Fostering Hope Foundation

The Need

There are approximately 500,000 children within the American foster care system. They enter into foster care for many reasons:

 

 

  • Not being safe at home because of physical, emotional or sexual abuse to the child or the siblings
  • Neglect of basic needs
  • Parental mental illness or alcohol/drug abuse that prohibits care or safety
  • Parental incarceration

The foster care system is able to provide the basics, but struggles to help youngsters fully overcome these traumatic beginnings. For youth who turn 18 and are then discharged from the foster care system, becoming a productive adult is an uphill climb:

  • Only half of all children in foster care complete high school
  • Half of the present prison population spent time in foster care
  • One third of the chronically homeless were formerly foster children

Foster parents open their hearts and their homes to offer love and nurturing to these children to change these statistics - but the job is often more than what one family can manage.

 

Colorado Springs

Milwaukee