The CALL coordinator creates homey support center
The CALL coordinator creates homey support center
Louise Witcher saw the potential in the house, despite the 60 feral cats living in it, the holes in the floor and the boarded windows.
She had one goal in mind: to make a safe, homey place for foster children.
Witcher i s volunteer coordinator for The CALL (Children of Arkansas Loved for a Lifetime) in Conway and Faulkner counties.
After “nine hard months of work,” The CALL support center opened at 745 Factory St. in Conway on The Ministry Center campus, the former Second Baptist Church. The house redo rivals an HGTV makeover. The soothing grays, bright teal blue and coral reflect The CALL’s new logo. The furniture is modern and clean, and Witcher gave much of it a new life with a coat or two of paint. The playroom has new and gently used toys, books and games.
“I wanted an environment so incredibly relaxing that children were not intimidated during their visits here,” she said. She estimated that 30 foster children a week use the center.
Witcher said the home, which opened in late April, is the second support center in the state; the first is in Benton in Saline County.
Adoptive and foster families can use the home for whatever they need, including birthday parties, and foster children can visit there with their biological parents in a “nonthreatening” atmosphere, Witcher said.
“We try to reunite these families, and if you have more visits, you increase the chances,” Witcher said.
The Arkansas Department of Human Services has “free rein” of the support center.
Witcher is a founding member of The CALL board, which was formed in 2009, for Conway and Faulkner counties. The CALL started in 2007 in Pulaski County. It is a faithbased, nonprofit organization that recruits foster families through churches.
Witcher said The CALL in Conway and Faulkner counties trains 95 percent of the foster families in those counties, which have 230 children in the foster-care system. Since The CALL started, the number of children waiting to be adopted has dropped from 600-plus to 287, Witcher said.
She didn’t plan to get so involved.
“I’ve been doing CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) for 14 years, and that’s how I got involved in The CALL,” she said.
As a Court Appointed Special Advocate, Witcher worked with children in the court system to provide support and advocate for their best interests. She wasn’t allowed to foster children, but she saw the homes in which some of her clients were placed.
“We saw there were not enough homes and not of the quality we wanted them to be,” she said.
People kept bringing Witcher information about The CALL and encouraged her to to get involved.
“I said, ‘I don’t have time for that.’ It was a God-calling. I had just started working at