Addressing the Greatest Need for Foster Kids: Trauma Healing
Life Ranch sees trauma healing as one of the greatest needs in foster care. Trauma causes a myriad of mental health issues, citizenship issues, and in many situations, death (primarily by suicide), and comes from a number of sources. Predominantly abandonment, homelessness, and in the worst-case scenarios human trafficking. These sources of trauma can cost the state and the system upwards of $30,000 to $120,000 per kid per year. What if there was a PLACE that could circumvent the problem? What if there was a PLACE that could turn the tide and not add layers to the trauma? We believe in trauma healing at Life Ranch, a place of retreat, a place of relief, a place of reconciliation.
When operating from the greatest needs in foster care we are dealing with big and complex questions. Life Ranch believes there is a simple foundational solution to these multifaceted and complex problems, we believe it is homes. Not just a house or a roof over foster kids’ heads and a pillow to lay on but a home. In the existing system, the need is described as beds and the solution is placement. But that is system vocabulary, the greatest need for foster kids is not placement but PLACE. There are very few foster kids who don’t have “placement”; there are a whole lot of them that are moved frequently and improperly placed. The system says the answer is placement, meaning if that kid is placed somewhere that he has a pillow to lay his head on, the need has been met. Life Ranch does not see it this way, Life Ranch sees that these kids need a place to heal, these kids need a place to grow, these kids need a place to be who God has created them to be. We are not simply looking to build houses, provide beds, and get kids placed. We are looking to build a community, we are looking to provide a PLACE and for that PLACE is an anchor for these kids that have been taken from their context, home, and community. Not a replacement for their family, their context, or their community but simply a PLACE to anchor in turbulent times.
Meeting Life Ranch’s Greatest Need:
Life Ranch is looking for a property with room to start and build to begin the trauma healing, to provide homes and to let the kids be kids and experience God’s creation. Life Ranch believes these kids need room and acreage to accomplish healing and a rural agricultural setting to gain ground in this mission. We want to steward our property and use what God has given to restore and give young men and women an anchor to be faithful, hard-working, grace-filled citizens of our great country. With society becoming busier and more contained, Life Ranch will use our property acres to build houses for the homeless parentless epidemic facing these foster kids. Life Ranch acres and infrastructure will create a space for healing to happen.
Starting with the Greatest Need: Sibling Groups
When Life Ranch asked the question “What is the greatest need in Georgia’s foster care right now” of people and organizations who have been in the foster care space in this state for a long time, almost immediately and verbatim the answer was “sibling groups”. So that is where Life Ranch will start, we will start with the biggest need. Life Ranch wants to create a PLACE with five sibling group homes in 5 years. Once Life Ranch obtains the property God has in store for us we will begin a 5-year development plan for five homes to meet the greatest need of sibling group place. Life Ranch will no longer use the word placement but we have replaced it with Place because we are going to use a vocabulary with its roots in story not system.
Envisioning Life Ranch’s Future
Fast forward with us 5 years in the future and walk onto the Life Ranch property. As you pull into a property you enter a property is teaming with a diverse community of foster kid sibling groups. You will be greeted by an aesthetically pleasing rural small farm community where foster kid siblings are at the top of the ladder. You will step into a world where foster kid sibling groups maintain and give purpose to everything done. It will be a place where the highest level of success is a foster kid growing up in a community with his/her siblings growing and being prepared and ready to re-enter home, context, and community as a contributing force to be reckoned with. Foster kids will be the reason Life Ranch exists, they will always be at the top and the “greatest of these” in our economy. We hope one day there will be no more foster kids but until that day we will be Life Ranch. These kids are not a statistic, they are not pieces of a system, they are stories, they are lives, they are God’s children and we have work to do.