At a young age, Kimberly Lloyd was introduced to fostering through her parents, who fostered children for six years. There were trying times, but even in her youth, Kimberly saw the importance of her parents’ mission and the positive impact they were having on the kids who lived with them.
“The experience always stuck with me, and when I began dating Bryon, I asked him if he would ever want to foster children someday. He felt the same way I did and said yes.”
When their youngest biological child was 5, the Lloyds felt God nudging, telling them it was the right time to open their home. “We had no plans to adopt, we just wanted to be a safe haven for children who needed one while their parents worked to get them back home,” says Kimberly.
In January of 2017, the Lloyds became licensed foster parents and were soon matched with a 3-year-old boy, David. He had been through significant trauma, and his case lasted 18 months. In the end, the Lloyd family adopted him with much joy. David is now 10.
Selfless hardly begins to describe this family. The Lloyds have fostered 17 children over the last six years, with three cases leading to adoption. The rest have either returned home, gone to family or been adopted by other families.
Two weeks ago, the Lloyds got a call from CPS about two young children they fostered from September of 2020 to May of 2022. They were going back into care and needed somewhere to go. Kimberly and Bryon were about to adopt their youngest son and close their home, which meant they would no longer be foster parents. They ended up taking both children, ages 2 and 3, back in as a kinship placement, joining the Lloyds’ biological children, Jack (age 16), Carys (age 14), and Hazel (age 12), and adopted children, David (age 10), Josiah (age 3) and Sebastian (almost 2 years old), in their family.
Their story would not be possible without the help of Foster Village. A friend of Kimberly’s who is a foster parent told her about a volunteer opportunity to sort donations at the nonprofit. “I was so excited about what the organization was doing because I remembered when my parents fostered in the ’90s and how isolated they felt.”
Kimberly quickly saw that Foster Village was filling a gap in the world of foster care. The organization supplies families with clothing, diapers, strollers and car seats. Most importantly they create a safe haven where foster, biological and adoptive families receive ongoing support and care.
Providing a community for these foster parents and children to bond and uplift each other, to share their stories and lean on one another, is what Foster Village has done.
“Foster care burnout is a real thing. The women of Foster Village have all become lifelong friends and allies who have been willing to get in the trenches with us, to laugh and cry alongside us, during what has been both the most challenging and rewarding thing we've ever done.”