THE NEED
While it is crucial for every parent to have a time of rest, it is essential in the foster care community.
Foster care is challenging for both the foster parents and children. Children in foster care live in an uncertain, ever shifting reality with little stability and questions of an unknown future. Foster parents are challenged with caring for these children's physical and emotional needs.
In 2022, there were 1,800 foster families in South Carolina. While we don’t know yet know the total stats for 2023 foster families, there was a significant drop (40%) in foster families from 2021 to 2022 in South Carolina.
This is consistent with the national average that 30 to 50 percent of foster parents decide to stop fostering.
We want to provide families the needed support, encouragement, and hope to endure the journey.
We believe that providing a consistent, overnight respite outlet for children in foster care and their foster families can help alleviate hardships and provide a necessary interval of relief.
Respite care is a critical ingredient to successful placements and it is our hope that Three Rivers Respite can help reduce the number of disrupted placements (25% of children in foster care have four or more placements). We want to encourage foster families to continue in the foster care journey through the trials.
Three Rivers Respite provides opportunities for the community to be involved in the lives of precious children who need hope, encouragement, and love. Foster care is a mission field. Please join us by becoming workers in the harvest.