SAN ANTONIO – Inflation is hitting nonprofit organizations that give children a safe place to sleep. Foster care homes have had to make adjustments to care for those children in need.
“To be here and to see that our kids are needing help and don’t get the help they need, it really hurts,” said Yomi Ajasin, chief operating officer of TruLight127 Ministries in Seguin.
Ajasin knows firsthand the impact foster care homes can have on a child’s life, but like many households, TruLight is struggling financially.
“Inflation has been really brutal here. We’ve been hit even harder as a nonprofit organization,” said Ajasin.
TruLight depends on funds from the community and state to operate. Ajasin said on average, the nonprofit organization receives $90 a day per child from the state, but that money also goes to the basics, the cost of operations, staffing, paying utilities, feeding and sheltering kids.
“It takes about $3,000 a month to be able to help care for our kids individually. If you, if you multiply that by 25 kids, that’s a whole lot of money,” said Ajasin.
TruLight is licensed for a 35-bed capacity, but the organization has been forced to scale back to 25 beds due to the rising cost to care for these children.
“If things don’t improve a little bit in the near future, we may have to go down to about 20 beds. It will be really hard to have to say no to kids,” said Ajasin.
The State of Texas has identified foster care funding as an issue. According to a Sept. 1 report on foster care capacity improvement, the 87th legislature directed $70 million in general revenue to foster care supplemental payments and rate increases.
TruLight hopes to get that much-needed funding soon, along with some help from the community.
“We’ve not really seen an increase in state funding to be able to help us,” said Ajasin. “We need about $150,000 to be able to get us back running again. We would open our beds. That’s the biggest thing we need help with and it must come from our community.”
