We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katie Welch` a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Katie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

I went to school for education and spent time in Africa during college teaching art. My experience there ignited a passion for teaching kids from tough situations. For 14 years, I worked in Title 1 schools, teaching and taking on leadership roles. During this time, my husband and I got married, had two biological children, endured three miscarriages, and eventually decided to become foster parents.

While fostering, we noticed a significant gap in support for foster parents. We felt overwhelmed and wondered how people managed to do this long-term. Our research revealed that 50% of foster parents quit within the first year, causing foster youth to move through multiple homes. This broke my heart, as a child’s sense of self is deeply influenced by their family life and home environment. How could they endure so many different homes, different schools, switching life completely every few months?

I began to dream of creating a support system for foster families to make foster care more sustainable. What if foster parents were all in therapy working through their own trauma so they could be better parents? What if they had ongoing help with household chores? Would they have more brainspace, more time for quality hanging out with their kids? I couldn’t stop thinking about how this support could be a game changer. But I questioned how I could do this—I had six kids, a 14-year career, money spent on education degrees and of course, the amazing Missouri Teachers Retirement.
However, I just couldn’t shake the idea, and one sunny day it was almost like the clouds parted and it was clear that I needed to quit my job and risk it all for this dream.

An opportunity arose to support another organization, giving me the chance to develop ideas and dreams for Foster Light. Foster Light is still a baby 3 years old. It has been the most challenging and rewarding season of my life. Transitioning from education to non-profit work has been a steep learning curve, but we’ve learned so much.

In the past three years, Foster Light has raised over $150,000 for foster families and is currently fully supporting six families. We have big dreams of supporting hundreds, even thousands, more families. I truly believe our wraparound care model could transform foster care in our country. When people are fully supported, they provide stable homes for longer, leading to better outcomes for children. We believe all kids deserve a healthy, thriving life. Foster Care in itself is a risk, but this risk has felt weightier still. It’s been incredibly challenging but truly a God-dream that I can’t believe is playing out in real life.

Katie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a 38 year old wife & mom of 6 that loves perusing estate sales and always have at least 4 drinks on my desk. My husband is cooler than I’ll ever be, he works in tech and loves cycling. We live in a mid 70’s lakehouse and love to spend all of the sunny days swimming. We have been doing foster care for 7 years now and currently have 6 kiddos, 2 bio and 4 foster. Our kids are our life and we love watching them compete and perform and do all the things.

I went to a foster care village when I was little with my grandma Blanche. She was supporting a child there and we just stopped by to drop off a gift. I wanted a tour. It was a little neighborhood with all foster families living in them and nannies and support and a park. It was just this dreamy little community where people could raise foster kids surrounded by support. There are many places like this around the country, the closest to KC being Drumm Farm. It’s such an amazing concept, but how could we keep the costs down while still bearing loads for foster families?

Foster Light requires all foster parents to go to therapy, we cover the cost. We feel this is so helpful for foster parents to work through their own trauma, learn coping skills, talk through foster care issues and develop confidence as a parent. We also work with families to create custom chore charts, morning routines and evening routines to post in their homes. This provide foster kids with a sense of stability and predictability, which is essential for their emotional security and overall well-being. In addition to therapy and structure, we give parents the opportunity to piece together a custom care plan for their family. If they need financial support, we can provide grocery gift cards or pay for extracurriculars. If they need physical support, we can provide transportation for kids or hire our trauma-informed babysitters to step in. If they need daily tasks removed from their to do list, we provide laundry, organization, lawn care & cleaning services. We show up to take things off their mind or their plate so they can continue saying “yes” to foster care for as long as their kids need them. When kids grow up in consistent homes, stats show they have more successful outcomes. We believe foster youth deserve a chance at a healthy, successful life too!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I feel like my whole life is one pivot after the next. I’m sure all moms feel that way and all foster parents too I guess. I’m going to make dinner, actually someone is going to have a trauma meltdown for 3 hours and we’re having pizza, I guess. I’m dropping the kids off and running to a meeting, just kidding my van died and I need a new car. I was taking down christmas decor one Tuesday in January when I found out I was getting a newborn in 2 days…PIVOT, you’re not sleeping for the next 6 months and you have 7 kids now. There are pivots all day everyday and sometimes I’m not patient and it makes me grumpy or fall into fear but most days I try to laugh about how crazy life is and beg God for peace. It goes better some days than others.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

If I’m honest, this is the most scary part for me. I don’t have a background in development and it’s a huge job. Early on, one of my board members actually gave us $50k to start up. It’s so humbling when I see people believe in Foster Light. I really do believe we can make systematic change in foster care, changing the outcomes for foster youth in the long run, and to see people grab the vision too is super cool. We have monthly donors, we have fundraising events at people’s houses, we had a super fun dinner at Chingu in Westport, we had a fancy Christmas dinner. We try to keep it fun but also paint a clear picture of the life changing work that’s happening through Foster Light.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fosterlight.co
• Instagram: Foster Light: @fosterlight.co personal: @helloitskatiewelch
• Facebook: Katie Welch
• Linkedin: KatieAnnWelch

Image Credits

image credits: Carlos Lima, The Sidebottoms, Janie Jones, Carmen Garlich, Swain Studios