Since 2015, at God’s leading, COMP
ACT
began expanding its continuum of care in order to better minister to the children and families from prevention (staying home) to permanency (going home). That continuum now includes Hillcrest Children’s Home with its multiple residential services, Highlands Adoption & Maternity Services, Foster Care and CompaCare.
Two of the growing works of COMP
ACT
are its foster care placement services and kinship navigator strategy. Both ministries are growing, and fast.
Last year, COMP
ACT
foster care services in the Garland County, Arkansas (home to Hillcrest Children’s Home) improved the foster child-to-bed need ratio by more than 40%! A recent resultant story of COMP
ACT
’s growing service continuum includes a youth who received trauma care through Hillcrest Children’s Home and was then placed in a COMP
ACT
foster home with a permanency plan of a promising future. In the process, this youth, who had previously floundered through the foster system, reached grade-level education status through a team effort of compassionate care. All of this happened within the COMP
ACT
continuum of care so that the child’s journey was without unhealthy disruption. This is a better path of healing future for such children.
At the tip of the spear of COMP
ACT
’s kinship navigator strategy is our F.I.N.D. (Families, Individuals, Neighbors, Devotees) program, developed and deployed in partnership with foster care. FIND is a kinship finding service; mining family and fictive kin connections for children who are seemingly stuck in foster care or at risk of foster care. By law, the first placement for a child who is removed from their home due to maltreatment should be with a safe kin. However, in most cases, it doesn’t happen due to a multiplicity of reasons, including tyranny of the urgent. FIND is making a difference.
The early results of COMP
ACT
FIND are encouraging. For example, in its early work, COMP
ACT
has been able to identify at least one kinship placement opportunity for 80% of the referred FIND cases! The kinship genograms for each child have spanned four generations. FIND is growing family hope for children!
We aim to redeem family for more vulnerable children! Pray for God’s favor on these ministries! We need financial partners to support these expanding Christ-centered family ministries. Please point those interested in financially supporting these ministries to the link below. Blessings!