Photo courtesy of King’s Home.
The King’s Home Ranch in Chelsea is beginning a new foster care program.
More than 400,000 children are in foster care in the United States. King’s Home in Chelsea has begun a new therapeutic foster care program for some of those children.
The program matches foster parents with children from ages 6 to 18 who are in the custody of the Alabama Department of Human Resources.
“Therapeutic foster care is just a specialized form of foster care,” Jennifer Lackey, operations director at King’s Home, said. “The kids in therapeutic [care], they've been removed from their family, most of the time it's been abuse or neglect. It could be physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse or it can be all of the above.”
Lackey said that many times these kids need individualized and specialized attention, which is why they tend to limit parents to only one foster child unless it’s a sibling group. She also noted that King’s Home provides all the necessary counseling and psychiatric services that these children require under therapeutic foster care.
“What it really boils down to is just kids that are struggling, and they need a little more help really getting stabilized and getting back on track,” Lackey said.
Lackey said the foster care initiative was a “natural extension” of the work that King’s Home already does.
According to their website, King’s Home currently provides 22 residential group home facilities. The youth program provides a home to children ages 10 to 21, primarily from DHR, fully staffed by house parents to care for the kids. There is also a women’s program that provides a home to women and children escaping domestic violence.
Lackey said the spiritual development component for the youth is a major part of the healing process, including exposure to Bible-based devotions and worship services.
“No one is forced to attend or no one is forced to participate in any religious activity,” she said, “but we make it very much known to the kids that they're welcome to attend worship with their foster families. We're nondenominational, but we do believe in Jesus Christ as a savior, and we're going to expose them to those teachings.”
Lackey emphasized that the agency is careful to respect children that have different religious beliefs. They have had non-Christian children in their group homes, and Lackey said they are upfront about the agency’s faith preferences to children before they arrive, to ensure that there is no confusion or misconception.
In May 2017, Alabama passed HB 24, which allows foster and adoption agencies to discriminate on which parents they place a child with, based on the religious beliefs of the agency.
King’s Home takes advantage of that law by only placing children in “Christ-centered homes.” That means that King’s Home will not place children with Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or atheist foster parents.
When it comes to placing children with gay foster parents, Lackey said they have no written policy on the matter.
She said, “We encourage anyone that meets the criteria and that can provide a Christ-centered home to call us. We would love to talk to anybody that has the heart and the calling to work with kids.”
She pointed out that for many foster parents, the role is a “calling.” Two of the house parents at the campus, Amanda and Dave Roper, left their careers as a software business analyst and a lawyer, respectively, to come work for King’s Home.
Lackey said, “For kids that have been through trauma, abuse, and neglect, progress happens in small steps. Being able to smile, being able to hug you, being able to share and process feelings.”
