National Foster Care Month: 31 Ways You Can Support a Foster Child This May

Every May, our nation pauses to recognize something that Baptist Children’s Homes of North Carolina carries in its heart every single day: the urgent, beautiful, and sacred calling to care for children in foster care.

National Foster Care Month is not just an awareness campaign — it is an invitation. And we believe God has placed that invitation before you for a reason.

There are more than 10,000 children in foster care in North Carolina alone. Behind every number is a name, a story, a face that God knows and loves completely. At BCH Family, our mission since 1885 has been to walk alongside those children and the families called to care for them — not simply as a social service, but as an expression of the gospel. So this May, we want to give you 31 concrete, practical ways to say yes to that calling.

And because the heart of the foster care system is reunification — restoring children to their biological families whenever it is safe and possible — many of these steps reach beyond the foster child to also embrace biological parents, caseworkers, and the wider web of relationships God uses to bring healing. When we support foster care well, we are supporting reunification well.

Ways to Give Your Time

1.     Become a licensed foster parent through BCH Family.

2.     Offer respite care — giving foster families a weekend of rest while you step in to love a child.

3.     Volunteer with BCH’s community programs and events.

4.     Offer a meal, a coffee, or simple encouragement to a foster family who is actively walking alongside a child’s biological family toward reunification.

5.     Offer to babysit for a foster family in your neighborhood so the parents can rest.

6.     Look through potential items in your home for donation to a ministry who supports foster care families or consider helping to start one in your church.

7.     Help a foster family with errands, grocery runs, or household tasks during a hard week.

8.     Spend time at a BCH campus as a regular volunteer presence children can count on.

Ways to Give Your Resources

9.     Donate to BCH Family’s foster care ministry.

10.  Sponsor a child’s extracurricular activity — sports, music, art — things that build confidence and belonging.

11.  Provide a gift card to a foster family for groceries, fuel, or clothing.

12.  Stock and donate a placement bag filled with toiletries, a cozy blanket, and a stuffed animal for a child entering care.

13.  Give toward BCH’s trauma-informed training programs for foster parents.

14.  Help make it possible for a foster family to attend a BCH retreat or training event.

15.  Provide school supplies or backpacks for children entering a new school mid-year.

Ways to Give Through Your Church

16.  Ask your pastor to preach a sermon on caring for orphans, vulnerable children, and families in crisis this month.

17.  Host an informational meeting at your church about becoming a foster or respite parent.

18.  Form a care team at your church to support a local foster family for an entire year — including practical help as they navigate relationships with biological families.

19.  Invite a BCH Family representative to speak during a Sunday service or small group.

20.  Take a church-wide offering designated for BCH’s foster care ministry.

21.  Organize a baby and toddler supply drive for children entering care.

22.  Start a prayer team that intercedes for children in foster care, their foster families, their biological families, and the caseworkers serving them all.

Ways to Give Through Your Voice

23.  Share BCH Family’s content on social media throughout May.

24.  Tell someone in your life what National Foster Care Month means and why reunification is at the heart of it.

25.  Write a letter to your NC state representative encouraging strong support for foster care and family preservation.

26.  Leave an encouraging review or message for a foster family you know.

27.  Invite a friend who has been curious about foster care to an informational meeting.

28.  Write a letter of encouragement to a BCH foster family.

29.  Pray — specifically and daily — for BCH foster parents who are currently navigating relationships with the biological parents of children in their care, and for the state workers walking alongside them. Pray that the Gospel would be made visible in every one of those relationships.

Ways to Get Started With BCH

30.  Attend a BCH Foster Care information session to learn what the process looks like.

31.  Fill out BCH’s interest form below today and let us walk you through the very next step.

You don’t have to have everything figured out. You just have to say yes.

The Gospel Calls Us Here

James 1:27 reminds us that “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction.” This is not a peripheral calling — it is at the center of what it means to live out our faith. And the call extends further than we often realize: to the child in care, to the foster family opening their home, to the biological parents fighting to bring their child home, and to the caseworkers and judges walking the hard road with them. Every one of these relationships is an opportunity for the Gospel to be made visible.

BCH Family has been answering this call since 1885, and we believe the Church is God’s greatest resource for the children and families who need care most.

This May, we invite you to take one step — just one — toward saying yes. Whether that’s filling out the interest form below, volunteering at a BCH campus, or leading your church to form a foster care support team, your yes matters. Contact BCH Family today and let us help you find your place in this mission.