What’s the deal with Wrap Around?

If you’ve been a part of the Tennessee Kids Belong community for any length of time, you know we spend a lot of time talking about Wrap Around.

Maybe you’ve heard some of these phrases before?

“Not everyone is called to foster or adopt, but we are all called to care.”

“It’s irresponsible to recruit more foster families without also recruiting more support for those families.”

“Foster families can do probably do this journey alone, but why would we want them to?”

Because Wrap Around support is SO critical to foster families, we talk about it a lot. In churches, with businesses, to foster families, and pretty much any chance we get. It’s important! But perhaps, in talking about it so much, we lose the poignant sense of urgency.

Wrap Around is not a nice “extra”.

I learned this first hand several weeks ago. I’m the Wrap Around Coordinator and a seasoned foster mom. In my arrogance, I thought I was pretty much an expert. Was I ever wrong!

My husband and I have 5 children currently in our home. I got a text from a local DCS office asking us to take in a very 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 this.

You know those trust falls you’ve probably done at camp? Where one person stands up on a chair and the rest of the team catches them as they fall backwards. We did a real life trust fall, hoping that our community would say “yes” right alongside us.

Our weekend with these precious kids was the best kind of trust fall. One that you survive 🙂

Our church and community said “yes” in huge ways. A 15-passenger van was dropped off, meals were delivered, friends took the kids shopping, to the movies, and the park. People came to rock babies, clean bathrooms and mow our yard.

Wrap Around was not a nice “extra” for us. We could not have said yes without our community.

Are there foster parents in your church that could say “yes” more often if there was a committed team of people catching their trust fall? Would more families step up to foster if they knew they would have the intentional support of their church community?

Your church could be the reason someone is able to say yes. And that “yes” means more siblings stay together, more children have a place to belong, more foster families feel seen and supported.

Maybe getting your church on board to support foster families through Wrap Around is something you’ve been considering. We encourage you to just take the first step and say YES.

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