All For Family, a nonprofit group that helps support foster children and their families, has announced expansion plans.
The group, which recently opened a facility in Hillsboro to provide space for supervised visits between foster children and their parents and siblings, is now setting up a second meeting location in rented space at Exchange Church, 2384 Starling Airport Road, in Arnold.
The Hillsboro facility is small, so the Arnold location is a big plus, said Angel Williams, founder of All For Family.
“This will not only help double, if not triple, our supervised family visit capacity, but it will provide us space for additional programs as well,” Williams said.
She said the Hillsboro space is a “nice, private, friendly place for one family at a time.”
In addition to a safe, appropriate location, families need a supervisor for each visit. All For Family recruits volunteers from the community to serve in that capacity.
“The Children’s Division provides a background check and some training,” Williams said. “It’s a perfect opportunity for seniors, retired or semi-retired, or really anyone who has time to give to the foster care community.”
Since All For Family was founded, Williams said, there have been several success stories.
“We have had at least four families successfully reunite, and another three or four that have progressed to unsupervised visits,” she said.
The group is funded through a grant from the Jefferson Foundation.
“The Hillsboro space is $350 a month, including utilities, and the Exchange Church space is $500 a month,” Williams said. “There are two rooms we can use for visits and another we’re setting up for an office, which the Hills-boro location doesn’t have.
“We also will have use of their dining hall during the week or when they don’t have events going on for sibling visits, meetings, parent education classes, training. They also have an outdoor area we are going to try to use. The only thing is, we have to be creative so that everything is portable.”
Williams said the group hopes to expand the scope of its services during visits.
“Our goal is to include a variety of sensory equipment and toys,” she said. “Because we know there is such a strong need among children who are coming from trauma, who have ADHD or autism, with so many overlapping features it can be difficult to differentiate. We have not met a foster child yet who does not seem to benefit from sensory play.”
All For Family had been offering its services at no charge to families, but were forced to institute a fee schedule, beginning on Jan. 1 of this year.
“Each family gets 20 visit units free,” Williams said. “After that, there is a $5-per-hour fee for the next 10 visits, then anything past 30 visits is $10 per hour. For non-foster visits, like custody cases, it’s 15 free visits; then it slides to $10 and then $15 an hour.
“We felt fees were necessary to make it possible to serve as many families as possible, and to help with ongoing expenses. Most places charge $45 to $60 an hour. We are trying to help as many families as we can.”
Volunteers welcomed
Williams, 45, organized All For Family in late 2018 to help bring awareness to the needs of foster care families and to support short- and long-range projects to help them get the services they need. The group has four main goals:
■ Increasing the number and length of supervised visits between foster children and their parents and siblings.
■ Funding home repair/remodel/expansion projects to help enable those who wish to become foster parents or to take in more foster children. The group hopes to recruit skilled volunteers, as well as solicit contributions for materials and money for these projects.
■ Establishing an indoor playground facility to bring separated sibling groups together, to serve as a venue for foster family gatherings and to provide a foster children’s social gathering place.
■ Providing in-home behavioral support and transitional services for teens in foster care, including in-home resources for families struggling with issues like discipline, safety, adjustment and other problems, and to help secure transitional living resources for those foster children who are “aging out” of the system.
The group is always looking for volunteers in a variety of roles.
“We definitely need to increase our number of volunteer supervisors for the Arnold area,” Williams said. “We have about eight or nine families on a waiting list and are seriously trying to recruit volunteers so we can get those families services.”
Those who wish to learn more about being a visit supervisor may apply at allforfamily.net.
“They get a background check – the Children’s Division has been processing those for us – and then they get training about their role, what’s permitted and what’s not. Then they have a home conference to go over all the information and verify they’re a good fit.”
Williams said supervisors could come from many places.
“It could be a relative, a co-worker, someone they go to church with,” she said. “We let volunteers sign up for as much as is convenient for them; we don’t require a minimum. I’d like to see them cover at least two hours a month, but they can certainly do more.”
There is a need for volunteers with other skills, as well as contributions of materials and money for projects.
“We had a family whose furnace went out, and they had a houseful of kids and no heat,” Williams said. “All kinds of emergencies can happen, and I would like to have a running list of people who can do these things whenever something comes up.
“We told the pastor at Exchange Church the outdoor area needs to be fenced for safety, and we would love to find someone with the equipment and time to come move some gravel and put an affordable surface down. The church is going to provide a fence, but we’d love to find someone who could help us install it. That would save a huge chunk of our budget.”
And the budget is an ongoing struggle.
“Funding is tight,” Williams said. “We got a $15,000 grant from the Jefferson Foundation to hire Nikki Allemann, a former family court caseworker, as a part-time office manager, and that’s the only paid employee right now. I’m not yet on salary, and we’re trying to resolve that, but it’s become a more than full-time job for me and our family can’t support that.”
A local restaurant has eased things somewhat, however. White Castle in Festus contacted Williams in late 2020, saying the company had chosen All For Family as the recipient of its “round up” campaign, in which customers donate change to a charitable cause.
“The first check in mid-2021 was for just over $4,000,” she said. “They just presented us with the second one, for more than $3,400, and they told us they were adopting us again for 2022. That’s significant for us, and we are so grateful.”
All For Family has obtained 501c3 status as a nonprofit from the IRS, so all donations are tax-deductible. For more information, go to the group’s website at allforfamily.net or visit its Facebook page at AllForFamily12. The email address is info@allforfamily.net.