National Foster Care Month celebrates advocates and the children, families they serve

Support Missouri Foster Care

To become a foster parent or support programs go to: dss.mo.gov/cd/foster-care

Since 2007, LINC’s child advocates have been helping children in Missouri foster homes transition into independent living as thriving adults.

Read more: Crossing over: LINC advocates help aging foster children, former juvenile offenders bloom as adults

LINC’s Chafee Independent Living Initiative is the selected “community partner” by Missouri’s Children’s Division to support hundreds of foster youth in Jackson, Clay and Platte counties.

May is National Foster Care Month, and LINC joins the community of advocates and supporters who help the dedicated foster parents and who help children and youth achieve full and meaningful lives.

LINC’s team members are experts who connect the teens and young adults to resources that are close and accessible to them, helping them secure things like school supplies, tuition aid, life skills training, budgeting skills, driver’s education, job searching, help with utilities and housing.

The work carried on through the pandemic as the youths’ needs only grew, said Susan Estes, LINC’s coordinator of special projects. “A lot of driveway meetings,” she said.

A team of three advocates serve some 450 youths across the three-county area, the majority in Jackson County.

The Chafee initiative is named for longtime youth advocate U.S. Sen. John H. Chafee of Rhode Island who championed federal legislation that boosted the resources provided to the states to help foster youth who too often were not prepared for successful independent living when they aged out of foster care systems.

LINC’s team supports youths between the age of 14 and 23, many of whom have suffered trauma in their lives. The Chafee team works with Children’s Division case managers, helping the foster parents when youths are still in homes, and then working with the youths as they find their own living spaces as adults.

During 2020 LINC youth advocates worked with 626 youth 14 years or older in foster care or aftercare, providing a total of 2,573 services.