Mission Statement

The Foster & Adoptive Care Coalition strives to create permanency in foster children’s lives by recruiting and supporting foster and adoptive families in the metropolitan St. Louis region.

Impact

The Coalition is a child welfare nonprofit that has been serving youth and families in the St. Louis region since 1989. Annually, the Coalition serves 14,600 children and families throughout our programs and services. There are systemic gaps and barriers in permanency and stability for children and youth impacted by the child welfare system. The Coalition strives to eliminate these gaps and barriers through innovative programming that facilitates healthy, culturally competent, safe, and nurturing homes and communities for children and youth.

We do this by providing and prioritizing the following: Information Dissemination, Child-Specific Recruitment, Traditional Foster Parent Recruitment, Specialized Recruitment, Advocacy, Navigation & Support, In-Home Therapeutic Services, Peer Support Groups, Respite Care, Training, Financial or Materials Support, and Social and Community Activities.

Coalition is dedicated to blazing new trails in the foster and adoptive landscape, and we’re proud to say that our innovative programs have yielded nationally replicable results for families. In fact, our professional training courses have resulted in a remarkable 98% improvement rate in the subject matter covered. Families who attend our support groups also report feeling increased support in their overall well-being, with an impressive 95% reporting positive results. Programs like 30 Days to Family® and Extreme Recruitment® have also proven successful in finding permanency for children entering the foster care system with relatives or culturally competent foster and adoptive parents.

Thanks to our Family Works program, almost 95% of children remain in their homes or move to a more stable living environment. And with our Comprehensive Systems Navigation Program, we’ve ensured that every child has a safe and stable home, achieving a 100% success rate.

Dana Brown Charitable Trust has been a valuable funding resource for the collation for many years. Our most recently grant supports our groundbreaking foster care recruitment programs; in the next five years these programs will scale to serve 100% of children who enter foster care.

This is possible because the General Assembly passed Missouri Senate Bill 683 (SB683) in 2022. SB683 requires “family finding” for all children entering foster care. Family finding is the child welfare practice of identifying relatives/kin of children in foster care.