May is National Foster Care Awareness Month. In Tennessee, approximately 8,000 children are in foster care at any given time. With fewer than 4,000 foster families, the need is ever-present; even during COVID-19. National statistics show that a new child is placed into care every two minutes.
Tae’s freshman year in college didn’t go as planned. He was in the middle of the second semester at Johnson & Wales University, studying culinary science, when the COVID-19 crisis began.
Taylor and Tony Barnes are two Youth Villages employees from Cookeville, Tennessee, who married in August. Taylor is a family intervention specialist, and Tony is a LifeSet specialist. They looked forward to starting their lives together, until they lost everything as devastating tornadoes ripped through Middle Tennessee.
When a state of emergency was declared due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people, understandably, freaked out.
As difficult as the COVID-19 outbreak has been, many young people with unstable home lives have had an even harder time adjusting to the emergency.
“I had a colleague on vacation, and I needed to cover her shift.”
This is where it all started for Amber Harris, a supervisor for Youth Villages in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. One of her families had a potential case of COVID-19, and the mother needed help because she could no longer work.