There are 40 to 70 Wood County children in foster care at any given time, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. In neighboring Smith County, that number exceeds 300.
Tucked away on about 100 wooded acres near Tyler, Children’s Village is providing a home to some of those kids by providing a family-centered home for children in foster care.
For 46 years, Children’s Village has quietly provided foster children with a home designed to feel more like a family than an institution. Now the Christian-based organization is expanding beyond its campus in an effort to address a shortage of foster homes in rural East Texas.
“If a child in Wood County is removed and placed in foster care, they’re leaving Wood County,” Executive Director Matt Rogers said.
Children who cannot stay with relatives may be placed in Tyler, but others may be sent anywhere in the state. Rogers said Wood, Van Zandt and Henderson counties have few available traditional foster beds.
The distance adds another layer of disruption to children who have already been removed from their homes.
“Now they’ve lost their school. Now they’ve lost their little basketball team, their boyfriend, their girlfriend, their church,” Rogers said.
Children’s Village hopes to reduce those losses by recruiting and licensing foster families throughout the rural counties surrounding Tyler. Even when children cannot remain in their home county, Rogers said keeping them within 50 miles is better than sending them several hours away.
The organization recently added a child-placing agency component, led by Program Administrator Matt Patton. The program, which received its license in January, will recruit, train and license couples to care for foster children in their own homes rather than on the Children’s Village campus.
Patton said the first couple recruited, Abraham and MiKayla Pineda of Smith County, were nearing the end of the verification process.
The expansion will allow Children’s Village to reach more of the 27 Northeast Texas counties that make up the state’s foster care Region 4 service area. It will also require the organization to build relationships in communities where its name remains unfamiliar.
Patton said his biggest challenge with the child-placing agency was going into small communities as someone not from those communities.
“You’re trying to just dig your way through to that person that really is going to spread the word,” Patton said.
That outreach represents a change for an organization that remained largely unknown for much of its history.
Rogers said he had worked in children’s social services for about 25 years before learning about Children’s Village shortly before he was hired.
“People drive up and down this road for 30 years past this white fence and didn’t know what we are,” he said.
According to Rogers, Children’s Village was founded by Charles “Chuck” Long and his wife, Marianne, who purchased the property in 1977. After moving a donated house onto the land, the organization welcomed its first foster placement in 1980.
Today, the campus includes two residential cottages of more than 5,000 square feet each. Married couples live in the homes and serve as full-time cottage parents, handling meals, school transportation, appointments and daily routines.
Rogers said the goal is for the cottage parents to step in and act as parents for the children.
“They do what they normally do,” Rogers said.
Although the cottages were once licensed for as many as 16 children each, Rogers said that number reflected the buildings’ square footage rather than a realistic family environment. The organization now aims to house about six children in each cottage.
Children’s Village is licensed to care for boys and girls from birth through age 17, allowing it to accept sibling groups that are often difficult to place in conventional foster homes because of their size or the children’s different ages and genders.
Keeping siblings together is one of Children’s Village’s highest priorities.
“We want sibling groups because a lot of times siblings get separated when they’re in foster care,” Rogers said. “We can take them and keep all of them together, whereas otherwise they might get split up.”
Rogers recalled a sibling group that arrived the night before school began. To keep the oldest child at Chapel Hill, staff drove her to and from school each day, sometimes making additional trips so she could participate in after-school extracurricular activities.
The siblings remained at Children’s Village for more than three years before returning home.
“Keeping them in their home school is a big deal,” Rogers said. “If that kept them in their school and in their community, that’s kind of the goal of doing all this.”
Ordinary family experiences are also central to the organization’s approach. Children attend church with their cottage parents, participate in school activities and accompany the families to holiday gatherings.
On campus, many celebrations take place inside the Little Red Schoolhouse. In 2013, retired teacher Jan McAlcorn offered to build the organization a one-room schoolhouse, modeled similar to those depicted in “Little House on the Prairie.” It opened in October 2014.
The schoolhouse was used for classes during the Covid-19 pandemic, but it usually serves as a library, playroom, training space and gathering place for birthdays and holidays.
“It’s really kind of the central civic center of the campus,” Rogers said.
Holidays can be especially difficult for children in foster care, so Children’s Village has developed traditions intended to create a sense of belonging. Its campus Thanksgiving has grown to include more than 30 people including staff members, relatives, friends and children.
The family atmosphere can also make departures emotionally difficult. Cottage parents may care for children for months or years before learning that a court has ordered them to return to a parent or relative.
Rogers said children can be excited to reunite with their families while also grieving the relationships they formed at Children’s Village.
“It is that mix of emotions for kids,” he said.
Because Children’s Village does not receive state or federal reimbursement for caring for children, its work is supported through private donations, grants, fundraisers, community partnerships and the Children’s Village Foundation. The foundation provides roughly 25 percent to 30 percent of the organization’s annual budget.
Rogers said community awareness is increasingly important as Children’s Village expands its services.
“If you can’t do anything else, share our story, share our posts,” he said. “That word of mouth and that getting things out there helps a lot.”
For children removed from homes in rural East Texas, spreading that message could mean finding a foster family nearby and remaining connected to a school, a sibling or a familiar community at a time when nearly everything else has changed.
For more information or to donate, visit childrensvillageotexas.org or call 903-531-0551.