The youngest of his three sons was still in diapers six years ago when Ira Conway lost them all to state custody.

“It’s easy to get overwhelmed,” the 45-year-old Navy veteran said. “It’s easy to get discouraged and lose hope.”

So much of what he had to do to get them back was self-evident. He had to separate himself from drugs and from the people and environments that had left his children unsafe.

There were people he didn’t know then who would be waiting ahead on his road back. People at the Salvation Army, and Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church, and people at LINC would see his determination and help him rise.

But before he could get where he is now — a family man again who is meeting with his LINC case manager in preparation for job interviews — he had to endure more pain.

He was homeless. He traced the walking routes to food pantries. There were times, he said, he sought a way to bathe at a car wash.

Conway is a client now in Missouri’s SkillUp program, operated in the Kansas City area by LINC. Working with Angie McNealy, a LINC program support specialist, he is getting job training and developing work-ready skills. LINC’s SkillUp and Missouri Work Assistance program every year helps more than 700 individuals with children on welfare get support, job skills and career training.

Conway’s first challenge, however, was to get a footing in his life.

LINC’s mission is to get clients like Conway “to self-sufficiency,” McNealy said. “But first we have to get them stable. You can’t get onto self-sufficiency if you’re hungry. You can’t get onto self-sufficiency if you’re houseless.”

Conway was driven “to do whatever it takes to get my kids back,” he said. In time, Conway and the boys’ mother — they’re now separated — earned the state’s support to get co-custody.

For a while, he was living with his boys in shelters as he pressed on in his struggle to provide them stability.

“Children are resilient,” he said. “But adults have to be tougher. I hate it that my growing pains were felt by my children.”

He was making his way back. The Salvation Army, through a program that helped veterans with initial housing costs, helped him get into a home. And he found a supportive community at Morning Star church at 27th and Prospect Avenue.

LINC operates one of its 55 Caring Communities sites at the Morning Star Youth and Family Life Center. And Conway found more support there. His oldest son, now 16, began volunteering at the site. The teen learned chess at LINC’s chess camp and tournaments.

Not only did Conway learn about the opportunity to get help through SkillUp, he also found allies at LINC to help him furnish his family’s mostly bare home.

“We were happy together to be in a home,” he said, “(but) we had no furniture. We slept on the floor. We had nowhere to put our clothes.”

LINC provided a truck. A team of LINC staff including McNealy took Conway to Flourish, a non-profit furniture bank in Grandview. There, the LINC team and staff at Flourish walked him through the warehouse and helped him pick out furniture and other items for him and his sons.

“It was a great day,” he said. “A blessing.”

“It’s actually a home now.”

He’s humbled by it all, he says. He talks of the recent evening when he and his boys gathered up sticks in the backyard, built a fire and roasted marshmallows for s’mores together. He’s determined more than ever to keep building job skills so he can have a sustaining salary for his family.

“Then I can take care of myself,” he said, “(and) I can use these hand-ups and maybe give one back one day.”

“It’s worth it,” he said of the journey with LINC and other supporters. “It gave me the strength to try to start picking myself up.”

“I’m not going to give up,” he said. “I want to continue on this path I’m on . . . because my kids deserve it.”