Every Child

With more than 400,000 children in the United States foster care system, it can be difficult to make that personal. But it’s personal for Heather Bert, executive director of Bethany Christian Services in Philadelphia.

Although adoptive families complete many hours of required education and training, Jennifer Winkelmann has noticed a trend among those adopting a child who has experienced trauma.

Deborah Gray, founder of Nurturing Attachments, is a clinical social worker specializing in the areas of attachment, grief, and trauma. She encourages parents to keep trying to establish a connection, even when children don’t immediately respond to you the way you hope they will.

Debra Fileta is convinced that a developed sense of identity is key to forming healthy dating and marriage relationships. “If you don’t know who you are,” she said, “you won’t know the kind of person who will fit into your life and story.”

Dan Bremnes began writing music at 16 with ambitions to become a rock star. But a mission trip with Youth With a Mission changed the course of his life, and Dan began to see how God could use music—and perhaps also Dan’s talent to write music—to be a light in the dark and to draw others to Himself.

Will Haney, with Church World Services, and Kristine Van Noord, with Bethany Christian Services, have been working to respond at the local, organizational, and national levels.

A career litigator with the Kansas City law firm Shook, Hardy and Bacon, Gene Balloun loves the work he does so much that he does some of it for free. Balloun has been providing pro bono legal representation for families adopting children through the Kansas foster care system for nearly 30 years.

Kendall Coffman is the executive director of Empty the Orphanage, a nonprofit organization in Bloomington, Illinois, that is committed not just to empty an orphanage but to fill families with children who need loving homes.

Desirée White was 17 when God put adoption on her heart. Then, five years ago—“on a normal Sunday morning in church”—she sensed God speaking to her again.

When Jessica Mullen began doing sidewalk counseling outside of abortion clinics, she was surprised by how little adoption was considered or even presented as an option for women facing an unplanned pregnancy.

Elizabeth Styffe is the Director of Orphan Care Initiative, a global ministry of Saddleback Church in California. She is working to mobilize ordinary believers to hear that adoption is God’s idea, orphans and vulnerable children matter to God, and there’s something every believer can do.

Jayne Schooler and her husband, David, are staff members with Back2Back Ministries, an international Christian nonprofit organization dedicated to being a voice for orphans. The Schoolers travel to various international ministry sites, training ministry workers and child welfare professionals on how to care for children who have experienced trauma and loss.

Margot Starbuck contributes to the adoption conversation with a variety of perspectives. She is an adoptee, an adoptive mother, an author, and an advocate for people with intellectual and physical disabilities.

Listen as Abby shares her remarkable story with Kris Faasse, Bethany Christian Services’ Senior Vice President for Clinical Operations. Abby Johnson is the founder and president of And Then There Were None and the author of Unplanned.