Donations help local foster children

To a child placed in foster care, the world can be a cold, foreboding, lonely place. But thanks to donations from some local businesses, foster children in Carson City can find some comfort in a scary situation.

In December, the Carson City district office for the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) received donations from Carson-Tahoe Health and Kassity Management Group designed to help make the difficult transition into foster care a little bit easier for children.

“We greatly appreciate their generosity toward one of our most vulnerable populations, children affected by abuse and neglect,” said Lori Nichols, LSW, foster care recruiter for the Nevada DCFS district office in Carson City, which also services surrounding rural counties. “When kids are removed from their homes, they are scared, upset and in fear of who will care for them and who will meet their needs.”

Nichols said the donation from Kassity Management Group was a complete surprise.

“We were completely blown away,” said Nichols, who stressed that DCFS did not reach out to Kassity. Rather, Kassity heard about the needs of children in foster care from others in the community.

“We heard about the need through the owner of the Reno McDonald’s franchises,” said Nicole Abowd of the Kassity Management Group, which manages 12 McDonald’s franchise locations in several communities throughout Northern Nevada, including Carson City.

“We are just very happy to help DCFS,” Abowd added. “We love to service the community anyway that we can.”

For DCFS, Kassity donated 200 individual gift cards valued at $5 apiece to be given to children in foster care. Those gift cards, Nichols said, will provide emergency meals to hungry children removed from their homes and awaiting transition into foster care. The cards can also be used by families during supervised visits, she added.

The McDonald’s gift cards will also help ease some of the burden on social workers, who typically have to pay for children’s meals out of their own pockets, Nichols said. There is no fund to pay for food, either, she said.

“When we have vendors like Kassity Management Group give us things, it may seem like a really small thing,” Nichols said. “But it means so much more to these kids when their needs are met.”

Abowd said helping children in the community is not a new effort for Kassity Management Group, which provides donations to help fund local schools. But the donation to DCFS was something extra special for the company to do, she said.

“This one was a touching effort for us,” Abowd said. “We knew the kids were getting these (gift cards) individually.”

The fact that the donation came in the form of McDonald’s gift cards really gives the children something to smile about, Nichols said.

“It’s a symbol that everything is going to be all right,” she said.

McDonald’s is a familiar brand to children, Nichols added, and for children in foster care, things that are familiar are also comforting.

Abowd said her company receives a lot of requests for funding donations, and Kassity does as many as it can. But last month’s donation to DCFS was something the company did without being asked.

“You don’t have to wait for someone to come ask you for something,” Abowd said about giving to the community.

In addition to the gift cards from Kassity Management Group, DCFS also received emergency blankets and “my stuff” duffle bags from Carson-Tahoe Health.

Nichols said the blankets will be used by social workers to give to children displaced from their homes so that they have something warm and comforting to cling to.

“We thought if they had something soft to cuddle with, it would help them feel better,” said Laurie Burt, marketing specialist with Carson-Tahoe Health.

When not used, the blankets can be rolled or folded up into a tidy little tote that’s easy to carry.

The “my stuff” duffle bags are filled with age- and gender-appropriate items meant to give the children some comfort, too, and a sense that someone cares.

Nichols displayed one bag meant for an 18-month old boy, complete with a sippy cup, teddy bear, fleece footy pajamas, and hygiene products, among other items a baby boy might want or need to feel cared for.

“We thought it would be nice for the kids to have a bag of their own to put their things in,” Burt said.

Without the “my stuff” duffles, foster children are usually left with whatever means are available to pack their belongings in.

“We learned that these kids (in foster care) were using black plastic trash bags to store their belongings in,” said Carson-Tahoe Health Resource Management Director Kayleen Fogelman. “We appreciate so much what they (DCFS) do. We want to support anything we can do to help.”

Fogelman said employees of Carson-Tahoe Health donated the individual items for each bag to help make the gifts even more personal — and meaningful — for the children.

For the folks at Carson Tahoe Health, the donations were as much heart-felt as they were practical.

“It is such an honor for our employees to donate and provide security for these kids,” Fogelman said. “[DCFS] is one of those organizations that’s near and dear to our hearts.”