Tulsa Boys’ Home asking community to step up, foster kids in need

SAND SPRINGS, Okla. — The Tulsa Boys’ Home in Sand Springs is calling on the community to step up and give homes to kids in need.

They’re working to gather their own group of foster parents and said the need is steadily increasing.

A drop in the number of people interested has caused this. They said Covid halted a lot of volunteers and public visitors. Now, they want to build a group of foster parents they can rely on.

Carson Little, 16, has lived with Katie, Mitch and 2-year-old Knox for around a year. They’re currently in the process of adopting Carson and he said it’s changed everything.

“It just changed my life for the better,” Carson said. “[I] finally get to wake up with a family, just feel loved and safe.”

The boys’ home is trying to get more people interested in fostering, Katie said. For their family, it was a no brainer.

Tulsa Boys Home asking community to step up, foster kids in need

“I kind of just knew that he was supposed to be in our lives,” Katie said. “I think, more of a blessing, that we get to be a part of his story and we get to help him move forward in life and what he’s going to do and show him that there is a future past trauma.”

The boys’ home said, last year across Oklahoma, there were close to 9,000 children living outside their homes. They take care of 64 teenagers ages 13 to 18.

Tulsa Boys’ Home Executive Director Gregg Conway said they struggle to find foster parents, specifically, for teenagers.

“Most of them are not particularly interested in fostering or adopting a teenage boy until they meet some of our guys,” Conway said. “What will become of a child in the foster care system if they age out at age 18 and they have no one, they have no family. That’s what we’re talking about, the orphans of the 21st century.”

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The boys are given therapy and help with school work at the home before they’re placed with foster and adoptive parents.

“To love and to help develop a child, a young person, that has lost all hope and has nobody else you know that they can rely on, that they can depend on, that will love them, it just doesn’t get any better than that I don’t think,” Conway said.

Potential parents will go through background checks and a training program.

Tulsa Boys’ Home asks for those interested, call them at 918-245-0231 or visit their website here.