Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicole Bowman.
Hi Nicole, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My husband and I became licensed foster parents in 2016. Having stepped into foster care with the intention of not only supporting and caring for the children in our home but also the biological families they came from. Our first placement was a 13-month little boy named Greyson, 7 months later a 12-month-old little girl K arrived then 7 months after that, Greyson’s baby sister, Chy’Anna was born and she immediately came to live with us. We went from having no children in our home to having 3 under the age of 3 within a year and a half! Life for us was drastically different, good but different.
In October 2018 we adopted both Greyson and Chy’Anna. Six months later K went to live with relatives out of state. A month after that, Greyson & Chy’Anna’s baby brother was born and came to us directly from the NICU. This little guy was with us for 9 months before COVID hit and the county agency dropped the case and unfortunately placed him back into an unhealthy & unstable environment. For me, this was the hardest part of being a foster parent.
As foster parents you not only have the day-to-day care of the children in your home but there are court dates, meetings, appointments, visitations, complicated relationships with the biological families, grief that comes when a child leaves, the emotional strain on your marriage and on top of all of that often lack support or understanding from our communities or families.
In 2019 I was speaking with another foster mama who mentioned she wished there was a group that she could be part of where she could talk about all the things foster & adoptive moms had to go through and to be in community with other people who understood. And since there wasn’t a group in our area, I came up with a plan.
The first Tuesday of every month, my home would be open to any foster or adoptive mom who wanted to come and sit around my table for coffee and conversation. This is essentially how Foster Our Community began. We began to meet monthly. Typically there were 8-10 of us who sat together, cried together, laughed together, and shared resources.
After experiencing first hand the benefit of being in community with other foster families and knowing the challenges they faced, I decided to begin serving foster, kinship, and adoptive families in our community. We started as a ministry of the church that I attended. This gave us the ability to begin serving right away. I had a small area to store supplies and $1,000 in our church budget to buy items to make up bags for children who come into care. We collected gift cards for meals, brand-new pajamas and diapers to give out to families when they received a placement. In the fall of 2020, we began to announce our organization on social media and in the community and allowed any foster or adoptive families in our immediate area to sign up.
We began to host mostly support groups and family social events, allowing families to gather and connect and give a sense of normalcy to our children as they all now have many foster and adoptive friends!
A big part of what we do is offer mentorship and connection. Reminding our families that they are not alone on this journey. This is especially helpful to overwhelmed families or new families since many of them are unfamiliar with how this system works.
In the Fall of 2021, we branched out on our own and became an official 501(c)3 non-profit.
We have steadily continued to grow serving over 100 families in our area with many others reaching out for support. The Ohio Foster Care system has now entered into crisis with not enough foster families for the children needing care. We are seeing overwhelmed case workers and many children being returned and placed back into unsafe and unhealthy homes.
With this in our hearts, we believe that we can and should be doing more to bring awareness to this situation and to continue to support the families who have chosen to foster. Many families quit within the first year of being licensed mainly due to lack of support and the brokenness of the system.
Earlier this year we joined forces with The Christ Foundation and we are in the process of planning a foster care Initiative we call the Mobilize OH Initiative. We want to get into the communities and churches in Northeast Ohio and help set up ways for these communities to support and help vulnerable families, their children, and the families serving them.
We are in the process of becoming an affiliate with Promise 686 out of Atlanta GA to help us accomplish this. We also have a conference planned for March 3 & 4th https://
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I intentionally started small because my priority was taking care of the children in our home. I wanted to still be involved with foster care even if I wasn’t licensed. Being small was manageable with a handful of volunteers as ourr community was very supportive.
The biggest challenge for me is that since we are growing, I’m learning to delegate tasks that I’ve done myself to others. This is a challenge simply because these are things that I love to do. I love having a personal connection to each family that reaches out to support.
Even now a new struggle that exists is that we are growing and going in many directions. We require more money and manpower to do all that we need and desire to do… taking us from a small easy-to-manage ministry to a full-functioning non-profit is challenging although very rewarding.
Our family also homeschools and we are in the middle of still advocating for the safety of our children’s biological brother which has at times taken up a lot of time… so we are still living out the same stories as the families we are supporting.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
As the founder/director of Foster Our Community I have taken part in every aspect of the organization from bookkeeping, to event planning, to family resources, to leading support groups and soliciting support for our organization.
I am currently in the process of delegating tasks to other volunteers and hoping very shortly to hire staff to help with what we are doing. I will also be helping with the Mobilize OH foster care initiative advocating for support of foster families, biological families, and most importantly support for the precious children who are vulnerable or have come into care.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Not sure that I believe luck has as much to do with it as much as our faith and the fact that because we ourselves have been through hard things, it led us to do and gave us the capacity to also do hard things. When you see firsthand the brokenness of the system and you believe children deserve better, you can’t help but do something and there are many people who are ready and willing to help once they become aware and know what it is that they can do. So many people believe that you must become a foster parent to make an impact and that’s simply not true.
There is a huge need for foster families. But even those who are unable to foster at this time can do something. It’s as simple as taking a meal to a foster family, bringing coffee, sitting with an overwhelmed mom, doing laundry, helping with yard work, mentoring a child in care, babysitting & child care. There are many ways to support vulnerable families and also foster & kinship families.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.
fosterourcommunityoh.org - Instagram: @fosterourcommunity
- Facebook: @fosterourcommunity
Image Credits
Serendipity Photography
