Join Our Foster Friendly Jacksonville Movement
Hope Multiplies, in partnership with The Church of Eleven22, is launching the Foster Friendly App in Jacksonville to connect northern Florida foster families with businesses, faith communities and community groups who are coming together to ensure they are seen, valued and supported.
Learn how you can get involved.
Why We Need To Make Jacksonville A Foster Friendly Community
My husband and I have five children in our home.
I recently received a text from a caseworker asking us to take in a large sibling set in the middle of the night. I couldn’t get the picture out of my head of these kids being separated. I just put myself in their shoes, and after that, I couldn’t say no.
So we said “Yes.” It was super late at night, We were unsure how in the world we were going to manage it.
We did a real life trust fall, hoping our community would say “YES” alongside us.
How A Foster Friendly Community™ Helps Foster Families Thrive
Here are a few examples from the family’s story (above).
Someone dropped off a 15-passenger van for them to use while caring for the sibling group.
A WRAP team organized, prepared and delivered meals.
Friends took the kids shopping, to the movies and to the park.
Neighbors showed up to help rock babies, clean bathrooms and mow the yard.
Foster Friendly communities involve local municipal leaders, businesses, faith communities and nonprofits saying yes to supporting their amazing friends and neighbors who provide kinship and foster care. Together a community’s support lightens the load for foster parents of caring for traumatized kids (on a moment’s notice) and makes it more likely that they’ll continue saying yes, knowing they’re not alone.
Learn How The Foster Friendly App Connects Families with Their Communities
Caring for Kids In Foster Care Is A Responsibility We All Share
It’s impossible to understate the effect on a child of aging out of foster care without a family…and on the adult they will become.
The lifelong adverse effects are wide-ranging and staggering. Foster care is a “root cause” of many of society’s deepest social wounds.
Behind these worrisome outcomes are hurting, vulnerable kids, who as young adults find themselves in hard places through no fault of their own. Every one of them has a name, a story, hopes and dreams – most of which will remain unfulfilled if no one stands in the gap to provide a stable home environment and family.
The challenges of today’s foster care system ripple into the vitality of our communities as a whole. Every child who ages out of foster care without a family will incur hundreds of thousands in social services over a lifetime. And that’s just the tangible costs.
Every child deserves the opportunity to reach their full potential.
Why Kids Aging Out Of Foster Care With Families Is An Urgent Community Crisis
Age out of the U.S. foster
care system each year
Lifetime social-service cost
per child
Proud Partners
