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Program For Children Already In Place In County, Lexington
“Just knowing that people are here to help them,” said Emma Dishman of the mission of Careportal, a program designed to connect atrisk families with churches in their community.
Dishman presented the program to the Buena Vista School board at its March meeting, and the Board voted to approve it last week.
Careportal is a national non-profit which launched an app in 2015 that seeks to bring aid to families whose children are at risk of being placed into foster care, as well as to children already in foster or kinship care.
“The main priority is for agencies to keep families together. Some children may have to be removed for safety reasons. However, most are able to be held together through the community support and assistance that you can offer,” Dishman said.
“Careportal can come alongside the families who need assistance to prevent their own children from entering foster care,” she said. “We can also assist with families that currently have a foster care or kinship care placement.”
Introduced to Rockbridge County in 2021, Careportal is now used by both Rockbridge County and Lexington public schools.
“The tagline of Careportal is ‘every church doing a little,’ so, the mission is to connect churches that are already established in our community to people that may need help in our community,” she said. .
“What it is on the tangible level is simply an online IT platform that connects children and families in need with churches that can help.”
Dishman explained that requests for aid will go through a professional connected with the family in need, whether from the Department of Social Services or the school system.
Once entered, the request will be sent to participating churches who will be able to volunteer to either purchase supplies or provide monetary support directly to the family.
“So the health care worker, guidance counselor, whoever it is, is going to enter in a description of the need,” said Dishman. Once the church members see this request, they can partner together to meet all these needs.
“Then they would reach out to the family that put this in, getting that information from the social worker and then they would actually show up to the house with the items and have them installed.”
Dishman said that one of the goals of the organization is not only to provide for a family’s immediate need, but to encourage more longterm connections within the community.
“A lot of the people that need these items are not only in financial poverty but also in relational poverty, so they don’t have a community they can get to,” she said. “So the hope is when the church members come to their house, just to begin some relationships.”
Superintendent Dr. Tony Francis said that Careportal will be implemented in the Buena Vista schools system over the summer, to be ready when students return in the fall.
