The nonprofit Fostering Hopes in Conway SC is in the middle of construction on their first professional foster home near Asheville. Because of limits on how many children can live in a home, many foster siblings end up being placed in different homes. Additionally, the short supply of available foster hosts means that foster kids are often placed far from the communities where their biological families live. Fostering Hopes founder Alex Williams estimates that nearly half of the Carolina’s foster children are placed outside of the county they’re from.
In an attempt to solve both of these problems, Fostering Hopes has partnered with H3Collective to build several large homes specifically designed for foster families. The first home, in Buncombe County, is a 36-hundred-square-foot home with five bedrooms that will be large enough to house five children. Using volunteers and donated materials, they expect to have the home completed by late spring, when it will be offered to licensed foster parents free of charge.
Fostering Hopes plans to build more of the foster homes in the area and eventually across the state. According to Williams, the homes will go a long way to help lessen the trauma on children in foster care. "It means they get to stay in the community they're familiar with," he says, adding that the homes will make it more likely that they'll be able to reunite with their parents in a "healthy way."