Foster care clothes room seeks new location
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Being uprooted from home is never easy, and it’s especially difficult for children who enter the foster care system. Nothing is familiar, and often children don’t have many belongings of their own, leaving their foster families with the burden of providing clothing and other necessities.
“Sometimes a paper sack of stuff is all (the kids) have,” said foster mom Shelley, who asked that her last name not be used.
She’s been a foster parent for years and had close to 30 placements of children in her home, so she’s learned the realities of the system. That’s why Shelley opened 4 R Kidz, a clothes room that accepts donations like clothes, shoes, diapers, dishes, toys, toiletries and furniture and keeps the items available to foster families. The clothes room is currently housed in the Family Concepts building in Polson, but that space will no longer be available as of Aug. 1, Shelley said.
Thanks to generous donations, 4 R Kidz has expanded, and Shelley will have to find a place with more room, too. Shelley paid the startup expenses — clothing racks, hangars and shelves — for the clothes room out of her own pocket, but as a single mother with several young children still at home, she can’t afford to keep funding the project.
“I can’t add the expense of (renting) a space to what I already pay for my house,” she explained.
She checked into renting a storage unit, but even that would cost $60 or $80 a month.
“If I don’t find a space, I am probably just going to move (the clothes room) to the Crow Reservation,” Shelley said, noting that she has family there.
But 4 R Kidz provides a valuable service to the Flathead Reservation and even some foster families from farther away.
“We’ve had people from Missoula and Kalispell,” Shelley said. “I’d like to be able to keep (4 R Kidz) open.”
Anyone interested in helping Shelley find a space can reach her at 644-3030.
