INSIDE OKDHS FEATURE STORY, MAY 2014 - COUNT ME IN 4 KIDS

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Jon Trudgeon
Count Me In 4 Kids
Director

Trudgeon: Count Me In 4 Kids is a community-based collaborative made up of leaders from the non-profit community, the business community, the faith community, that have all come together around a central idea. And that is to help and resource children and families in or at risk of foster care here in Oklahoma. 

It is basically these people come together on a shared belief that the foster care problem isn't a state issue. It's all of our issues. These kids didn't just magically appear overnight in the system. They're all of our state's problems, and it's going to take all of us working together to help these children for a better life.

Count Me In 4 Kids started as a conversation in late 2011, early 2012 by a few leaders here in the Oklahoma City community: Wes Lane, Karen Waddell-Vinyard, and some others, who had been passionate about the foster care issue based on their service with DHS on various commissions and so forth. And they really wanted to address the issue more holistically and think about, "Okay, how can we as citizens of Oklahoma do more for these children, do more for these families?" And from that conversation they put together this collaborative called Count Me In 4 Kids.

That collaborative has grown since 2012 to include over 50 different agencies from the central Oklahoma region. And they are sort of the brain trust of "What is foster care?" From DHS representation, to foster care agencies, to non-profit supporting agencies like Citizens Caring for Children, business leaders like the Green family, they've all stepped up to be a part of the solution which is truly rewarding and humbling. 

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Amy White
Bridge Deputy Director
Count Me In 4 Kids Team Member

White: This is a partnership that we are so blessed to have and that I can't wait to see as we begin to grow and move it further, further across all parts of the state of Oklahoma. I just think, take that opportunity to utilize this resource, and even also, take the opportunity to be a part of the resource.

I mean, a lot of times, you don't have to be a foster parent to help foster care. Because there are foster parents that are out there that are like going, "Wow, I just need a break." They need respite. That's something that we've heard a lot of comments about recently. Or "I really could use someone to help me do laundry every other week." You know, "I don't want to be a foster parent, but I think I could help do laundry." I mean, there are so many different ways that you can support foster care that you don't have to be a foster parent, but you can support those individuals that are out there 24 hours a day providing care to our children. 

Or supporting families where you go, "Well, you know, I've got this thing over here," or "I've got this skill," that you could make a difference in a child in a family's life, where a child would not have to come into care with the Department. 

And truly to be separated from your family, your school, your community is one of the greatest traumas that any child can experience. And so, to have the opportunity to partner with so many individuals that want to come forward that say, "What can we do to help?" We absolutely have to say, "Here, we'd love to take your help, and we also want to be part of the solution."

Trudgeon: As a goal of Count Me In 4 Kids, we wanted to try and find a way that we could help prevent kids from entering the system. We know that there's always going to be a need for foster care homes and more foster care homes. But we thought what a great way to make a difference is try to intervene early in a family's life so that a crisis doesn't occur that results in a foster care situation. 

So, based on that, our collaborative went and did some discovery around the country looking for best practices, and we found this model in Chicago called "Safe Families for Children." Safe Families for Children is a program that is designed for the community as a whole to stand up and take a stand for children. By doing so, we are going to churches and actively recruiting those churches to come and step forward with their congregations to be volunteer placement homes for families in need. 

It really is about intervening early in a situation in a family's life, so that we can help them before a pre-crisis situation gets to a critical situation. We are really excited about what we've heard from Chicago. The results have been absolutely, almost unfathomable. In Cook County when they started this program, the number of children entering into foster care in the Cook County area of Chicago was about 3,000 a year. Within one year of Safe Families working in Chicago, that number had been reduced to 1,100. We hope and pray that we can have similar results here in Oklahoma, and we totally believe we can. Our community rolls out to support great causes - whether it's tornado victims, flood victims, fire victims - our people rush to a cause when they know how to act and how to respond to it. We think Safe Families for Children will provide that bridge, that model, that will allow the community as a whole to step up and help these kids and these families when they need it the most. 

In a Safe Families situation, a volunteer family will step up and say, "Hey, I would love to help a struggling parent or family with their child while they're working to improve their own situation." How that works is, they'll go to a website actually called "Youshare." Youshare is a crowd-sourcing resource based for the entire community. And so it's based on profile settings. It's sort of like a match.com, if you will, for family placements and services to foster care families. So a family in need will place a profile stating, "Hey, we're a struggling family. We need a refrigerator. We need a bike so I can get to my workplace. We need X, Y, or Z." They'll create that profile. On the other hand, anyone from the community can go on and create their own profile of resources that they have. From that point we convene the two parties, introduce them to each other, let them discuss the arrangements of their match process, make sure that everyone is comfortable with the situations, and then a match is made. 

What I think is extremely important about the Safe Families model is that it is volunteer-based. There is no pressure from the state through DHS. There's no pressure from Count Me In 4 Kids. It is truly a voluntary arrangement. So, what that means is the custodial parent signs a power of attorney giving certain rights to this volunteer family, but that power of attorney is revocable upon their decision when and wherever they want to. The average stay in a Safe Families home is just over 42 days, and that's an amazing power to allow a struggling parent to focus in on themselves with the safety and security to know that their child is being cared for. 

We have been fortunate that we've been able to convene tremendous leaders who have volunteered their time graciously to helping us form this collaborative, helping us discover Safe Families, and now, really helping us with the capacity-building. We have tremendous volunteer support in that sense. It's almost beyond volunteer support. It's almost birthing parents for our organization. They are completely dedicated and completely passionate about what they do. Director Lake and Amy White are just as much a part of that. They've been so supportive of everything we're trying to do.

White: The partnerships and collaborations are essential to the success of Oklahoma. You know, I think that because we have Count Me In 4 Kids that has started here that has brought together so many individuals, so many passionate people about this topic, with a mission that not only talks about supporting children and families in foster care and in adoptive care, but also supporting families before they come into care, takes the whole system in one fell swoop, and it's focusing on children. 

Count Me In 4 Kids. Who can't support better outcomes for our children in Oklahoma?