Rachel Ewald brings hope to foster kids

“You never write about the good things,” she says about the coverage of the state’s child welfare system. “You always focus on the bad.”

Well, yeah.

She’s got a point, especially lately, as there have been many stories about the state’s role in failing to prevent the recent deaths of two children, despite warnings that they were at risk.

I try to tell her The Atlanta Journal-Constitution feels a responsibility to serve as a watchdog over government, and that these stories serve a public good. But she’s not done with me yet.

The positive stories, she tells me — foster parents who love their kids, caseworkers who fix troubled families, people who volunteer to help — are also important. They let people know the system can work, and that these foster children can move on to a better future.

"They give people hope," she says. "Do your homework. You're only telling half the story."

Ewald is leading me on a tour of her nonprofit in Roswell, showing me the half she thinks I’ve been missing. The Foster Care Support Foundation provides clothing, toys and school supplies to 3,000 foster kids a year in Georgia. She started in her garage in Roswell in 1996 and opened this 20,000-square-foot warehouse in 2000. She currently accepts no government funding, and she’s coordinating a $550,000 budget, 15 employees and a few thousand volunteers.

And for the past two decades she’s been a foster parent for 50 kids. That’s right, five-zero. She adopted one girl, who is now 10. And that’s along with raising four kids of her own.

You got to listen to a woman like this.

It’s late in the afternoon, so the cavernous warehouse is quiet, but she fills it with stories of foster kids who’ve come in nervous and leave with a season’s worth of clothes, arms full of toys and a little more hope they’re going to be OK.

Many kids come in with just the clothes on their back, having undergone what she calls an “emergency pull.” Oftentimes, that means the state Division of Family and Children Services believes the child has been abused and is living in imminent danger. They don’t get to pack; they just leave.

She recalled a 6-year-old boy who came in with his foster parents a few weeks ago. He was so shy, staying right by the side of his foster mother. Many kids can’t believe they can pick out all their own clothes and shoes for free. For a child who’s just been wrenched away from their home into foster care, it’s an important moment. It shows them they have some control over their lives.

As the boy tried on some clothes, Ewald sidled up to him.

“You have a bike?”

He didn’t. She went in the back and rolled out a shiny silver one.

“Do you want to see if this one fits?”

The boy nodded.

As he walked the bike out the door, the boy stopped, ran back and gave her a big hug.

“That happens everyday,” she tells me. “But people don’t hear about that stuff.”

Because people like me don’t write about it, she seems to be saying.

I try to tell her I’ve written some positive stories about the system. But she’s already moving on down the aisles.

The whole place is a reflection of Ewald’s personality. Organized to a tee, neat, direct. There are rows upon rows of clothing racks, all broken down by age group, boys and girls, and a whole teen section. One corner has 80 plastic bins, virtually all for infant clothes: a bin for winter hats, a bin for infant shoes, a bin for those under two-years-old.

Another corner has 1,000 shiny dresses meant for foster girls going to their prom. It’s very important to Ewald that foster kids don’t get identified as shabbily dressed outsiders.

“They feel different enough,” she says.

She is a great believer that foster care can save children. She grew up near an orphanage in New Hampshire, and remembers the kids on the other side of the fence, looking so forlorn.

These days, the kids come out of the worst of homes: parents on drugs or who drink too much or who just don’t know how to raise a kid without losing control. Foster care may be the first time they step inside a good home. But many come into the system emotionally damaged from abuse or neglect.

She recalled the 17-year-old who came in, angry about everything. He just wanted his old room back. He didn’t want to try anything on. He walked out and sat in the car.

Ewald went and talked to him.

“I understand it’s tough,” she told him. “You feel like you’ve lost everything — your friends, your family, your home, your stuff.”

This place, she told him, can help him get some things back, at least some clothes, some things he can call his own.

He came inside and tried a few things on. He started talking about clothes. He smiled when he talked about wanting to go to college.

“That’s what it’s all about,” she says.

Her point was clear.

“There’s a lot of good,” she says. “People need to know that.”