1,500 children in the Tri-County area lack a permanent place to call home.
More foster families could be one part of the solution. But recruiting them requires funding.
More than 20,000 kids across Illinois lack permanent, stable housing. Peoria County ranks third-highest among counties in the state, with more than 850 youth in residential facilities, hospitals, or without housing at all.
Ann Lading-Ferguson is CEO of FamilyCore, a Peoria-based organization working with these children and their families. She says the pool of foster parents is declining.
"We're always looking for foster parents who are willing to take a child in and let us borrow their home, as we call it," she said.
Lading-Ferguson says it takes a special person to become a foster parent.
"It's loving someone else's child in a way that is indescribable," she said. "You're spending time with that child, you're nurturing them, you're caring for them. You're also dealing with whatever they bring with them."
FamilyCore is hosting a Kentucky Derby Soiree on May 7 at the Maxam Event Center in downtown Peoria. Proceeds will be used in part to train people to become foster parents, and coordinate the placement of foster children, among FamilyCore's other initiatives and programs.
Click here to find out more about the event.
