Client Story

Welborn Baptist Foundation’s mission is to cultivate communities that flourish. They have four focus areas, including Early Learning, Healthy-Eating and Active Living, Christ-Centered Communities, and Nonprofit Excellence.

In recent years, Welborn Baptist Foundation has granted over $500,000 to foster care projects, and funding requests for foster care have increased. As they were funding various foster care projects, they realized they did not understand the landscape of foster care in the area. How were their dollars impacting foster care? They also realized that foster care is a large social issue and sought a collective impact approach to better understand it. 

Welborn Baptist Foundation asked TCG to complete a white paper on foster care in Gibson, Posey, Vanderburgh, and Warrick counties. Welborn wanted to understand who the local, regional, and state partners were supporting foster care and their input to inform the project. 

First Welborn Baptist Foundation and TCG assembled a steering committee to guide the work. Taking a collective impact approach, we sought experts in the area of foster care from various sectors, including nonprofits, education, churches, as well as government entities such as the Department of Child Services (DCS). The committee helped define the research questions for the white paper, identified data sources, and guided TCG in developing surveys. Through its completion, the committee provided feedback about the white paper.   

Our research was informed by the following guiding questions:   

• What is foster care? 
• How does foster care impact the community? 
• Who are the children in the Southwest Indiana counties?
• How is the community meeting the needs of children in foster care? 
• How are other communities addressing foster care needs? 
• What improvements can be made in the foster care system? 

TCG collected public data about foster care. The research showed that neglect is the predominant factor for a child’s removal, contributing to 91% of Indiana cases. Neglect happens in the following cases: 

• The child’s basic needs, like food, clothing, and shelter, are not met
• The child is unsafe
• The child is not given an education
• The child suffers emotional neglect, perhaps through being ignored or isolated
• The child is not given proper health care.* 

Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) says the “root cause” of neglect is poverty.** Instances of neglect can decrease when parents and families have the support they need to get through the tough times in life. The Protective Factors: Keep Your Family Strong framework can educate families and caregivers on supports that have been proven to strengthen families. The six protective factors are: 

• Nurturing and Attachment
• Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development
• Parental Resilience
• Social Connections 
• Concrete Support for Families 
• Social-Emotional Competence of Children 

For children in foster care, various potential pathways to exit foster care are identified in their case plan goals. When a case plan begins, the initial goal is reunification. At the time of data collection, 67% of cases retained a reunification goal, while other plans had been adjusted as needed. Adoption is another common avenue, with 23% aiming to find permanency within adoptive families.

TCG deployed the three surveys for Foster Care Placement Services, Community Partners, and Foster and Kinship Care Parents. TCG also completed one interview with a woman who grew up in foster care in the area. Overall, the surveys exposed a theme showing that staffing shortages are impacting the services provided. Foster families are not able to get the services and support they need. 

TCG created an asset map of the organizations already supporting foster care in Southwest Indiana. The white paper ends with aspirational research on organizations doing good work in foster care. The community can consider these examples as they think about how to support foster care in Southwest Indiana.

*   NSPCC. (n.d.). Neglect. NSPCC Website. https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-is-child-abuse/types-of-abuse/neglect
** CASA GAL. (2022, October 27). The Common Thread in Child Removal – Neglect Not Abuse. https://nationalcasagal.org/the-common-thread-in-child-removal-neglect-not-abuse/ 

• Assembled the steering committee and facilitated its meetings 
• Collected public data, conducted surveys, and completed research on aspirational organizations 
• Compiled the Foster Care in Southwest Indiana White Paper