Our Vision

Enable the Christian faith community to continue their spiritual service of caring for orphans. (James 1:27)

When orphans were moved from orphanages to foster families and renamed "foster children" the Christian faith community assumed all was well.

Well, all is NOT well. There is a NATIONAL crisis in foster care: Too many children and too few foster homes.

When the Christian faith community comes to understand that foster children ARE ORPHANS they will step up and DO their spiritual service and take better care of the orphans (now called foster children.)

Our Mission

LiftedUp will provide free consulting, mentoring, training, support and encouragement to individuals and organizations that will minister to or are members of the foster care community.

Our Goals

1. Reduce by one-half the number of foster children in each overcrowded foster home.
2. Double the retention period of foster families.
3. Have a local LiftedUp program serving every county in America.

Our Methods

1. Recruit, train and certify new foster families primarily from the Christian faith community.
2. Recruit, train and supervise volunteers who provide tangible support to ALL foster families.

Our Commitment to Public Agencies Responsible for Foster Care

LiftedUp works with Public Agencies to improve the quality of foster care in our community by recruiting and training local volunteers to assume those duties normally done ny professional staff, which are appropriate for volunteers and will allow professional staff to do their jobs more effectively with the families they serve. LiftedUp volunteers will relieve the professional staff of some of the simple and mundane tasks which are time consuming and can be accomplished by volunteers.

By any accounting the professional staff workload is excessive. It is unreasonable to believe there will ever be enough money to hire enough professional staff to have reasonable workloads. Using volunteers to do appropriate, repetitive or time consuming tasks gives professional staff more time to work with the people they serve.

Our Commitment to Foster Parents

Individuals and families who provide the daily 24/7 care for the children in the foster care system have an assigned social worker who is often overworked and responsible for too many children.

There may be a foster parent association or loose network of fellow foster care providers.

A fortunate few foster parents have sympathetic friends and relatives willing to share the burden.

Unfortunately, many foster parents feel isolated, misjudged and misunderstood.

Foster parents are easy targets for criticism ("They only do it for the money.") and ridicule ("How can you do that to your own family?")

But if foster parents don't care for orphans (abused, abandoned and neglected children), who will?

Generally, foster parents are loving, giving and caring people who make a personal sacrifice to do a thankless, endless and often frustrating job; a job most people would never even consider doing.

Foster parents deserve their community's support, encouragement and appreciation.

LiftedUp provides foster parents with tangible support in the form of FREE respite care at least once a month.

Our Commitment to the Local Church and LiftedUp Volunteers

LiftedUp is a home mission outreach program for the local church. LiftedUp will adopt whatever methodologies are consistent with the local church to realize our vision, facilitate our mission and reach our goals.

Realizing the local church may already be deeply involved in various ministries LiftedUp will target volunteers not already involved in other church responsibilities. LiftedUp will have an appeal to people who cannot accept the responsibility of say a weekly Sunday school class assignment but who can take a child into their family for just 1 day a month.

By practical and meaningful support for foster parents LiftedUp volunteers are practicing pure religion (James 1:27.) It is lifestyle evangelism through meaningful, sacrificial service to others for just 1 day a month.

Our Commitment to Preparation and Follow-through

LiftedUp volunteers understand the importance of their role in serving professional staff or foster families. Volunteers invest themselves in specialized training and make a commitment to volunteer on a regular basis for at least 1 year.

In order to be effective volunteers must be properly trained and supervised. LiftedUp provides both the training and supervision.

However, caring for foster child just 1 day a month is much easier. LiftedUp will prepare volunteers by providing proper training, clear guidelines, support and encouragement. Well prepared volunteers can spend a rewarding day with a foster child.

While being a LiftedUp volunteer is not particularly difficult it may be demanding; it may require great patience and flexibility and determination. Partnering 1 day a month with a foster family requires the volunteer to make a serious and thoughtful commitment.

LiftedUp volunteers become an important, necessary, even essential part of the foster family.

Our Organizational Model

LiftedUp is a foundation of the National Heritage foundation certified to receive charitable contributions. (See: www.nhf.org )

The Local LiftedUp Program is designed to be a self-contained volunteer organization within a church or multiple churches partnering together.

LiftedUp provides structure, guidelines and standards for the Local LiftedUp Program.

Program Directors are volunteers from the local church who provide the leadership for the Local LiftedUp Program.

LiftedUp provides materials, guidelines, policies and standards for the Local LiftedUp Program to use and follow.

LiftedUp conducts an annual compliance audit of each Local LiftedUp Program.