Foster Angels of South Texas was founded in 1999 to improve the lives of children in foster care by ensuring each child has their basic needs met and to provide life-enhancing and life-enriching opportunities whenever possible. We serve children and youth from birth to 22 years old in Region 11, a 19-county state service area throughout South Texas, where we have assisted over 46,000 children in foster care since our inception.

These children have experienced sexual, physical, verbal, and emotional abuse and severe neglect. This has occurred at the hands of those they should trust the most: their parents. They enter foster care with just the clothes on their backs or items that fit in a trash bag. Foster parent reimbursement rates are notoriously inadequate, at $27.07 per diem at the basic level according to the Texas Department of Health & Human Services; this is less than $10,000 per year to care for a child who has no personal belongings and expected to live at 300% below the state poverty level.

Our daily request program is our primary daily work. We receive 50-70 requests weekly from our partners at Child Protective Services (CPS), Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), child placing agencies, and other organizations who work directly with these children. Each request falls under a specific focus area to include adoption assistance, clothing and personal care, education, food, household items or housing support, medical and therapeutic needs, normalcy activities, and transportation assistance. We respond within 48 hours and deliver their requested items in less than two weeks. We also process emergency requests in 24 hours and can assist the same child more than once in the same year. Last year we served 2,876 children in foster care and received 1,046 requests; 652 of those were for basic needs - a 45% increase from the previous year for the simplest of items to establish a thriving childhood foundation.

The distressing circumstances these children have experienced endure long after they enter foster care and continues to negatively affect their lives well into adulthood. As a result, Our daily request program has expanded to include our Life Set program. The Life Set program includes a three-part initiative: 1) Soaring Scholars - assistance towards living expenses for students in higher education which has been in place since 2021. We have nine scholars enrolled in college; two have successfully graduated and a third scholar is graduating this December. 2) Keys to Success is a new initiative that began in 2023. We offer support during the car buying process and have assisted three foster youths in purchasing their first car this year. 3) A housing pilot which is to be implemented in 2024.

Our daily request program and Life Set program are ongoing to provide children and youth in foster care with the most basic of needs, a sense of security, and the chance to thrive. These vulnerable children are at the forefront of our overall work and they mean so much to us.