New home to open in Sikeston dedicated to housing foster children

SIKESTON, Mo. (KBSI) – The city of Sikeston will add a home dedicated to housing foster children with no place to go.

Mari Ann Moyers, director of Spread Hope Now, recently had a family member that started fostering children. They discovered that sometimes kids sleep in the office of their caseworker when they were moved because there is no place for them to go until the caseworker can locate a home.

Several weeks, Spread Hope Now purchased a home that will be called Journey House. It is for foster children with no place to go. They will have a bed and a warm place to sleep while their caseworker finds them a home.

Moyers brought the idea up at a Spread Hope Now board meeting.

She says other states have Isaiah 117 House, where they build a house and build a non-profit around providing the home for the caseworker and children until placement is found. After contacting them, she found it was very long process and could take years.

“We already have a non-profit in Spread Hope Now, so we started praying about renting something so we could do this sooner rather than later,” Moyers said.

The Spread Hope Now board decided to move forward and look for a place to rent but within 10 days they received a call that someone was making a very large donation that enabled the group to buy a small house.

The group came across a family who had just lost their mother and were selling her home. Spread Hope Now closed on the house last week.

“They sold us the house and we received donations to pay for the entire thing,” Moyers said. “We took cash to closing, not because Spread Hope Now has that money, but because somebody on the outside saw in in their heart to do that.”

Volunteers are working to do small remodeling. Moyers says they hope to have the house up and running in 90 days or less. They are working with the state and the state will have to give final approval before it is operational.

“(The state) is excited about it,” Moyers said. “We’re working closely with Children’s Division and the support this provides them is going to be a gamechanger.”

The home is named Journey House after one of the children in foster care.

“We felt like that was a really fit name,” Moyers said. “We are not a destination, but we want to be part of the journey and we want to be a really good part of their journey.”

The children must be with the caseworker at all times until a home is found. At Journey House, caseworkers will be able to make calls while volunteers take care of the kids.

“Volunteers will be required to have a thorough background check and they will come in and cook, and give kids baths, read to them, rock them, tuck them in and all those things so that case workers can go into the office that’s in the house and make calls without the child hearing them,” Moyers said. “It is traumatic to call five or six people in the family and the children hear them say ‘no, we don’t want them. We can’t take them.’”

There will also be a separate entrance for the police to enter and exit so the children don’t see them.

“The main goal is to ease trauma for kids going into care and start them with new clothes and love and security and the second goal is to make it easier for caseworkers,” Moyers said. “We know their job is hard. They are feeding kids out of their own pockets in an office. It’s just an impossible situation while working.”

Volunteers are needed and once Journey House is open. There will be a place on the Spread Hope Now website for prospective volunteers to sign up for a background check request.

Journey House will be open as needed. Volunteers will be on call.

Spread Hope Now is also faith funded. Monetary donations will be accepted to make sure every child has new clothes with tags.

Donations can also be made online at spreadhopenow.org or by mail at P.O. Box 1991, Sikeston, MO 63801.

“Sikeston is so unique the way we grow to fill in the gaps for other people and help them get a good start,” Moyers said. “It’s what happens at Spread Hope Now, whether it’s through Hope 180, the Warming Center or Journey House, it just starts people off with hope.”

She says it looks like grandma’s house and will smell good; it will be warm, and it will be welcoming.

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New home to open in Sikeston dedicated to housing foster children