Midwest Foster Care and Adoption Association began in 1998 as a small support group formed by an experienced Teaching Foster Parent, and a brand new, energetic foster parent. The group originally consisted of members of a small STARS (pre-service) training class who got together monthly at the Baptist Mission Center in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, to share a potluck dinner, talk about their experiences, and bring in speakers who could help them work through any issues that came up as they fostered.
Through word of mouth, the group began to expand. A core group of about eight families became committed to the grassroots idea of foster and adoptive parents helping each other improve the lives of abused and neglected children. That core group formed an informal steering committee tasked with envisioning an organization which would provide supportive services to a far larger group of foster and adoptive families.
The group decided that foster and adoptive families needed a center, an actual physical location where they could come together to find the services and supports they needed in a ‘one stop shop.’ Within the center there would ideally be assistance with food, clothes, furniture, school supplies, holiday gifts and other physical necessities. But more importantly, there would be training from experts who could provide information that would be pertinent to the work they were doing. There would be support and mentoring from other foster and adoptive families who had lived the same kinds of experiences they lived. There would also be help in solving the problems that foster and adoptive families face in trying to navigate the social services, healthcare, mental healthcare and educational systems to find their kids the help they needed.
Determined to create a Foster and Adoptive Family Resource Center, this core group divided up tasks. One foster parent located an empty building and began discussions with the owners about leasing it at little or no cost. Another foster parent had experience in running food pantries from his history of working within a church. Several foster parents worked together sitting at a kitchen table to write an application to the IRS for their non-profit designation.
Community foundations and donors expressed interest in this unique organization, and Midwest Foster Care and Adoption Association was officially founded in 2000. The organization opened its first Foster and Adoptive Family Resource Center in a large school building at 1700 Blue Ridge Boulevard in eastern Kansas City, Missouri. The resources of several families were combined to form a food pantry, clothes closet, furniture exchange, resource library and more. Volunteer foster parents staffed the Resource Center full time, and the foster and adoptive parent community of the Greater Kansas City area came together to connect with the resources available and the friendship and support they’d so desperately needed. MFCAA’s member family participation quickly grew from 20 families to more than 400 families.
In 2002, the organization formed its first community Board of Directors, and in 2004 the organization hired its first paid staff member. Since then, the organization has grown into a stable and thriving non-profit social service agency with nine staff members, devoted to meeting the needs of foster and adoptive families and the children they serve. MFCAA is widely recognized by the child welfare community as the premier trainer for the in-service needs of the foster and adoptive parent community, and has received local and national honors for its tireless work advocating for the needs of foster and adoptive children and their families through the Children’s Division, the Legislature and the courts.
