Imagine Arrowhead Stadium filled to the brim four and a half times over. This is not a Chiefs’ playoff football game, nor is it a Taylor Swift concert with screaming fans. This staggering number represents the amount of children currently in the United States’ foster system– approximately 420,000 of them.
Locally, there are over 6,000 kids in the foster system in the state of Kansas. Statistically, many of these children will face time in prison, end up on the street or take their own lives.
The gravity of this gripped the heart of KC Kansas Angels’ President Judy Temaat in 2018, when she attended a conference centered on foster care and delved deeper into the numbers for her own hometown.
“Holy cow we have to do something,” she said when she saw how many kids were in foster care just in Johnson County, Kansas’ most affluent county. “We’re the third highest county in the state with kids in care. . . Just because there are big beautiful houses, it doesn’t mean there also aren’t problems.”
For some starting direction, Judy reached out to the organization Austin Angels hoping to bring a similar chapter to the Kansas City Metro area. Knowing she could not do this alone, she connected with three other women who almost immediately agreed to help launch KC Kansas Angels across seven counties in July of 2019.
Today, Judy and her case managers are helping further the mission of KC Kansas Angels–
“Through intentional giving, relationship building and mentorship, we can change the world.”
The need for safe, loving homes is immense, but it’s just one of many problems to solve. According to Judy, 50 percent of homes that open their doors to foster care close their doors within the first year, the most common reason being a lack of support. The KC Kansas Angels staff are striving to keep those doors open.
Melissa and her husband are currently raising eight kids between the ages of 11-18, four are fosters and four are biological. Each month, they receive a Love Box, a program that matches local volunteers with families in order to provide consistent support. The group supporting Melissa’s family also cooks dinner and drops it off once a week.
“I’m not one of those people who ask for help,” Melissa said. “I was starting to drown and they appeared at just the right time and started delivering meals.”
The Love Box program is a one-year commitment of providing one box a month. By helping foster parents receive help in different forms, the goal is for volunteers to forge long-term relationships with the family that go beyond just a year. Judy and her husband Phill have been doing just that with their family of three girls.
“I’m babysitting Saturday for them so mom can take her biological daughter to an all-day volleyball tournament. To pay a babysitter for that period of time would have been financially hard for them,” Judy said.
Dare to Dream is another year-long KC Kansas Angels program that emphasizes the power of relationships. This mentorship program is all about a healthy, safe adult spending individualized time with a child in foster care to help promote healthy habits through consistency in their lives.
“There’s a huge need for male mentors,” Judy said. “There are so many young men in the foster system who just don’t have the positive role models they need.”
Judy’s husband Phill is a mentor to one of Melissa’s kids. Recently, they went shoe shopping for the school year, a huge relief for Melissa with seven other kids to buy for.
KC Kansas Angels has come a long way in a short amount of time, but their work is far from over. Every volunteer, every donation and every story shared goes toward breaking the cycle of foster care.
“I see progress being made when I see kids graduating from high school and breaking habits,” Judy said. “We’ve had parents say to us, ‘I was going to close my license until you guys got involved with us.’”
For the last nine years, Melissa has played a role in 49 success stories and often hears from her kids who have aged out of the system.
“I have kids walk in the door and go ‘Where’s Mom?’ They know when we eat, so they just pop in and make themselves at home,” she said. “On Mother’s Day, you never know who you’re going to hear from.”
Whether it’s going back to their biological parents, being adopted or turning 18, Melissa and her husband are dedicated to seeing kids through to their final destination.
“I just want to show the world around me that they are normal kids who just need love and safety in a family and someone to look up to,” she said.
Not everyone is called to be a foster parent. Not everyone can open their home, but anyone can show up to help break the cycle.
“Be a Love Box volunteer, be a mentor, bring someone a meal, make a financial donation. There’s so many holes and gaps that need to be filled,” Judy said. “Start somewhere even if it’s small.”
As someone who didn’t know where to start in this journey, Judy certainly knows how she wants it to end.
The cycle stops with them,” she said. “If that’s the only contribution I make to this, then I’ve done my job.”
“That’s why it’s so beautiful when families like Melissa’s come alongside these kids and give them the leg up they need to reach their fullest potential, to have the same dreams as all the other kids."