Loading luggage with love
Ministry distributes clothing and other items to foster children, helping ease the transition into foster care
Rachelle Metcalf’s family got the call three days before Christmas 2015.
The newest member of the family — a little girl in foster care — would be arriving any minute and there was a distinct possibility that she would come with little or no personal belongings.
Metcalf didn’t have to make a hasty shopping trip to purchase clothes and other items for the child.
Instead, she relied on Luggage With Love.
Volunteers from the faithbased nonprofit converged on Metcalf’s home loaded down with several new outfits for the new foster child, plus a pair of athletic shoes, pajamas, underwear, a Bible and a toothbrush. For good measure, the cheerful group also brought Christmas cookies and other holiday treats.
“It was very thoughtful — a real blessing,” Metcalf said. “They prayed with us, too.”
Providing such care and practical help was exactly what Marcie Carrico had in mind when she founded LuggageWith Love in 2015.
The Norman woman said the organization began as a ministry outreach of Norman’s Victory Family Church, where she is a member. However, it eventually became a separate nonprofit with its own warehouse office in the northeast part of the city.
Carrico, a foster parent herself, wanted to help ease the transition of foster care placement for both children and their new foster families.
The idea for the ministry came through divine inspiration when she answered a friend’s SOS for clothing for the imminent arrival of a foster youth. Carrico said the premise for Luggage With Love was based on that emergency shopping trip.
Now the organization helps alleviate the need for such rushed — and often expensive — visits to local stores for foster parents.
“It leaves foster parents where they had to go spend $150 just for the basics and now they don’t have to do that,” Carrico said.
At the same time, a nice piece of luggage along with new clothing, shoes and hygiene items gives children in crisis some dignity and the knowledge that someone cares about them, she said.
“When the children first come, it’s a shock. They are put with strangers and the whole situation is potentially hard. We wanted to try to alleviate that stress on them,” Carrico said.
Metcalf said only two of the seven foster children who have been placed in her family’s care arrived with anything besides the clothing on their backs.
Carrico shared similar sentiments, saying that youths who do arrive with items often have them stuffed into small trash bags, which she said can be demeaning.
“We come through the warehouse and pack a bag and our delivery drivers try to deliver that same day,” she said.
“We make sure those kids, especially teenagers, don’t go to bed wondering ‘what am I going to wear tomorrow?’”
Duffle bags and suitcases
Luggage With Love originally started as an outreach for foster youths and families in Cleveland County, but the ministry has spread to include five other counties — McClain, Garvin, Pottawatomie, Seminole and Lincoln. Also, Carrico said about 30 percent of the children served by the ministry come from Oklahoma County.
The organization accepts referrals from state Department of Human Services caseworkers, plus individuals from foster parent networks also make requests.
Carrico said the nonprofit relies on private donors, grants and churches that host clothing drives. Luggage With Love also has partnered with other like-minded groups like the Blanket for Blanket program, Feed the Children and the New York-based Pajama Project which sent the Oklahoma nonprofit 200 pairs of pajamas and books.
On a recent weekday, Carrico walked through the Norman headquarters and set a small hot pink suitcase with a Sesame Street motif on a table. She filled it with items for a baby girl including a doll, a pink onesie, baby bottle, washcloths, baby wipes, a polka dot blanket, tiny athletic shoes and diapers.
She said each child referred to the nonprofit receives a new duffle bag or suitcase filled with several outfits, a hygiene kit, athletic shoes, a Bible, books and a toy. In the winter, the organization provides coats and backpacks and in the summer, swimsuits and flip flops are distributed .
Fulfilling a need
Deborah Shropshire, deputy director of child welfare for DHS, said Luggage With Love’s support is extremely helpful to foster children at a critical moment in their lives.
“One of those critical moments is when we have to put a kid into a foster home and often these are kids who the day before they were at home with their parents and now they’re in a new foster home and often don’t come with very much of their own stuff like clothing, pajamas, toys,” she said.
Shropshire said sometimes, caseworkers may not have access to the child’s belongings or the child’s clothing is not adequate in some way. And with emergency placements, foster parents often get short notice that a child is soon to arrive.
She said the nonprofit’s availability as a resource has been wonderful.
“It is a really important partnership for us because one of the things we’ve been trying to do better is really support our foster families,” Shropshire said.
“That’s a huge deal — huge.”