FLM is partnering with local churches to solve our communities’ foster care crisis. With more than 200 churches in Glynn County, if 1 family in every church said “Yes” to fostering a child in need, we would have more foster homes available than children in need of a home! Our goal is to recruit, train and license foster homes to care for the needs of local children entering into foster care in partnership with area churches so that children are not further traumatized and displaced from their local community and the natural family and relational supports.

FLM is recruiting 20 initial church partnerships to raise awareness of the foster care problem and to serve those church families answering the call to foster local children in need. FLM trains and licenses foster homes to co-parent and form mentoring relationships with birth parents in anticipation of family reunifications. FLM provides assessments, home study and counseling and other wrap-around services to children and their birth parents to aid in successful family reunifications.

FLM is a licensed child placing agency through the state of Georgia and has established several local church partnerships and is developing new ones. FLM provides awareness campaigns to churches and community partners and offers training to volunteers, foster and respite parents. FLM partners with several regional DFCS county offices to provide contract services to families engaged in child-welfare services.

FLM is able to monitor and track how many families and churches are served through its awareness campaigns, in addition to tracking foster care outcome indicators such as how many foster homes are available to serve children locally as well as program discharge statistics such as the number of children reunited with birth parents, the number of children who achieve permanency with a relative placement or those who achieve permanency through adoption.

FLM was licensed as a Christian Child Placing agency in May 2019 and is developing its base of funding streams in order to fully staff all its programs. FLM has provided training for 8 new families within the past 2 months. Three of these families have completed 24-hours of additional instructional training and are completing final steps to become licensed foster parents. FLM is currently hiring staff to provide more services to families through wrap-around, assessment, and counseling services.