Our mission is to educate, equip and encourage the Christian Community to provide a future and a hope to children and youth in foster care in Arkansas. Our vision is to see a day where there are no children in Arkansas waiting for families. Our need is their need. And what children and youth in foster care need most is a family to care for them as they heal from abuse or neglect. We work to accomplish our mission and vision by recruiting, training and supporting foster families, adoptive families and volunteers from local churches.

 

We help Christians fulfill their Biblical mandate in James 1:27 by encouraging them to foster or adopt. Through engaging local churches to raise awareness for the need for families, we provide a pathway for those families to start the process to open their homes. We help families navigate the process and paperwork through organized paperwork systems and one on one support. This support helps families work through the process and provides assistance when things slow down or get “stuck”.

 

The training required to become a foster or adoptive home can be a significant barrier to opening your home. The CALL hosts faith based trainings over one in-person weekend so families can complete the training requirement as efficiently and conveniently as possible. These trainings are all conducted by qualified volunteer facilitators, many of whom are foster parents themselves who can share first-hand knowledge and experience.

 

When families are open and caring for children and youth in their homes, we provide tangible support through our CALL Mall (clothes/supplies closets), providing meals, helping with housework, etc. We engage local churches to provide support through Parents Night Out, family game nights/days, etc. We also provide support through trauma informed education opportunities and networking with other resource families. And finally, we provide spiritual support by encouraging churches to embrace the families in their congregation serving through fostering or adoption, with prayer support, emotional support and by providing for other things as needed.

 

This year, with the generous support of our churches, sponsors and community, The CALL in Garland & Hot Spring Counties has expanded our Support Center.  We are conveniently located in Hot Springs and easily accessible for our foster families and partners at the Department of Child and Family Services. Along with offices and volunteer work areas, we have space for our CALL Mall, where foster families can shop for needed items for the children in their care. We also host family visits between biological families and their children in our two beautifully decorated playrooms. Our goal is to provide a safe, loving space where parents and children can heal and bond in a family-like setting while on the road to reunification.

 

Today there are close to 200 children and youth in care in Garland and Hot Spring County and only approximately 40 traditional foster family homes to care for them.  There has never been another time when the church is needed more than today. Foster care is local mission work at its core. Christians can love their neighbors in the most tangible way possible by bringing vulnerable children and youth into Christian homes to provide healing and safety, and to show them the extravagant love of Jesus Christ.