YORK COUNTY, S.C. — A York County group is seeking solutions to the Charlotte area's foster care crisis by offering temporary homes to kids with nowhere else to go.
It's called removal day, the day kids are abruptly yanked from their homes and placed in foster care. Right now, those kids often spend hours at a time at a social services office while they wait for placement. A York County group is working to change that. They want to build a home that will serve as an in-between spot for kids who don't have a place to call home.
The group is working to raise money to build an Isaiah 117 House, a safe space for foster kids to land on the worst day of their lives. There are dozens in the works across the country and the one in York County would be the first in the Carolinas.
"It's really heartbreaking," Christi Halpin said. "We foster teenage boys and a lot of time they're sitting right next to the working trying to find them a place to go and they hear the rejection and they hear the no's, how nobody wants them."
Halpin and her husband have opened their home to 24 foster kids since 2020. The kids often spend the worst day of their life in a sterile government building.
"They are taken to the DSS offices where they await placement," Lindsay Lendyak said. "Think of the DMV, so when a kid is removed from their biological family and they're hungry and scared, they go and sit at this office and wait to be in a home. Our house will provide a home for them to come to."
Lendyak is working with Halpin to build an Isaiah 117 House in York County. The homes started in Tennessee in 2018 after a family there realized what kids were going through. There are 15 open across the U.S. with 49 more set to open. These two women, who met as foster moms, are hoping to build the first one in the Carolinas next year.
"We need Isaiah House yesterday," Halpin said. "I had a sibling set of three girls, the case worker said, 'They're hungry and scared,' and the girls didn't know why they were there and they didn't understand what was going on.
"I thought if we had an Isaiah House they would have come to my house with full bellies and cute unicorn pajamas. We need it yesterday. I didn't realize how badly we needed it until that very moment."
Halpin and Lendyak are using the model of the homes already in place and hope to build within a 10-mile radius of the Rock Hill DSS offices. They've just started fundraising to make their dream a reality.
"We didn't know what removal day was in foster care," Halpin said. "Once you know what it is and what the kids are going through, it's really hard to ignore their brokenness. They're confused, scared and overwhelmed. They're removed from everything they know and brought to an office. Our plan is to fill the gap with an Isaiah House."
They're hoping to have it open by the end of next year.
Contact Michelle Boudin at mboudin@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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