Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together.
In Texas, there are over 31,000 children placed outside their parent’s care in foster care. There are not enough foster homes to support this number of children in care. This means that children from your community are being placed outside of their home community, or in shelters.
Children who are placed outside their home community in one day lose their parents, family, school friends, teachers, coaches, and sense of connection to their community. They frequently miss school so they can have visits, or they don’t see family because they need to be in school. This sense of loss is compounded when they cannot be placed with their brothers and sisters due to no one having enough room.

Foster parents are needed to take children of all ages. The hardest to find placement for are teenagers and for children with challenging behaviors. Foster parents who are willing to take sibling sets of 3 or more that spread across the age ranges are greatly needed.
An important role for foster parents is to work with the child’s birth family to help that child return home, and if that fails, to commit to raise/parenting the child through adoption or guardianship.
The foster parent helps children to keep contact with their birth family, while acting as a mentor for that family. Foster care is a service provided to the child’s entire family. Foster families come from the same community as the child, are willing to accept and agree to visitation and other types of contact with siblings, relatives, and other important people in the child’s life.