Preparing the Ground: How Welborn Helped Position Southwest Indiana to Care for Vulnerable Children
For years, Welborn has invested in nonprofit organizations serving children and families impacted by foster care. Through grants, capacity-building, and supportive partnerships, Welborn has consistently walked alongside those working closest to the need.
But over time, a deeper question began to emerge:
Are we helping catalyze lasting change for vulnerable children and families?
Rather than assuming the answer, Welborn chose to listen.
In 2024, the Foundation commissioned and published the Foster Care in Southwest Indiana White Paper – a comprehensive study of the foster care landscape across the region.
The research brought together agencies, community leaders, and stakeholders to better understand both the challenges facing children and families and the opportunities available to address them. What emerged was a clearer picture of a complex system and an important realization: while many organizations were doing meaningful work, one of the region’s greatest untapped assets was the local church.
The findings pointed toward a promising path forward. Churches could play a unique role in recruiting foster families, providing practical support, surrounding caregivers with community, and encouraging child welfare workers. While several local churches were already engaged with nonprofits serving the sector, many congregations simply did not know where to begin. The desire to help existed; a clear pathway often did not.
That insight prompted a strategic shift.
Rather than focusing solely on expanding direct-service programs, Welborn began exploring ways to help more churches discover meaningful and sustainable avenues for engagement. In essence, the goal was to bring more people, relationships, and resources into the work altogether.
The value exchange was clear. Nonprofits could benefit from increased volunteers, support, and community involvement, while churches could more fully live out their biblical calling to love their neighbors and care for vulnerable children and families. Together, both could participate more deeply in God’s restorative mission.
In response, Welborn invested in a strategic partnership with Hands of Hope, a statewide leader in foster care engagement. With Welborn’s support, Hands of Hope hired and deployed a Church Engagement Specialist in southern Indiana whose role is to equip and mobilize local churches for foster care involvement throughout the region.
In addition to bringing church-centered resources such as CarePortal and Care Communities to Southwest Indiana, Hands of Hope advocates for church involvement across the foster care sector regardless of which nonprofit, agency, or program a church chooses to support.
With Hands of Hope engaging churches directly, Welborn’s role evolved. The Foundation became more focused on building connections, simplifying entry points for churches, and helping community partners identify where collaboration could create the greatest impact.
Still, the Foundation wanted to learn more about how churches could engage most effectively.
In 2025, Welborn commissioned and published a second study focused specifically on church engagement in foster care. Entitled Church Centered Engagement in Foster Care, the research examined engagement models from around the country while also listening directly to local pastors, nonprofit leaders, and Department of Child Services staff.
The findings were remarkably consistent. Churches wanted to help, but engagement needed to be simpler, clearer, and better connected. The report emphasized collaboration, coordination, and equipping churches to discover the role they could uniquely play in supporting vulnerable children and families.
Following the release of the study, Welborn stepped further into the role of convener, bringing together local practitioners with extensive foster care experience. The goal was straightforward: identify an approach that would make foster care engagement easier for churches to understand and pursue.
A significant part of that work involved developing common language around the various ways churches could engage. Through a series of conversations, four broad categories emerged:
- Providing tangible items and resources for families
- Building community through wrap-around support
- Encouraging and supporting child welfare workers
- Advocating for and recruiting foster and adoptive parents
These categories provide simple and accessible entry points while remaining aligned with the many programs, organizations, and processes that already exist throughout the foster care sector. The next step is encouraging partners and agencies across the region to use and reinforce this shared framework.
As this work was taking shape locally, an important statewide opportunity emerged.
In 2025, Indiana Governor Mike Braun called on communities across the state to help address foster care and addiction challenges. Through the statewide Called to Care initiative, churches, community organizations, and government leaders were invited into a new partnership focused on strengthening families and caring for vulnerable children.
The initiative included plans to visit all 92 Indiana counties, inviting churches to engage with the Department of Child Services and explore meaningful ways to support foster care efforts in their communities.
The state also selected Hands of Hope as its nonprofit implementation partner. Their network of Church Engagement Specialists across Indiana would play a key role in helping churches become engaged and remain engaged over time.
For Southwest Indiana, the timing was significant.
Years of research, relationship-building, strategic investment, and collaborative planning had already laid important groundwork. When state leaders sought to engage local communities, Welborn was uniquely positioned to help convene the conversation and support a coordinated regional response.
In May 2026, state officials from the Department of Child Services joined church leaders, nonprofit partners, local DCS staff, and community stakeholders from Vanderburgh, Warrick, Posey, and Gibson counties in Welborn’s Community Room to explore how the region could work together to address the needs and opportunities before them.
The gathering was not the culmination of the work. It was another step forward.
Follow-up conversations are now being facilitated across the region by Hands of Hope to continue building momentum and helping churches identify practical ways to engage.
The need remains significant. More foster families are needed. More support systems can be built. More churches can discover ways to serve.
But after years of researching, listening, learning, investing, and convening, Southwest Indiana is better positioned than ever to respond.
And that may be the most meaningful outcome of all—not a finished story, but growing momentum toward a future where every child and family has the support they need to flourish.