In high school, one of our friends had a very small car. I don’t remember the make and model, but it was, up to that point, the smallest car I’d ever seen.
One night, when the high school parking lot was full (likely because of a football or basketball game), a few of us decided to see if we could pick up his car and move it.
We found out we could. So we simply turned it 90 degrees in its parking spot, making it impossible for our friend to get out until one of the cars on either side left.
Why did we do it? Well, for one, it was funny. But put simply, we did it because we felt like we could. We never contemplated doing such a thing to our friend with a truck or our friend with a ’70s-era Impala (which was perhaps longer than a truck). It never would have crossed our minds to take such an action because it would have obviously felt impossible.
When foster care feels like an impossible problem
For decades, foster care advocates have made it a priority to communicate that foster care is important and that the number of children in care is at a crisis level.
When trying to communicate that something is important and a crisis, the natural human instinct is to share the biggest numbers we can find. The bigger the numbers, the bigger the crisis, right?
So we became accustomed to using our 10 minutes in front of a congregation or at a booth in an exhibit hall to lead with the fact that there are approximately 330,000 children in US foster care (for many years, it was well over 400,000). Or every National Foster Care Month, we reached for these big numbers to try to make a splash on social media.
Surely, communicating these kinds of numbers would help our audience to see how big and important this crisis is … right?
Making foster care feel solvable
But the thing is, people are most interested in solving solvable problems. And when we shift our attention from trying to help people see how big a problem we have to helping move people toward action, we realize we need a drastically different approach.
Instead of sharing the biggest numbers we can find, we need to share the smallest numbers we can find.
Roughly 330,000 children in foster care in the US? Paralyzing.
132 children in foster care in your county? Motivating.
Small numbers are the ones people feel they can do something about. Rather than pointing out large national and state foster care numbers, we can point out much smaller county foster care numbers.
Over the years, More Than Enough, CAFO’s US foster care initiative, has worked to help mobilize groups of churches, organizations and agencies toward collaboration with a vision that providing more than enough for children and families is actually possible in their county.
We’ve seen that one of the most effective tools for convincing people that more than enough is possible is not a big ad campaign. It’s not a book or a podcast or a blog post like this one. It’s simply giving people the opportunity to know what the small numbers are where they live.
When people see the number of children in foster care in their county, or the number of children waiting for adoption, we don’t need to say anything. They look at that number and think, “Our community is big enough to solve that problem.”
Introducing the More Than Enough dashboard
Over the past several years, one of our team’s goals has been to create a tool to gather and share those small county numbers — and equip local churches, organizations and advocates to share them in their communities.
For a time, we had a data exchange that could do this to a certain extent. I am excited to share that a new tool, the More Than Enough dashboard, is now live. It displays county-level data, where available, to help drive community engagement and ownership. It includes current and historical data from as many counties or county equivalents as we’ve been able to gather.
While some data points are unavailable for certain counties, we believe this is one of the most complete sets of publicly available county-level foster care data.
With this tool, you can find the smaller numbers that can shift foster care from a paralyzing national crisis to a local challenge you can solve.
Because just like a pack of high school boys probably wouldn’t dream of picking up a truck, people in your community can’t dream of caring for approximately 330,000 children.
But when you go local, make the problem solvable and lift together? Incredible things happen.
We believe that more than enough is possible in your county, and by sharing this data with your community, you can help them believe it, too.
Jason Weber is National Director of More Than Enough, an initiative of CAFO. More Than Enough is a community of churches, organizations and advocates working toward a shared vision of more than enough for children and families before, during and beyond foster care in every US county. The More Than Enough support team strengthens the community with practical tools and resources, aiming to see more than enough well-supported families for every child in foster care — including foster, kinship, adoptive and biological families.
Find your county’s data in the dashboard
Explore the More Than Enough Dashboard to find your county’s data. If your county’s data is not on the dashboard but you have a way to access it, let us know!
More Than Enough, CAFO’s US foster care initiative, is a community of churches, organizations and advocates working toward a shared vision of more than enough for children and families before, during and beyond foster care in every US county. The More Than Enough support team strengthens the community with practical tools and resources, aiming to see more than enough well-supported families for every child in foster care — including foster, kinship, adoptive and biological families.
