The Foster Closet provides shoes, clothing, toys, baby equipment, and other personal items to children, ages birth to five, who have been placed in foster care throughout the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It also provides gift cards to families who provide a foster home for older children to allow those families to pick out the items that they may need for the children from local retailers.
Children are often placed in foster care with no personal items and in many cases they come into care with only the clothes on their back. These needs are not always met immediately or in full by the State. The Foster Closet provides these kids with stylish new or like new clothes and personal items helping to begin the process of rebuilding their self-esteem and providing them with belongings they can call their own.
The Foster Closet also helps reduce the financial strain a new placement can place on a foster family by freeing up funds that would otherwise be used to fulfill those needs, this allows foster parents to focus on using their resources to help the children adapt to their new home in other ways. The Foster Closet is not a “One Stop” shop; and foster families may use it many times during a placement as need arises. Any clothing and personal items in use by a child during any change in placement remain with the child as their possession.