StevieRay Hansen's Commentary

A Global Crisis

There are 159 million children across the globe who are defined as orphans, (Source) These children, and others, are a risk for poverty, health concerns, neglect, and abuse.

What happens to these orphans? 

The lucky ones are taken in by extended family or friends. For the rest, the options can be frightening. Many end up on the streets living a beggar's existence. Others find themselves caught up in the global sex-trade or as slaves. Foster care is a wonderful option for many of these parent less children, but there are simply too many kids and not enough loving homes. Orphanages or group homes exist in all manner and form. Some are wonderfully run, loving places; others offer nothing more than an environment of physical, mental or sexual abuse. A visit to these places will find the children to be malnourished and simply hanging on to a bitter and unimaginably dreary life.

HIV/AIDS

The AIDS epidemic has simply decimated many sub-Saharan countries and other areas. Worldwide estimates of the number of children orphaned due to the AIDS crisis puts the number between 14 and 18 million. http://www.childinfo.org/hiv_aids.html

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The 127 Faith Foundation. We are a nonprofit organization
Please make checks payable to:

The 127 Faith Foundation
PO Box 127
Pontotoc Texas 76869

PRAY FOR THE  127, JACOBS TROUBLE(tribulation) IS UPON US!!

Courage & Integrity

It is impossible to find anyone in the Bible who was a power for God who did not have enemies and was not hated.

If the greatest warrior of all times, King David was sent back to earth by God Almighty, the Pharisees and Sadducees the hypocrites would be in a frenzy, you see- great warriors like King David, Paul of biblical proportions would expose their ungodly doctoring. Those men would expose the treacherous path most of the world is on(inclusiveness) in other words sin must be accepted or you'll go to jail, those pastors in Canada(coming to America soon) are experiencing that following Christ can be by the world standards "dangerous". But those Saints,salt of the earth Christians know our life on earth is temporary, heaven is our eternal home, what's in your heart, applause from the world which is temporary, Christ outstretched arms which is eternal?

In Christian armor, it is integrity that holds everything else together. If you do not have integrity in the big and small things of your life, you are going to lose the battle. Would people say that you are a woman or man of integrity? If not, then you cannot win the battle.

The Value of Human Life

"If the church doesn't wake up and provide the moral, and theological foundation for the value of human life at a very basic level, and fight for the rights of those who are marginalized and who can't defend themselves (Orphans), I think that we could see an acceptance of a global slave trade." The Church Has become a place of entertainment, God's been marginalized in the process leaving the sheep without a earthly shepherd and the fruits of that dying tree are evident...

Why is it so important for believers specifically to be on the front lines of defeating this particular social ill, though? "[It's] on the same level as whether or not Christians saw themselves as responsible for helping Jews who fled Nazi Germany, or whether or not the church was going to be engaged at the end of the slave trade here in the United States. There are few times in the human narrative where the test, resolve, and the character of human kind is on trial, and I think we're in one of those chapters."

It's important that believers respond to this issue in a way that goes beyond compassion or emotion. StevieRay Hansen says that he has come to understand involvement in this fight for justice as a direct response to God. "God's heart beats for us to do justice. In fact, in Micah 6:8 [He] commands–He doesn't request, He doesn't recommend, He REQUIRES–us to do justice."

So what are we to do, then, to solve this overwhelming issue? Where do we even begin? "When you think about the monstrous complexity of the human trafficking industry, it's not going to be resolved by one simple solution," But there are certainly things to be done, "There's a part that we can all play." Please get involved...

James 1:27

The Faith behind our HOPE. You could say that our motivating force can be found in the book of James 1:27 which reads, "Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of God our Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world." For many people, religion carries a bad name. They are tired of hearing well-meaning people tell them how they are supposed to live, only to be found doing the exact things they speak against.

Others look at the Church and see nothing but people who talk a good game, who often fail to put their words into action. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture of true Christianity is what people need to see. A picture of people helping and loving other people, without regard to politics, race, background or any of the other social separators we all encounter daily. I for one do not want to be known for what I say about my Faith, but rather for what I do because of my Faith. For if I speak about my faith, but don't follow it up with action, then I have become just another distraction, or perhaps even worse, a hypocrite. Our desire is to simply live our Faith and "Carry one another's burden, and thus fulfill the law of Christ." Galations 6:2

The Plight of the Orphan

The orphan is practically invisible.They are viewed as disposable by the pornography industry... The underbelly of society, pedophiles, men lost in pornography pray upon the ones that "nobody misses." (Orphans).

“In the United States, more than 900,000+ children are reported missing every year, and nearly half end up living on the streets. Seventy five percent will become sex trafficking victims, most within their first 72 hours of living on the street.”

The part of sex trafficking that makes it, in many ways, the darkest of all sins — though I don't think you would categorize it in many ways like that — it's hard to imagine anything that's darker than preying on a little girl or young boys. "SIN" has created a demand for that.

Pornography or in that industry are in the sex trafficking industry themselves. In numerous other ways that I don't think people understand just how related they are, and the ability to view sexual sin in anonymity. It also perpetuates this because sex trafficking is done in secret. It's a hidden sin and I think part of the similarity between porn and sex trafficking is the secretiveness of it in addition to the fantasies.

Imagine a young girl or boy being left alone in this world. Now, imagine that same girl or being turned out into the streets, because she/he is too old to stay at the orphanage. Many of these orphans end up as victims of human trafficking. They are sold into sex slavery and many languish and suffer there for years with no hope of a better life.

In the next 30 seconds, a child will be sold into sex slavery.

That’s the sad, horrible truth for countless kids in the USA.When kids are kicked out of the orphanages, they are often forced out onto the streets where they are at constant risk of being sold into slavery. They have nowhere to go, no idea how… or if… they will eat today.

When there’s no one to love you, no one to care for you, your options are few and far between, and they are often dangerous.

But thanks to your compassionate and giving heart, we are able to provide a safe home to many of these children. The 127 Faith Foundation is often the only place they can turn, the only safe option they have.

But we need your help to continue providing safe shelter, food, clothing and care for the kids in our Ranch nestled in the hill country of Texas—and for those we haven’t met yet.

Will you donate today? A gift of any amount would be appreciated—in the fight against human trafficking, every bit matters.

Together with you, we have already done so much good. But there are so many other kids out there who need our help. We want to do more . . . we need to do more.

Please act today. I hope you will prayerfully consider giving generously—I believe you will.the127.org

StevieRay Hansen
It is impossible to find anyone in the Bible who was a power for God who did not have enemies and was not hated.

Something's Wrong with this Picture

There's something definitely wrong with society, the127.org ran a gofundme page for months and could not raise one penny to help the least among us (orphan) and yet some individual that is supposedly helping stray dogs (soulless animals) grabs a spotlight of a hero on the gofundme page. Our society has their priorities upside down, evil is good, good is evil mentality. I will continue to speak out. speak up and to shine a light on the injustice society apparently fosters as good....

GoFundMe Story:

Evil

 

“I just love the dogs so much. It's ultimately about them, but I've also come to love these folks out here on the streets.”

Four years ago, Paul Crowell set out on his daily walk to work and passed dozens of dogs who lived on the streets with the homeless population. Despite their owners' best efforts, many of the dogs were hungry. As a life-long animal lover, Paul couldn't stand seeing them suffer. So that day, he made it his mission to feed the homeless pets in his community—and he's been their guardian angel ever since…

GoFundMe Heroes is a monthly spotlight celebrating the everyday people who do extraordinary things on GoFundMe.

Please make your check out to The127 Faith Foundation

Mailing Address:

The127 Faith Foundation
PO Box 127
Pontotoc Texas 76869

Recruitment Profile

Often without a steady home or school life and without strong support networks, foster youth are at risk for recruitment. Traffickers recruit foster youth directly from group homes with false promises of money and a family structure. Youth who have been conditioned to view themselves as a paycheck, due to prior abuse and exploitation by both biological and foster parents, are at a heightened risk and vulnerable to the increased attention and generous overtures commonly used by traffickers. But not all victims are recruited from group homes.

Homelessness is a key contributor to trafficking of youth. Foster children who have runaway, aged out of the system, or otherwise find themselves on the streets are a greater risk of being trafficked, particularly in the commercial sex trade. Entry into human trafficking often begins with trading sex for essential items such as food and/or shelter, but can quickly evolve to victimization by organized trafficking operations. In a study conducted in the U.S. and Canada one-fifth of homeless youth were victims of sex trafficking. The issue is compounded by the fact that states do not always report when a foster child is missing, despite provisions in federal law that mandate it. LGBTQ+ youth in the foster system are particularly prone to homelessness due to added stigma and discrimination. State By State

Biblical Reformation

It is only modern Christian men who find solace and comfort in bowing their collective knees to the forces of darkness. Has there ever been a time in the history of the world where Christian leadership regarded compromise as a sign of godliness?

Compromise is weakness. Jesus didn’t compromise. He didn’t go along to get along. The greater the opposition for his revolutionary message the more he doubled-down. Despite what may be modeled for you in your own church, the King of Kings was not a passive I’m-ok-you’re-ok kind of guy.

Our Churches Are Producing Soft Christian Men.

 

 

Christianity is in dire need of a reformation. How in the name of all that is holy have we come to the point where any man who speaks his mind is un-Christian? Have you read the book of Acts? Don’t you understand that those in the Bible who are most famous are the ones who opposed the status-quo? Paul wrote most of the New Testament FROM JAIL. A jail cell was his pulpit.

I don’t think there is a nice way to say it…especially if you are not really concerned about being nice. It has reached the point where I am almost embarrassed to identify with the sissified men I see representing Christianity.

What in the world has happened to us? Why is the average Christian man so unlike the Christian men that we find in the Bible?

Pick your Bible hero…my favorite is King David…and take a good hard look at him and see if you see his prototype in America today. Biblical men were real men. The fought evil, spoke the Truth, and usually ended up in trouble with the authorities of their day.

Prison-bound Orphans

Orphans in the United States

Society bears some responsibility for these throwaway children, the numbers are growing expeditiously, eventually we won't be able to build enough prisons to keep the secret out of society's stained-glass windows hidden,We will have to come to terms with this problem sooner or later. Please help the least among us, orphans...

United States: Thousands of Children Sentenced to Life without Parole...
National Study by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Finds Majority Face Life for First Offense...

There are at least 2,225 child offenders serving life without parole sentences in U.S prisons for crimes committed before they were age 18, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a new joint report published today.

While many of the child offenders are now adults, 16 percent were between 13 and 15 years old at the time they committed their crimes. An estimated 59 percent were sentenced to life without parole for their first-ever criminal conviction. Forty-two states currently have laws allowing children to receive life without parole sentences.

The 157-page report, The Rest of Their Lives: Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States, is the first national study examining the practice of trying children as adults and sentencing them to life in adult prisons without the possibility of parole. The report is based on two years of research and on an analysis of previously uncollected federal and state corrections data. The data allowed the organizations to track state and national trends in LWOP sentencing through mid-2004 and to analyze the race, history and crimes of young offenders.

“Kids who commit serious crimes shouldn't go scot-free,” said Alison Parker, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, who authored the report for both organizations. “But if they are too young to vote or buy cigarettes, they are too young to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.”

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are releasing The Rest of Their Lives at a critical time: while fewer youth are committing serious crimes such as murder, states are increasingly sentencing them to life without parole. In 1990, for example, 2,234 children were convicted of murder and 2.9 percent sentenced to life without parole. By 2000, the conviction rate had dropped by nearly 55 percent (1,006), yet the percentage of children receiving LWOP sentences rose by 216 percent (to nine percent).

“Untie the hands of state and federal judges and prosecutors,” said Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). “Give them options other than turning the courts into assembly lines that mass produce mandatory life without parole sentences for children, that ignore their enormous potential for change and rob them of all hopes for redemption.”

In 26 states, the sentence of life without parole is mandatory for anyone who is found guilty of committing first-degree murder, regardless of age. According to the report, 93 percent of youth offenders serving life without parole were convicted of murder. But Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found that an estimated 26 percent were convicted of “felony murder,” which holds that anyone involved in the commission of a serious crime during which someone is killed is also guilty of murder, even if he or she did not personally or directly cause the death.

For example, 15-year-old Peter A. was sentenced to life without parole for felony murder. Peter had joined two acquaintances of his older brother to commit a robbery. He was waiting outside in a van when one of the acquaintances botched the robbery and murdered two victims. Peter said, “Although I was present at the scene, I never shot or killed anyone.” Nevertheless, Peter was held accountable for the double murder because it was established during the trial that he had stolen the van used to drive to the victims’ house.

The human rights organizations also said that widespread and unfounded fears of adolescent “super-predators”—violent teenagers with long criminal histories who prey on society—prompted states to increasingly try children as adults. Ten states set no minimum age for sentencing children to life without parole, and there are at least six children currently serving the sentence who were age 13 when they committed their crimes. Once convicted, these children are sent to adult prisons and must live among adult gangs, sexual predators and in harsh conditions. For more state-by-state statistics please see the State-by-State Summary.

According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, there is no correlation between the use of the LWOP sentence and youth crime rates. There is no evidence it deters youth crime or is otherwise helpful in reducing juvenile crime rates. For example, Georgia rarely sentences children to life without parole but it has youth crime rates lower than Missouri, which imposes the sentence on child offenders far more frequently.

“Public safety can be protected without subjecting youth to the harshest prison sentence possible....

Nationwide, black youth receive life without parole sentences at a rate estimated to be ten times greater than that of white youth (6.6 versus 0.6). In some states the ratio is far greater: in California, for example, black youth are 22.5 times more likely to receive a life without parole sentence than white youth. In Pennsylvania, Hispanic youth are ten times more likely to receive the sentence than whites (13.2 versus 1.3).

The United States is one of only a few countries in the world that permit children to be sentenced to LWOP. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every country in the world except the United States and Somalia, forbids this practice, and at least 132 countries have rejected the sentence altogether. Thirteen other countries have laws permitting the child LWOP sentence, but, outside of the United States, there are only about 12 young offenders currently serving life sentences with no possibility of parole.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also challenged the presumption that the youth offenders are irredeemable, which is implicit in the sentence they have received.

“Children who commit serious crimes still have the ability to change their lives for the better,” said David Berger, attorney with the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers and Amnesty International’s researcher for this report. “It is now time for state and federal officials to take positive steps by enacting policies that seek to redeem children, instead of throwing them in prison for the rest of their lives.”

The organizations called on the United States to end the practice of sentencing child offenders to life without parole. For those already serving life sentences, immediate efforts should be made to grant them access to parole procedures.

Testimonies from The Rest of Their Lives: Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States

On comprehending the life without parole sentence:
A 29-year-old woman who was sentenced to life without parole at the age of 16 said:

“I didn’t understand ‘life without’ . . . [that] to have ‘life without,’ you were locked down forever. You know it really dawned on me when [after several years in prison, a journalist] came and . . . he asked me, ‘Do you realize that you’re gonna be in prison for the rest of your life?’ And I said, ‘Do you really think that?’ You know. . . and I was like, ‘For the rest of my life? Do you think that God will leave me in prison for the rest of my life?’”
—Interview with Cheryl J., MacPherson Unit, McPherson, Arkansas, June 24, 2004 (pseudonym)

On committing crimes as children and being tried as adults:
Gregory C., who committed his crime of first degree murder when he was 15, described his state of mind at the time:
“A kid just does something—whether it’s an accident or intentional. I mean personally, me, I was fifteen years old . . . I didn’t know what I was doing. I was still a kid. . . . Kids do a lot of stupid things. . . . The person I was when I was fifteen, I really didn’t have any morals, I didn’t even know who I was at that time. I hate to admit it, but I was real ignorant.”
—Interview with Gregory C., Colorado State Penitentiary, Cañon City, Colorado, July 2, 2004 (pseudonym)

Thomas M. described what happened when he heard the jury’s verdict:
“I was very emotional and I broke out crying in court. I don’t know if I fully understood but I kinda understood when they just said, ‘guilty, guilty, guilty’ and ‘life’ y’ know? As time went on, I’m really starting to realize how serious it is. I was young, I wasn’t really too educated. When I got locked up, I was in the eighth grade. All my education has come through the years of being incarcerated.”
—Interview with Thomas M., Colorado State Penitentiary, Canon City, Colorado, July 27, 2004 (pseudonym)

On contemplating suicide in adult prison:
Richard I., who was 14 at the time of his crime and entered prison at age 16, spoke about his suicidal thoughts and his repeated practice of cutting his arms with razor blades:
“When I went to prison, I was around all the—up all night—all the violence. I was like, ‘man I gotta get out of this—how am I gonna get out of this prison?’ I can’t do no life sentence here at that age. And so I thought of that [killing himself]. Gotta end it, gotta end it . . . I’ve got so many cuts on me. . . . Razor blades. They give us disposable razors, you pop it out.”
—Interview with Richard I., East Arkansas Regional Unit, Brickeys, Arkansas, June 21, 2004 (pseudonym)

On rape and other physical violence in adult prison:
Brian B. wrote about what happened soon after he entered prison in Pennsylvania at the age of 17 with a life without parole sentence:
“Sheriffs took me to the Western Penitentiary. They lied to the warden telling him I were eighteen, which I had not yet become. I were housed in an open poorly supervised unit, and that evening a group of large adult men rushed into my cell, holding me down, they began pulling my clothes off while another took a syringe over to a spoon that another inmate were holding a lighter under. He drew up whatever was in the spoon. I were then injected with whatever it were. And then raped. Once found by the officers I were taken to a holding area, cleaned up, and placed on a van to another prison at around 3:00 am.”
—Letter from Brian B., Albion, Pennsylvania, August 28, 2004 (pseudonym)

Warren P. wrote that when he first came to prison, at the age of 15:
“I was the target of covert sexual predators. Adults would pretend to be your best friend to get close to you, then they would try you. . . . Officers would be hard on me more so than the adults for they believe that the younger inmates need rougher treatment.”
—Letter to Human Rights Watch from Warren P., Marion Correction Institute, Lowell, Florida, March 2, 2004 (pseudonym)

On rehabilitation:
Charles L. came to prison at age 19. He spoke with obvious pride about what he was learning on “hoe squad” in the Arkansas Department of Corrections:
“I ain’t ever had no job. But now I’m on hoe squad. Know how to plant everything. Cantaloupe, squash, onions, green beans, cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes, peas, sweet potatoes . . . everything they grow, eggplant . . . they grow everything. There’s a lot I know since I been here.”
—Interview with Charles L, Varner Unit, Arkansas, June 22, 2004 (pseudonym)

Troy L., who was 15 when he murdered his abusive father, was interviewed for this report at age 24 in June 2004. He wrote in a subsequent letter:
“I would be ever grateful, in fact, for the chance to spend my life now for some good reason. I would go to the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan or Israel, or jump on the first manned mission to Mars. . . .[I]f the state were to offer me some opportunity to end my life doing some good, rather than a slow-wasting plague to the world, it would be a great mercy to me.”
—Letter to Human Rights Watch from Troy L., Grady Arkansas, July 2004 (pseudonym)

A legislator’s, prosecutor’s, and judge’s views on the sentence:
Florida State Attorney Harry Shorstein, who prosecuted 14-year-old Joshua Phillips for killing his eight-year-old female neighbor in 1998 said:
I oppose mandatory sentences and the Legislature's tying the hands of judges and prosecutors. No matter how tough you are on crime, you can't say a fourteen-year-old is the same as an eighteen-year-old.
—Paul Pinkham, “Court upholds life in prison for teenager,” Florida Times-Union, February 7, 2002, p. B-1

The judge who sentenced 15-year-old Henry L. to life without parole for first degree murder said at sentencing:
“[T]he sentence that I must impose is mandated by law. I don’t have any choice in the matter. I’m not at all comfortable with this case, not because the Defendant didn’t receive a fair trial. I think that he did. . . . [But] it’s obvious to me that we can’t, as a society, say that fifteen-year-old children should be held to the same standards as adults. Our law provides this. I think the law is wrong.”
—Honorable David Scott DeWitt (deceased), excerpt from sentencing transcript in People v. Lashuay, 75th Circuit Court, Midland County, Michigan, June 25, 1984 (on file with Human Rights Watch)

The Stats Are Bleak!

At least three million (and as many as 10 million) children witness domestic violence incidents each year in the U.S., and approximately nine million adolescents have witnessed serious violence during their lifetimes.

Approximately 16,000 people die annually due to homicide in the U.S. and the number of emergency room visits for assaults is two million.

In 2010, in incidents of murder for which the relationships of murder victims and offenders were known, 53% were killed by someone they knew (acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend, etc.).

By a conservative estimate, approximately 3,000 children annually experience a parent, ex–spouse, or partner killing another (uxoricide).

Roughly 64% of uxoricides occurred with the child in the home and 43% of the children either witnessed the murder or found the body.

The 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. is suicide with a total of 38,364 in 2010 that is the equivalent of one person every 15 minutes and more than 700,000 emergency room visits are due to self-inflicted injuries.

There were 7,446 murder-suicide events captured for the United States between January 1, 1999 and December 31, 2009. A total of 15,748 individuals died and 1,314 were injured in those events.

The number of unintentional injury deaths in 2010 was more than 120,000, and the number of emergency visits for unintentional injuries was 29.3 million.

Approximately 2.3 million active duty, National Guard, and Reserve service members have deployed since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and almost 60% of U.S. service members have family responsibilities, resulting in two million U.S. children exposed to at least one parental wartime deployment in the past 10 years.

In 2012, there were approximately 400,000 American “AIDS orphans,” or any child who has lost a parent to HIV or who has a parent sick with the disease.

One in every 28 children in America – or more than 2.7 million children – has a parent behind bars. Among African–American children, one in nine, or 11.4%, has a parent in jail.

In September 2011, there were an estimated 400,540 children in foster care, and more than a quarter (27%) were in relative homes, and nearly half (47%) were in nonrelative foster family homes.

In 2011, of the 73.7 million children under the age of 18, 28% (20.6 million) lived with one parent, and 4% of children lived with no parent. Approximately more than half of the children living with no parents were living with grandparents.
*Information was compiled from a variety of government, university, and non–profit sources. https://the127.org

Something to consider: 80% of death row inmates have been in foster care at one time. If the premise of foster care is to help a child end up in a better place than their birth home, it's not working. It is a very broken system of care and needs to be dissolved. Source

Kids need our voice like never before!

 

Child-Abuse-Victims-by-Age-Graph-768x457

Foster Care - The Untold Truth

Foster Care for the Least of These

As Children's Rights attorney Marcia Robinson Lowry explains: "Foster care systems established and funded to serve children are failing, producing only more damaged graduates who will go on to produce new generations of damaged children, who will continue to lead unspeakably tragic lives and who will increasingly tax our public resources."

Jean Adnopoz, a psychologist at the Yale Child Study Center, says children who spend years drifting between foster care homes "can't be expected to come out in any way that would appear to be healthy."

"If you have a child with no psychological parents, essentially adrift in the world, you are headed toward all sorts of bad outcomes," she said. "And we as a society are going to pay and pay and pay for it."

Foster Care Statistics:

On September 30, 2004, 518,000 children were in the U.S. foster care system. Most children are placed in foster care temporarily due to parental abuse or neglect.

A record 304,000 children entered the system in 2004, according to one study. Much of the rise was due to methamphetamine use. Experts estimate that 80 to 90 percent of foster care placements can be traced to substance abuse.

About 40,000 infants are placed in foster care every year.

126,000 children are currently available for adoption.

On average, children stay in the system for almost three years (31 months) before either being reunited with their families or adopted. Almost 20 percent wait five years or more. Children have on average three different foster care placements. Frequent moves in and out of the homes of strangers can be profoundly unsettling for children, and it is not uncommon to hear of children who have been in 20 or 30 different homes. Many have been separated not only from their parents, but from their siblings.

More than 20,000 children each year never leave the system -- they remain in foster care until they "age out."

Thirty percent of the homeless in America and some 25 percent of those in prison were once in foster care.

44 percent (or about 241,000 children) have reunification with their birth families as their case goal.

48 percent were in foster family homes (non-relative), 24 percent were in relative foster homes, 18 percent were in group homes or institutions, 4 percent were in pre-adoptive homes, and 6 percent were in other placement types.

The average age of a foster child is 10. Half are 10 or under.

40 percent of foster children are white; 34 are black; 18 percent are Hispanic.

Case workers burn out and leave the profession in very high numbers. The annual turnover rate in the child welfare workforce is more than 20 percent.

The recommended number of cases for a social worker is 17. In some states, the number is three or four times that number.

Click here for more statistics from the Administration of Children and Families, at the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

Matthew 18:6 ESV / 268 helpful votes
But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Romans 12:19 ESV / 123 helpful votes
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

Matthew 25:40 ESV / 61 helpful votes
And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

Deuteronomy 32:35 ESV / 45 helpful votes
Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.’

Luke 17:2 ESV / 29 helpful votes
It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.

Deuteronomy 18:9-13 ESV / 24 helpful votes

Glimmers of Hope

Despite ambitious and expensive public and privately funded pilot programs in communities around the country, and despite the heroic efforts of think tanks, community organizations, foster and adoptive parents, mentors and some members of the religious community, there is no national approach or policy regarding child welfare in this country.

As the public policy pendulum swings back and forth between family preservation (keeping children with their biological parents) and protecting children by placing them in foster care -- most experts now agree that the best thing to do is try to leave them at home if at all possible and provide good services to help the family cope.

If that's not possible, the next best solution is to have family members or nearby foster parents take the kids in, and at the same time provide a group of professionals (a therapist, a pediatrician, a social worker, a tutor) to help the kids and the adults. This is called "wraparound services" and has been working well in pilot programs in this country and in others, like England. This is designed to prevent a child from falling through the cracks, which happens all too often when one over-burdened social worker is the only one responsible for the safety of a child.

To compound the problem, not nearly enough is being done for children leaving the system when they become adults, who often receive a small check ($600 in Florida) and a pat on the back. How many parents of well-adjusted typical children send their kids out into the world with hardly any support when they turn 18?

James 1:27 New International Version (NIV)
1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

People talk a good talk, claim to be concerned, but their actions prove otherwise, wolves in sheep's clothing are common in our society today. Lip service is widely used to hide their self-centered hypocritical lifestyles,orphans know the truth...
Contact StevieRay Hansen: [email protected]

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Please make checks payable to: The 127 Faith Foundation

Mailing Address:

The 127 Faith Foundation
PO Box 127
Pontotoc Texas 76869

PRAY FOR THE127, JACOBS TROUBLE (tribulation) IS UPON US!!

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