A LETTER FROM OUR

We Care Foster Care’s 2022 was a year full of impact, growth, and learning.

We delivered over 800 hours of direct teaching and learning to foster youth in need with programs targeting both literacy and the social, emotional, and academic skills these children lack.

We also provided direct services and goods to over 250 families, including beds, school supplies, healthy meals, winter clothes, holiday gifts and so much more.

While we are proud of the work we have done, there is still so much more to do. That is why we launched our new We Care LifeCare program to support aging-out youth by building a network of caring adults and organizations who provide goods, services and resources to help them thrive in their everyday lives. We will continue to build on that in 2023.

I am sincerely grateful to our dedicated and hardworking board of directors, staff, program partners, teaching artists, volunteers, and Monthly Heroes. And we could not have done any of this without the care and support of our incredible financial partners. We truly appreciate every single one of them. Their willingness to care has made a significant impact on the lives of those we serve.

We

Care, Alexis Ramsey Executive Director

Michigan has approximately 10,000 children and young adults in foster care. Disproportionate numbers suffer from a grim parade of mental health issues and poor educational outcomes, a burden Michigan’s safety net fails to fully address.

Foster children face the following challenges:

Behavior problems, often rooted in placement-related trauma, keep foster children from focusing on school.

Teachers and other adults in the lives of foster children usually focus on the child’s behavioral issues, not their educational needs.

Foster children, who attend an average of 6 different schools in their K-12 experience, lose 4-6 months of academic progress every time they change schools.

Foster children generally blame themselves, not foster care or schools, for their poor academic achievement.

In some cases, foster families do not have the financial means to provide a healthy and safe home environment, lacking clean beds, bedding, and safety accommodations for children. There is often no extra income available in these home placements to provide needed dental or counseling services, nor is there money to experience arts and cultural activities.

“It takes a village” as the saying goes, and addressing these complicated educational, financial, and social issues involves many agencies across numerous jurisdictions: public, private, local, state, and federal. As such, We Care serves Wayne County’s foster children by coordinating with various agencies, non-profits, businesses, and area professionals to mobilize and target available resources to where they are most needed (or “to where they will do the most good”) or (“to where they will be most effective”).