Our Mission

Safe Families hosts vulnerable children. We create extended-family–like supports for desperate families through a community of devoted volunteers who are motivated by faith to keep children safe and to reunite families.

Our Objectives: 

• Child Welfare Deflection: Safe Families provides a safe alternative to child welfare custody, thus significantly reducing the number of children entering the child welfare system.
• Child Abuse Prevention: Providing an overwhelmed and resource limited parent with a safe, temporary place for their child without threat of losing custody. By offering support, the goal is to avert potential abuse/neglect episodes.
• Family Support and Stabilization: Many parents struggle because of limited social support and unavailable extended family. Many Safe Families Volunteers become the extended family that a parent never had.

Our Model

• Families in need maintain full custody (They may be biological or adoptive parents or guardians.)
• Volunteer Host Families are extensively screened and supported
• Average length of stay is six weeks (ranging from two days to a year)
• Average age of child in SFFC care is 4.5 years old
• Close working relationships between Safe Families, the local church, and the referring organization
• Commitment to reunite the family as soon as possible

Monroe County Chapter History

Safe Families for Children of Monroe County is one of the newest Safe Families chapters. We are committed to serving families in crisis by partnering with the local church, where families open their homes and lives to vulnerable children.

Safe Families for Children (SFFC) first began in 2003 in Chicago, IL. In 2008, Indianapolis was the first city to launch a SFFC chapter outside of Chicago. Since then, the Indianapolis site has served hundreds of children and their families.

Our chapter started in 2014 after a representative from the Indianapolis office came to speak at a local Bloomington church. Members of the Bloomington community, with belief in the Safe Families’ vision that Jesus calls us to defend the cause of the weak and the fatherless, began praying to launch a Monroe County chapter. Since our humble beginnings, we have formed a committed board of directors, trained host families passionate about the Safe Families vision, and collected resources for families. In these areas, our goals are to empower the church, unify families, and deflect children from being unnecessarily put into the foster care system.

We are hoping to make Monroe County the South Central Indiana hub for Safe Families. In the next couple of years we are looking to expand into the surrounding counties.

Do You Need Help?

Are you feeling overwhelmed with a crisis? Are you struggling to meet the needs of your children? Safe Families may be able to help.

Call our emergency intake line at 317-519-3839 to request a host family or to ask questions about our program.