Collaboration involving the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and faith-based partners is a key to making lives better for the state’s foster children, state leaders said during a recent summit in Lansing.
About 180 people attended the fourth annual Faith-Based Summit on Foster Care and Adoption.
“MDHHS is charged with coordinating adoption and foster care services, but we cannot do this alone,” said Stacie Bladen, deputy director of the department’s Children’s Services Agency.
“Success in meeting the needs of our children and families depends on the collaboration of many, including our private agency partners, faith communities, advocacy organizations, and broader community service providers and leaders.”
Faith-based communities and other groups help MDHHS find loving foster and adoptive parents for children. There are more than 13,000 children in foster care in Michigan and only 7,000 licensed foster homes. Three-thousand children are available for adoption, and 300 of them do not have an identified adoptive family.
“The faith-based community continues to be a great partner in making sure children are placed in safe and loving homes in Michigan,” said Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, who spoke at the event. “In building a stronger, healthier Michigan, we need everyone to come together to support our youth and their futures.”
The Rev. Kyle Ray of Kentwood Community Church in Kent County is among the faith leaders who have committed themselves to helping some of Michigan’s most vulnerable children.
“The Faith-Based Summit provides a great opportunity to hear about many of the different ways the faith community meets the needs of children and families across the state,” said Ray, chairperson of the Faith-Based Initiative on Foster Care and Adoption Advisory Council.
Ray and his wife Petra adopted two boys — now ages 15 and 17 — from foster care. “I tell my congregation that everybody’s not called to adopt or take in children, but we’re all called to wrap around those families that do that,” he said. For example, congregation members can help foster or adoptive families with meals, housecleaning or babysitting. And they can pray for these families, Ray said.
At the summit, held at the Radisson Hotel at the Capitol, three congregations received Faith Community Excellence awards for outstanding work in helping Michigan’s foster and adoptive children. Winners were: Oak Grove African Methodist Episcopal Church, Detroit, represented by the Rev. Cherida Gary; Radiant Church, Richland, represented by Jennifer Patrick; and Community Reformed Church, Charlevoix, represented by Karlee Philp.
Oak Grove African Methodist Episcopal Church of Detroit won for its women’s ministry — which provides a welcoming place for girls in foster care and hosted a Sacred Pamper Day to provide manicures, pedicures, a makeup demonstration and glamour shots — and for its Come Home for Christmas dinner for foster youths.
Radiant Church of Richland was recognized for its Radiant Families program, which provides mentors to foster and adoptive families.
Community Reformed Church of Charlevoix was honored for its Foster, Adopt, Care, Educate, Support (FACES) ministry, which provides a resource closet with clothing, toys, hygiene supplies and other items for foster and adoptive families. It also holds a monthly date night for foster and adoptive parents and provides caregiving for children.
Seakers also included Colbert Williams of Grand Rapids, creator of The Evolution of a Son to a Father Project. His project is a series of workshops and conversations that explore his journey from growing up fatherless, to becoming a single teenage father, to reuniting with his biological father to fostering and adopting youths.
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