be an insurmountable task to find families for these children. Of course I am not a social worker and have a long ways to go to truly understand the system, but I believe at Kings Park we do have at least one or more families wanting to stand in the gap for Jesus and open up their hearts and homes for these kids. In fact, I think we can have many more kids adopted from Wake, Chatham and Durham County in our church alone. Through God all things are possible.