Longtime resident, Russell Brown and his wife have lived in the Leawood South neighborhood for over 30 years and raised four children.  Russell retired as Chairman/President at the Harry J. Lloyd Charitable Trust a few years ago.  The foundation was the second largest in Kansas and annually provided $10 million in grants to ministries around the world. 

While working at the Trust in 2002, Russell met Robert Glover, the founder of Care for Children.  Russell was impressed and compelled by Robert’s work and suggested the Trust support his efforts.  After Russell retired, Robert contacted him to help move their office from Chicago to Kansas City.  Russell knew he had found a ministry that “touched his heart.”  

Robert Glover and his wife were “called” in 1998 to provide a need to help orphaned children in China find foster families.  The family of eight made an unprecedented move from their comfortable lives in the UK and relocated to China where they did not speak the Mandarin language or know the culture.  Here they began helping the government with the orphan problem.  At the time in China, the law was to have one child.  The Glovers came with 6 children and they were all blonde!  The family successfully assimilated and the foster care program began growing with the support of the Chinese government.  

Robert Glover and Care for Children have caught the attention of many organizations and high-profile people who have helped.  Among these people have been British billionaire, Richard Branson and Prince Michael who enabled the Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace for Care for Children events to happen!

Since 2002-03, Robert has successfully assisted approximately one million children from orphanages into foster homes.  

Our organization places orphan children in loving foster care homes located in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and soon Armenia and Greece that are currently warehoused in government orphanages.  (We do very little in China today.)

Children can survive in orphanages, but they thrive in families - the secure environment they yearn for on a daily basis.  Care for Children’s vision is to see a generation of children in Asia and the world transformed as they have the opportunity to grow up in a family of their own.  

We firmly believe that the family was created to care for and nurture children.  Leading and international child welfare organizations, including UNICEF, The British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) and the Christian Alliance for Orphans U.S.A., all agree that family is the best place for children to grow and develop.

Care for Children works in partnership with several countries to provide orphans families of their own, where they can receive the love they need to develop into the men and women they were destined to be.

Robert Glover (Founder of CFC) “gave away all his family’s worldly goods” and moved from outside of London with his wife and 6 kids all under the age of ten years old to Shanghai, China in 1998 with a clear vision to place children into local, forever families.  His heart was moved to support the millions of orphans that had been abandoned and placed in government-run institutional orphanages.  Robert used his experience as a social worker in the UK, and his heart for orphans to begin an outreach for the children of Asia, and helped them experience the joy and security that comes with living in a family.

Care for Children soon developed, and began to establish strong partnerships with the Chinese government at the national and local levels.  Instead of working against the government and orphanages, Robert and his team developed a strategy to partner alongside these institutions, training them to successfully develop a foster-care program with local Chinese families,  Care for Children has worked as an agent of change and has partnered successfully with governments, communities and orphans to place approximately one million children into families since 1998. 

Despite the great success of this program, there is still an overwhelming number f orphans living in orphanages across Asia.  The problems that come with economic challenges, illness, disease and natural disasters have resulted in millions of orphaned and abandoned children.  In the past, countries have favored government orphanages as a means of caring for orphaned children, believing vulnerable children are best entrusted to the care and protection of the state.  

There are still many orphanages across Asia and other countries that do not have a local family placement program in place or lack the skills, knowledge and resources to develop a program that will be sustainable over years to come.  In most countries the concept of long-term family placement is relatively new,  Although some orphanages have attempted their own methods to place children into families, there is no systematic methodology backed up by the professional theory, leaving children vulnerable.  These areas are in urgent need of support to ensure that orphaned and abandoned children have the opportunity to care for local families as a positive alternative to orphanages.

The children that are received into foster care homes are ages 3 to 8 years old and 70% have some form of disability.  Also, 60 % of the homes end up adopting the kids.  They do this on their own.  CFC does not do adoptions.  

I would be grateful to share additional information regarding CFC if it might be an area of interest for your organization.

Yours Sincerely,

Russell L. Brown

President, Care for Children

As Russell says, "Kids want to be loved, protected, and fed."  His work and involvement with Care for Children continue today as President of the United States fundraising office in Leawood, Kansas.  There is always the need for more money and resources for operations.