Charity Spotlight: SAFY

via Facebook

By Kerrigan Peoples

Every child needs and wants to be loved and nurtured. SAFY makes sure it happens for as many kids as possible.

SAFY is a national foster care agency that provides adoption care, mental health services, independent living services, and works to help place children into foster homes and help them find permanency. SAFY’s biggest rehabilitation foster care center is located in Ohio, the largest state served in the agency. Columbus alone has 380 foster parents and 530 children served on a daily basis.

via Facebook

“We recruit families who are willing to open their hearts to work with a child they’ve never met or seen,” says Tonya Brooks-Thomas, Ohio Executive Director of SAFY. “We look at who is going to take it seriously and be involved in the child’s life.”

SAFY works to put kids of all backgrounds into forever homes, including kids from sibling groups, kids who are members of the LGBTQ+ community, and kids who have been abused. SAFY was created to help these children, who often get lost in the system.

“We appreciate anybody from any path of life,” says Brooks-Thomas. “Some children sleep in chairs at night at the local foster care agency. They are more than what’s on a piece of paper.”

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Recently reaching 35 years, SAFY continues to fill the gap and help children find safe, warm homes.

For more information or to become a foster parent, visit safy.org.