Families 4 Families celebrates 250 Active Placements

Meeting a huge milestone is cause for celebration — and motivation to tackle the work still to be done. 

As Families 4 Families’ leadership looked ahead to 2025, they set a goal to reach 250 active placements. With 186 children placed in 2024 and over 200 active placements, they knew the need for additional foster homes was ever-increasing. 

“We felt that [250 active placements] was a manageable goal where we could still maintain our quality, our hiring, our training and our care of our families,” CEO Wayne Naugle shared.

Just three months into the new year, the team has met their goal! 

But they also faced the sobering reminder of the state of Georgia’s foster care system.

“Since COVID, Georgia lost a huge chunk of foster families and the number of foster kids drastically decreased,” COO Brette Safadi explained. “Over the past couple of years, we’re seeing that the rate of kids is starting to steadily increase again, and we need more foster homes to be able to take care of these kids.”

To place 250 children, Families 4 Families needed even more willing foster families, and these families have stepped up in a big way. 

Intake Coordinator Aleah Evans communicates directly with the Georgia Division of Family & Children Services (DFCS) and with foster families to place new removals. She sees firsthand the critical need for more loving homes, and she’s been blessed by the families willing to open their homes and hearts to foster children.

“God has provided so many families that want to be a part of what Families 4 Families is doing,” Aleah shared. “We’ve seen so many new families that are opening their home for one, two, three, four kids at a time.

“We are so grateful for any family that wants to foster with us and take any amount of kids, but to see so many families step up and want to take more than one [placement] or older kids or say, ‘Those behavior issues do not scare me,’ is super encouraging to me.”

Once Aleah places children and hands over their care to families and caseworkers, she often doesn’t hear updates on the children or the reunification process, but at a recent all-staff meeting, she heard the tangible ways Families 4 Families’ foster families have made an incredible difference.

“We had a few case managers stand up and talk about how a child on their caseload got saved since being in a foster home,” she said. “There was another story that was shared about a biological mom coming to know Jesus and the foster mom baptizing her at the church.”

These stories are only a handful of the ones case managers hear across the state. As the Families 4 Families team celebrates these stories and their 2025 milestone, they are still focused on the next child and family they can serve.

“It’s a terrible thing that we even have to serve 250 kids. That’s a heartbreaking reality, but even bigger than that, there are over 10,000 kids in foster care across the state,” Brette explained. “We want to be a vessel for the Lord to move in the midst of a broken system.”

For the rest of 2025, the team has set a new goal.

“While we did already hit that 250 number, our goal is to get where we’re consistently staying around 250 and that will take some time,” Brette said. “We want to place as many kids into our homes as we possibly can because we want them to experience Jesus and come to know the Lord.”

“Our dream is to have homes that are just waiting on kids,” she added. “Unfortunately, most of the time it’s the opposite. It’s kids waiting on families, whether that be in a DFCS office, in a hotel room or whatever the case may be.”

To meet this goal, creating awareness is key.

“The biggest problem with foster care is not that people don’t care, they just don’t know,” Wayne explained. “Talking to your friends about foster care, telling your church about foster care, anything we can do to bring attention to what goes on with these kids is always the best thing.”

Brette emphasizes that everyone can play a part, no matter how large or small, in sharing hope with children in need. 

“It can be a donor who wants to give and sit back and watch the Lord move or can be someone who wants to come and mop a foster mom’s floor and everything in between,” she said.

When the body of Christ answers God’s call to serve as the Families 4 Families team and families have, Aleah believes He will move in big ways. 

“Because I’m choosing to be obedient to this call that God’s put on my life, there’s going to be kids in heaven because He worked through me,” she said.

“So long as we continue to be faithful to what He’s asked us to be,” Brette added, “He’s going to keep showing up.”