Growing Where Children Need Us Most

Thornwell Foster Care Program Expands Into Lowcountry

For 150 years, Thornwell has followed a simple calling: walk alongside children and families with compassion, stability, and hope.

Today, that commitment is leading us to South Carolina’s Lowcountry. Thornwell is proud to announce the expansion of our Foster Care program into Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester, and Georgetown counties, building upon our existing work serving children and families across the Midlands, Pee Dee, and Upstate regions. And we are kicking off that expansion with some fun events across the state – like attending baseball games to spread the word about the need for more foster families!

But this expansion isn’t about adding dots to a map. It’s about responding to the real and urgent needs of children in foster care across our state. Right now, two of those needs stand above the rest: keeping siblings together and finding families willing to welcome older youth and teens.

When children enter foster care, they often lose nearly everything familiar overnight.

Home.
Routine.
School.
Neighbors.
Sometimes, even siblings.

For many children, brothers and sisters are the one constant that remains. They are the ones who know how the other takes their cereal, who remember birthdays and bedtime stories, and who understand experiences that are difficult to explain to anyone else. Yet siblings are too often separated simply because there are not enough homes able to welcome them together.

At the same time, older youth and teenagers frequently wait the longest for placement and often face the fewest options for family-based care.

These are the children who need us most. And these are the children Thornwell is committed to serving.

Recently, Thornwell celebrated the placement of two teenagers into two Thornwell foster homes where they are already beginning to thrive.

We also witnessed the power of keeping siblings together when a Thornwell foster family welcomed a sibling group of four children into their home. The children arrived with little more than the clothes they were wearing. The Thornwell Foster Care team worked alongside the family to ensure they had what they needed to say yes to keeping brothers and sisters together during one of the most difficult moments of their lives.

Because foster care was never meant to be done alone. At Thornwell, our goal has never simply been to license more foster homes. Our goal is to equip, support, and sustain families so they can provide safe, stable, and nurturing environments for children healing from trauma and navigating uncertainty.

That means ongoing support for foster parents.

It means partnerships with churches, schools, community organizations, and the South Carolina Department of Social Services. It means building networks of care that strengthen families and create stability for children. And it means ensuring support exists not only in one community, but where it is needed most.

As South Carolina continues efforts to increase placement options for sibling groups and older youth, Thornwell is honored to partner alongside DSS and fellow child-serving organizations to help meet this moment.

Because every child deserves the opportunity to grow up in a family.

Because brothers and sisters belong together whenever possible.

Because teenagers deserve homes that see their potential, not their age.

And because children in South Carolina cannot wait for the perfect time.

They need families, communities, and support systems willing to say yes today. Whether that means becoming a foster parent, supporting a foster family, mentoring a young person, or simply learning more about the needs facing children and families in our communities, every person has a role to play. It takes a village to care for children.

And together, we can build one strong enough to hold them all.