Episode 5: Churches Step Up

CHAS CHAPPELL, HOST: A young mother and father are on the brink of losing their children. The mom is suffering from postpartum depression after the birth of her fourth child. The parents are unemployed and struggling to care for their three older children, including one child who was diagnosed with autism. 400 dollars of clean clothes they can’t afford stand between the parents and a knock on their door from Child Protective Services.

Welcome back to “Virginia’s Foster Care: Crawling Through Broken Glass.” I’m Chas Chappell. In our final episode, I’ll explain how churches are stepping up to fill gaps in Virginia’s social services system.

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CHAPPELL: The family of six is just one example of dozens of requests submitted every day to a platform you may not have heard of: Care Portal. It’s a national online network that allows churches and other non-profits to fill gaps in social service programs and keep kids out of foster care. Two church leaders say they try to work within the system—but progress can be limited by bureaucratic red tape and concerns among social workers at the Department of Social Services that churches may be going too far by evangelizing the people they’re helping.

So how does Care Portal make the difference? How do churches use it? And… does it work?

Rhonda Sedovy, Care Portal’s coordinator for Grace Presbyterian Church in Lexington, says it does.

RHONDA SEDOVY: Everybody wants to help. They just don’t know. They don’t know what is needed. That’s what the care portal platform is.

CHAPPELL: Care Portal was launched in 2015 by the Global Orphan Project, a nonprofit organization in Kansas City. Since then, it’s expanded to counties across the country. It’s an online IT platform that connects donors and churches with organizations who request aid on behalf of struggling families.

Care Portal began operating in Rockbridge County in 2022. Today, 28 churches are signed up to meet requests. The churches expanded the local program to neighboring Alleghany and Bath counties in 2024.

Sedovy says the platform allows her and other churches to help more people.

SEDOVY: I had a close relationship with some of the ladies that were working at DSS… You know they can’t keep everything that they need when they get a child and there’s lots of paperwork that they have to go through… You know, we helped one kid at a time through foster care, but how could we help like 100 or 1,000? and Care Portal was the answer.

CHAPPELL: Schools pay an annual fee based on their size that ranges from 250 to 7,500 dollars. Social Services agencies pay depending on their county’s or state’s participation in the program. Churches and non-profits that fulfill requests don’t pay a fee. Sedovy says these organizations put requests on the platform.

SEDOVY: Requesting agencies like the health center or the school system that see the everyday needs of this child, they know when the child’s not coming to school with clothes or their clothes are dirty, and it might be that their washing machine went out.

CHAPPELL: Families cannot post requests to Care Portal themselves. Care Portal’s official website says requests are restricted to approved organizations to guard against fraud.

Requests normally start with a mandatory reporter like a teacher or doctor… but they also come from social workers, community organizations and other churches in the system who can’t fulfill a request themselves.

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CHAPPELL: But what are families asking for? In Rockbridge last year, top items and services included beds, cribs, kitchen furniture, clothing, groceries, rent and utility assistance… and diapers. Since it began operating, Care Portal in Rockbridge has fulfilled immediate needs for 400 kids in the county.

A substantial portion of DSS child cases list an “unsafe home” as a reason for removal. It’s a catch-all term that includes unsanitary conditions, homelessness and even drug addiction and domestic violence. But sometimes it means that a family lacks basic necessities.

Pastor Michael Saunders of Lexington Baptist Church says he views fulfilling Care Portal requests as the best way to keep kids out of foster care.

MICHAEL SAUNDERS: If they don’t have their own bed, we can get them a bed. So, the family’s good, yeah, they just don’t have a bed. Well, that’s a, let’s keep the kid out of the system… why don’t we get a $200 dresser and save not just the kid from the system, but say, how much is the government gonna spend putting this kid into foster care? They’ll spend over 200 dollars in one month.

CHAPPELL: But not all requests are inexpensive. In the last year, costs ranged from 200 dollars to 3,000 dollars for help with rent.

So where does the money come from? Sedovy says she reaches out to local charities, like the Community Foundation for Rockbridge, Alleghany and Bath Counties, for donations. But she says the majority of the financial burden rests with independent donors in Rockbridge County.

SEDOVY: Anybody can, can sign up to meet those needs. For instance, Cornerstone Bank is a community champion for us.

CHAPPELL: But it’s not just businesses.

SEDOVY: Anybody can sign up to help and provide goods to that family, the church has to deliver on them.

CHAPPELL: Since its launch, Care Portal in Rockbridge has raised over 135 thousand dollars, including 60 thousand dollars in the last year. But for all the money donors give, it’s up to Care Portal’s approved churches to fulfill the requests.

Sedovy says the responding church uses the money to buy the items that families need and then delivers them. But she says churches aren’t just a delivery service.

SEDOVY: I have personal relationships with that have been going on for, I would say, close to three years now, with people that we serve through Care Portal. You know, they might get, you know, they might be doing well, and you don’t hear from them for a little while, and then, you know, they might have a blip in the road, and they’ll reach back out.

CHAPPELL: Sedovy says one of her most rewarding cases involved fixing a hot water heater for a family with a special needs child. She says she sent personalized Christmas gifts to children of an incarcerated father. She also provided clothing and essentials for a family fleeing domestic violence.

SEDOVY: So, we’re helping with mental health issues for that biological family, because if they have that stress or like, oh my gosh, you’re gonna get me a refrigerator. Or, you know, you know you’ve got a bed that I can have. You mean, you’ve got furniture for my children. When you see these kids light up like, I’ve got my own bedding or, you know, I mean, it’s just, it’s incredible.

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CHAPPELL: Eventually, Sedovy says the churches want to fulfill more complicated requests.

SEDOVY: Care Portal in general is a three tier system. So, the first tier is meeting physical needs. The second tier would be, and let me say, in Rockbridge County and in Bath County, we are still in that tier one phase, kind of hopefully moving to the tier two phase, which is more of being relational.

CHAPPELL: Sedovy says that could mean a child needs a tutor, a ride to work or to a doctor’s appointment.

SEDOVY: Tier two requires, like background checks and things to do that we’re not quite at that phase, the tier three phase is adoption and or being a foster parent.

CHAPPELL: Sedovy says Rockbridge, Alleghany and Bath are behind other counties in Virginia because they started Care Portal three years ago. She says the wealth and education gap in this area is a major factor. In Lexington, about 50 percent of people have earned a college degree. In Rockbridge County, the number drops to 26 percent. In Buena Vista, just zero point three percent of residents graduated from college.

SEDOVY: And I don’t think people understand, you know, how you can be in a mansion on the hill and two miles away from you can be somebody that has no running water or electricity in their home here, and that is a thing here. And I mean, it is a thing you don’t see that when you’re walking around the streets of Lexington city here, but if you go out in the county, you know, it’s real. And, you know, I think that a lot of people do have a heart, and there are so many altruistic individuals, you know, that want to give back and help. They just don’t know how.

CHAPPELL: In Rockbridge, about 50 children are in foster care. That includes kids who DSS placed with relatives or family friends in what’s known as kinship care.

But the statistic doesn’t include all the kids at risk of entering the system. Sedovy says the majority of Care Portal cases come in on behalf of kids who are still with their families or live unofficially with their relatives. She says the relatives are often unprepared.

SEDOVY: They might be here and say, grandma and grandpa have to take in a child. And, you know, their kids have moved on, that ship has sailed, and they don’t have the resources, or say, Grandma and Grandpa are taking care of them, and their refrigerator goes out. You know, that might tip them over the edge.

CHAPPELL: Saunders, the pastor at Lexington Baptist Church, says the COVID-19 pandemic showed him and others that kids placed with relatives received virtually no follow up by social workers.

SAUNDERS: Remember, you can’t go into homes. You got to, you got to stay six feet away. Well, how do you check in on a home if you got to stay six feet away? And so all sudden, the pandemic, a lot of these things got shut. There’s a lot of reporting that happens in schools. Well, there’s no school.

CHAPPELL: Saunders says he asked DSS to work with his church to meet families’ basic needs. But he says DSS was skeptical of his intentions. The state Children’s Ombudsman, Eric Reynolds, says local DSS and churches often clash over DSS fears of religious indoctrination.

ERIC REYNOLDS: Some of them, there was some rocky starts. I think there was, you know, but it really requires setting the expectations, you know, churches, you know, that’s one of their missions, is to help the needy, right? But don’t proselytize, you know, so make sure that the expectations are set forth in the in the beginning.

CHAPPELL: Sedovy says she is open to bringing people into a closer relationship with her church, Grace Presbyterian.

SEDOVY: Care Portal gives people an opportunity to be missionaries in their own backyard… it’s not a requirement to go to church for them to receive care from Care Portal, but we certainly like to let them know that we’re not just trying to be that transactional thing, like bringing the bed — that we want to be relational with them.

CHAPPELL: Saunders says he’s careful about pushing religion on needy families.

SAUNDERS: Goal is not to make these kids come to our church. We just want to help kids.

CHAPPELL: He says he was frustrated by DSS’s initial skepticism.

SAUNDERS: We found out real quick that in a small, small town, they were like, we don’t like anything you’re doing. Why? Because you’re not working with DSS… There are politics to it, and there’s a lot of red tape, and there’s stuff that you wish that they would change, because I think you forgot there’s a kid there.

CHAPPELL: But Saunders says his church’s relationship with DSS is much stronger today. Sedovy says DSS now gives churches notice directly or through Care Portal if a child in foster care has needs the government can’t fulfill.

Reynolds, the Ombudsman, says that when DSS and churches get along, the result is usually positive.

REYNOLDS: If the workers are aware of some of these resources, and they build up relationships with the churches or the people that organize, like the Care Portal… I think that bodes well for the families that that worker works with.

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CHAPPELL: Care Portal isn’t the only way churches step up. Saunders says his church and others host dinners to help recruit foster parents. During the sessions, church leaders explain what it means to be a foster parent.

Saunders says the training process to become a foster parent in Rockbridge can be difficult to navigate. He says prospective foster parents often have to make a weekly, hour-long drive to Staunton.

SAUNDERS: Twelve weeks in a row, continuous weeks of training. If you missed one, start over, no childcare provided. Get your babysitter. We got three kids that — get your own babysitter. And it’s like, that’s not gonna work, we can’t do that.

CHAPPELL: Saunders says there are only four foster-care eligible homes in Rockbridge County. So, what happens to the rest of the children who need foster placements? Saunders says social workers find spaces for them outside the county.

SAUNDERS: You’re probably looking at going up to Staunton. If not, Charlottesville, Richmond, Virginia Beach. You’re going to one of these bigger areas where there are more homes.

CHAPPELL: Saunders has been a foster parent several times. He says he knows what it’s like for children to leave their homes and go into foster care.

SAUNDERS: The kids leave with a garbage bag of clothes. Leave their home. So literally, you’re going to get a garbage bag, and you’re filling it up with a couple things they need, and that’s what they leave with. So, you’re, you can put yourself in the space of a little, little kid, you know—and this is not on the DSS workers — but you’re trying to get this kid out of a situation. But you also may have just left, like, their three favorite toys, the rest of their clothes, you know, their favorite pillow, whatever it was, their night light that they loved. All that stuff gets left behind, so the kid comes with nothing into the system.

CHAPPELL: He says serving as a foster parent was rewarding in unexpected ways.

SAUNDERS: You feel like, man, this kid’s really going to be blessed by having us around. And you realize actually it’s the reverse. We’re blessed by having them around, and if we did any good for them, we’ll praise the Lord.

CHAPPELL: Sedovy also was a foster parent—who wound up adopting a boy who had come to live with her.

SEDOVY: I get to be my son’s mom every day. You know, I just I don’t think that, I don’t know that he’ll ever understand what that means. But I wake up every morning thinking that I get to be his mom today. I can’t imagine not having that opportunity. It’s been such a blessing. I’ve always told my kids, you know, some babies grow in mommy’s belly and some babies grow in mommy’s heart.

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CHAPPELL: This concludes our five-part series, “Virginia’s Foster Care: Crawling Through Broken Glass.”

Be sure to check out each of our previous episodes if you haven’t already.

To read the full story, visit our investigative reporting page on the Rockbridge Report’s website at rockbridgereport.wlu.edu.

Thank you for listening.

Music credit: “Mystery Box” by Amir Marcus