UCHRA will promote foster care and inmate mentorship initiatives to increase participation in the region.
The Governor’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative office presented its work Wednesday during a UCHRA Policy Council meeting. Middle Tennessee Regional Director Cammy Aguilar said Every Child Tennessee is an initiative designed to mobilize Tennesseans to help care for foster kids before, during, and after the foster experience. Aguilar said the initiative works with Tennessee Kids Belong, which is a non-profit that teaches churches and organizations how to recruit foster families.
“It can teach them how to start wrap ministries, which is getting like five to ten families around a family that is already fostering, and help support them, wrap around them, because a family who is fostering, the retention rate is like 50 percent dropout after one year of fostering because it is so hard,” Aguilar said.
Aguilar also presented the Volunteer Mentorship Initiative. Aguilar said they take volunteers to meet one-on-one with prisoners to mentor them and help them transition back into society.
“When people come out of incarceration, it’s a 70-80 percent return rate within three years that they go back into prison,” Aguilar said. “But our studies show that there is a 35 percent out of that group, if they go through the mentorship, they will never return.”
Aguilar said the foster care initiative also helps organizations and churches sign up for a program called CarePortal. Aguilar said the program allows organizations and churches to see the needs of local families in real time.
“This family needs a mattress, this family needs a crib, this family needs help with groceries, and these are needs that are already fully sifted through DCS (Department of Children Services), which means these families are already on the radar of almost being at a place where the children have to be removed from the home. It’s not illegal to be poor, but it is illegal to neglect. And a lot of time neglect is because of poverty.”
Aguilar said she has seen a lot of participation from the region in the initiatives already, but is trying to recruit more. UCHRA Executive Director Mark Farley said he would like to see more participation from the region.
“I think we have a lot of great organizations, a lot of the faith-based community that are very eager to try and work to help these families, ones that are fostering children, as well as those coming out of the prison system,” Farley said. “I think it’s a very exciting opportunity, and we always try to spread the word and help get the information out so that those groups will know about the programs and be able to be involved.”
Farley said both issues are problems that the Upper Cumberland often sees.