This is a guest opinion column
For many of us, remembering our childhood brings back happy memories – holidays and meals spent with family, playing outside with siblings and friends, field trips and summer camps. For almost 6,000 children in Alabama’s foster care system,this is not the case.
The term “child maltreatment” refers to the abuse and neglect of children and has been named one of Alabama’s top 10 health indicators. According to the Alabama Department of Public Health, the number of child maltreatment victims increased 43 percent over a three-year period from nearly 8,500 in 2015 to more than 12,000 in 2018.
Among Alabama’s 5,800 foster kids, there are approximately 2,300 licensed foster homes in place to support them. If each foster family in Alabama cared for two children, there would still be over 1,000 kids in Alabama without a home who have experienced maltreatment.
Fortunately,there is a light in the darkness – Embrace Alabama Kids is a statewide nonprofit ministry dedicated to providing homes, healing and hope to children and families in crisis. For the last 134 years, we have cared for kids across the state from the cradle to college. In 2023, we supported nearly 2,300 children and families throughout Alabama and Northwest Florida suffering from neglect, abuse, or abandonment.
April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, a time when child wellness and child welfare organizations across the U.S. heighten awareness around the need to protect and prevent children from experiencing abuse. There are so many ways –big and small – that Alabamians can support our vulnerable children, including supporting family preservation and foster care efforts.
Keeping children safe from maltreatment
When a child is in danger, our team at Embrace Alabama Kids ensures they have access to a safe and supportive home. We, along with our caring foster parents, open our hearts to give these kids a chance to grow and thrive in a loving environment.
Our foster care team works to ensure that kids in foster care have access to basic needs like food, clothing and shelter and stay safe from harm, danger, and neglect. We help provide education services and proper medical, dental, and mental health services as needed. We also try to place them in a foster family setting where their religious customs can be maintained, if possible.
We want our children to thrive in the homes they live in, enjoying all the normalmarkers of childhood such as back-to-school supplies, Easter baskets and Christmas gifts. Our licensed and accredited foster care program serves traditional foster care children, therapeutic foster care children, sibling groups and those who need enhanced services.
Highlights of our work in Alabama includes: Mary Ellen’s Hearth, a family transition house in Montgomery that helps mothers and their children reach stability through housing, education and family-specific intervention; BabiesFirst in Mobile,which provides housing, individualized support and education to teen mothers who have experienced neglect, abuse and abandonment; and our Higher Education Homes in Florence and Tuscaloosa, which provide housing and wrap around support for college students coming from foster care or other alternative living arrangements.
Preserving families
Many people may not realize that the primary goal of foster care is reunification with families, not adoption. Our team also provides family preservation as an in-home service to support families either at risk of losing their children from the home or who are newly reunited with their children who have been in foster care.
The goal is to equip families with skills to handle challenges in a healthy way and prevent the need for children to re-enter foster care. We work directly alongside the Alabama Department of Human Resources to develop intervention plans tailored to each family with an incredibly high success rate.
We need your support
We depend on funding to give our kids the childhood that all young people deserve– one free from harm and full of love. In addition to financial support, our team is here to serve as a resource for potential foster parents interested in learning more about the fostering process. Our foster care and family preservation teams work in Tuscaloosa, Dothan, and Andalusia, and we also refer interested foster parents to other agencies if we receive interest outside of those areas.
As we recognize National Child Abuse Prevention Month in April, I encourage you to make a difference for Alabama’s families by supporting our mission at Embrace Alabama Kids or other organizations across the state making a positive impact on our children. The kids we serve need advocates, those who will take notice and act on their behalf. We can be a difference-maker in their lives, together.
K. Blake Horne, Ph.D., is President and CEO of Embrace Alabama Kids. Headquartered in Montgomery, the nonprofit ministry has been caring for kids and families across the state since its inception in 1890.