Advocacy For Foster Children Grows From Possum Trot to Orange County

Bishop W.C. Martin, the man who led members of his small country church in Possom Trot, Texas, to collectively adopt 76 foster children, said he believes the Zero by 2020 initiative launched in Orange County, California, will lead to a national movement.Zero by 2020 is a collaborative initiative of Christian churches in Orange County with the goal of finding a family for every child in Orange County by 2020 and equip the church to support them.Bishop Martin recently told leaders of the initiative that he will do whatever it takes to help the movement grow.“I believe in my heart that what God did with us in Possum Trot is going to generate throughout this nation,” he said. “There’s no reason in the world that it shouldn’t. I believe 100 percent that God is going to move and take care of this particular problem because our children have suffered too long, our children have been through these hardships long enough. I believe they have a right to a better life than what they ever had before.”Bishop Martin, who describes himself as simply “an ol’ country boy,” gained national attention several years ago when he and his wife, Donna, led the congregation at Bennett Chapel Baptist Church to adopt 76 foster children from across Texas, many of whom had been abandoned or abused.“I never dreamed there were so many children in the system,” Bishop Martin told People Magazine in 2012. “We’re just a little church. But this problem is all of ours.”Officials within several Orange County agencies have also captured the vision and are already working with churches to help accomplish the initiative’s goal.Olive Crest, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping abused and neglected children, is also a leading agency in the effort.“It’s really exciting to see how churches are coming together on behalf of children,” said Wendy McMahan, who is Olive Crest’s Director of Foster, Adoptions, and Kinship. “There’s an awakening taking place right now among the Church, with so many ministry leaders who are answering the call by stepping up to find families for children waiting in foster care.”Olive Crest is focused on strong families and safe kids, McMahan said.“We want to help families discover the right fit for them, whether it’s fostering, adopting, or providing support to other families,” she explained. “We’ll train each family and walk with them each step of the way through placement and the fostering process. Some families will feel called into foster care and adoption, and we hope that others will answer the call to restore families through the Safe Families for Children program.”McMahan adds that Olive Crest feels honored to be partnering with so many Orange County churches to share the call toward finding families for children.Skip Lanfried, one of the organizers of Zero by 2020, said that the initiative is beyond the “vision stage” and now into the implementation phase.“Bishop Martin has walked this hard road already,” Lanfried said. “His small church of less than 200 people and 25 families said, ‘Yes, we will step into the pain and hardship of these kids in foster care and give them a family.’“As the result of the movement that happened in his church a miracle happened for 76 kids. These were children that experienced very traumatic childhoods. These were the most difficult kids to place in the foster care system in Texas and his church was willing to step in on their behalf, step in the gap, and provide family.”Lanfried is encouraging everyone that is interested in the Zero by 2020 initiative to attend the Next Step Gathering to be held at Friends Church in Yorba Linda on April 14. Bishop Martin will be at the event, scheduled to speak during a training session.“We believe that Orange County has kids that have experienced difficulty being placed with families,” Lanfried said. “At this event coming up, we’re going to be hearing from Bishop Martin firsthand, who along with his church have succeeded in overcoming this problem.”For more information, including registration, for the Next Step Gathering, go to the event page here:Http://NextStepGathering.eventbrite.comPREVIOUS ARTICLES: ZERO BY 2020

2020 Vision: What Does 'Getting to Zero' Mean?

What does “Getting to Zero” mean? Getting to Zero is the idea that we want to see zero children waiting for families here in our community — zero kids having to go to bed each night still praying for a mom and dad.No child should be left to wonder whether they are worthy of love.An ambitious plan to eliminate the number of vulnerable children without a caring family in Orange County by 2020 using a church-to-church partnership with the county was launched earlier this year.While this sounds like an outrageous goal, we’ve already seen the miraculous happen! The country of Rwanda has already modeled what Getting to Zero can look like, when they made the bold decision to close all their orphanages and get over 3,000 children into family care through the help of the local churches. Looking at their amazing progress – and the remaining challenges – helps paint a picture of what this vision could mean for Orange County.Now, five years into the work of Getting to Zero the country of Rwanda is approaching its goal of closing all orphanages throughout the country as children are being placed in families out of the orphanage or reunited with their families. Despite this progress, in some orphanages children remain waiting to receive a family – either because finding a willing family is a challenge or often times, there are orphans ages 18 and older who grew up in the orphanage, never learned life skills to survive on their own, and therefore feel unable to leave the orphanage setting. What does all this mean for the work of “Getting to Zero”? Even when orphanages have closed, the task of caring for vulnerable and orphaned children is far from done.The work of the Orphan Care Initiative goes far beyond simply “closing orphanages.” The tools and training we provide through the work of the local churches in Rwanda is developing a child welfare system for a country that will ensure that no children grow up outside of family care. If you take the case of the United States, we have no orphanages – in their place we have a system for identifying vulnerable and parentless children, sourcing families to foster and adopt them, and training and monitoring those families so that they are successful. If you look at Rwanda through that view, the work has only begun. There is now a stellar example in Western Rwanda – where the Orphan Care Initiative has focused our efforts at the request of the government – of what it looks like to reintegrate children into families well with the wrap around support of the church.However, much of the rest of the nation returned children to families without the wrap-around support of the churches, which is so critical to the long-term success of an orphanage-free child welfare system. Our most recent Orphan Care PEACE trip saw this firsthand as they conducted trainings in Kimonyi, an example of an area where the orphanage recently closed but families had never received any information on how to address the trauma their children have experienced in the institution. When the government realized these families were struggling, they specifically asked for the Orphan Care Initiative to intervene with training and support.Getting a child out of an orphanage and into a family is only the start of the journey of helping that child and family succeed long term. In that way, future Orphan Care PEACE teams remain critical to delivering several important, world-view shifting messages:1) The value and need for adoption in a culture coming out of dependence on orphanages.2) Teaching churches how to deliver the evidence-based adoptive parent training that allows families to help heal hurts of children who have come from the orphanage and other hard places.3) The truth that EVERYONE in the church is called to care for the orphan, and the church can help members get on mission in this area in a variety of ways.The Rwanda Orphan Sponsorship is a piece of this support system designed to help children remain in, reunite with or regain family through adoption. Families brought into the sponsorship program receive support to help care for their child in the form of a monthly amount from their local church. As part of sponsorship, parents become part of a savings group to learn how to grow and manage their money, and they receive lay social work support from the church and agree to attend parenting training. In return, the families agree to use the funds to pay their child’s school fees, enroll them in medical insurance and tithe back to their local church. Because these funds go directly to the family from their local church, many families receiving sponsorship don’t know there is a Western donor on the other end, they just see it as their local church coming alongside to support them.This post was originally published on the #ZEROby2020VISION site here.

Churches To Rally Together To Bridge Gaps In Orphan Care System

Founders of an orphan care initiative said they want to implement a plan that would protect all children in or outside the Foster Care system from being left without a caring family.Their goal to eliminate the number of children without a caring family to zero can be met by using a church-to-church strategy alongside local government agencies, a plan successfully implemented in the entire nation of Rwanda, they said. Organizers plan to activate the initiative in Orange County and are rallying churches to meet for Vision Night For OC - New Hope For Vulnerable Children scheduled to be held in Anaheim on August 22 at 6:30 PM.One of the top priorities of the initiative is to completely eliminate the 85 percent failure rate of connecting the 300 to 500 youth who “age out” of the Foster Care system in the county every year.“This night represents a beautiful and extremely significant partnership and relationship between churches in Orange County and our local government and community,” said Erin Kim, who is a foster parent trainer through Social Services and Saddleback Community College and enjoys supporting the foster care community as a volunteer through Mariners Church in Irvine. “As the light of the world, the local church should be loving and serving the families and children in our community and no one church can do it alone.“We need to work together, we need unity and a common vision to love and serve the vulnerable among us.”Vision Night For OC organizers said that each night there are nearly 2,700 children in Orange County's Foster Care System that “go to bed with their heart's crying and silently wishing they had their own permanent loving family.”“As long as one of these vulnerable children is waiting for that loving, permanent family to take them home, we will not rest,” leaders of the initiative group stated. “With the help of our local government this can be accomplished through a church-to-church strategy working together for a united goal.”Organizers are asking churches of any denomination or non-denomination to join them for “a night that will go down in history” as the result of churches partnering together to find families for every vulnerable child in the system.Representatives from the County of Orange are scheduled to attend along with dozens of churches in Orange County to launch this vision.“This event has been years in the making and it will be a night you don't want to miss,” organizers said.

Statistics

• About 40,000 abuse phone calls a year to the County Abuse Hotline and 1,200 enter the system each year as legally qualified abuse cases
• 3,000 Youth in Foster Care including 300 aged out Youths
• 70% of Foster Children are being cared for by Relatives
• Need 150 Resource Families right now since group homes such as Orangewood are being closed
• Biggest need is for sibling sets, older children over 6 years old and medically challenged Foster kids
• About 300 to 500 youth age out of the system each year with an 85% failure rate

Sources: Various sources provided by initiative organizers

When asked how churches can work together, Ernie Casarez, who is a Volunteer Ambassador for the Orphan Care Initiative at Saddleback Church, listed the following:1. Develop a spiritual heart for the orphan (a child not under care by their biological parents)2. Have a monthly meeting at their church to explore becoming a Foster or adoptive parent and to pass on those candidates to the County or contract agencies3. Support Foster and adoptive families by becoming trauma trained4. Remain in contact with each other to refine our three systems so they are applicable to all denominations.Organizers quoted the following Bible verse in support of their initiative:“He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.” Ephesians 4:16 (NLT)This event will provide the vision, case studies, trainers to train the church trainers and core resource materials already tested and proven effective in Rwanda, Casarez said.Organizers said space is limited and are asking for those interested in attending to RSVP. For registration on Eventbrite click here. For any other questions, call (949) 609-8555.