RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina is in crisis when it comes to finding foster parents. 

Foster parent recruiters with Pinnacle Family Services tell Spectrum News 1 there has been an almost 23% drop in licensed foster parents since the pandemic hit, and they are desperately trying to fill in the gap. 

Many kids are having to sleep at their county social services office because they have nowhere else to go. 


What You Need To Know

  •  Many foster children have to stay at their local social services building

  •  Licensed foster parents have dropped almost 23% since the pandemic

  •  Wake County will hold an informational meeting for potential foster families on April 11

Michelle Wingate knew from a young age that fostering would be in her future. 

“It has been a call on my heart since I was 4 years old. I worked in child care for a long time, caring for kids who were placed in our center from foster care, working with those families and just kind of seeing how broken it was and how much of a village needed to kind of rally around these kids,” Wingate said.

She and her husband Chase Wingate have fostered 20 kids since 2017, eventually adopting three of them, with one adoption set to be finalized soon. Add their two biological children, and the pair has six kids under their roof.

“We fostered with the intent of reunification efforts being made. Watching them kind of build that self-confidence and grow in figuring out who they are and how they fit in the world in a safe and loving environment is the greatest joy to watch,” Michelle Wingate said.

Pinnacle Family Services, which helps recruit foster parents, says there are currently 12,000 foster kids in North Carolina. 

Five thousand of them are in foster homes, while 4,500 are staying with other members of their biological family or friends. That leaves 2,500 kids in the state currently with nowhere to go. 

“I was so nervous that I wasn't going to be able to live up to what the kid really needed. And that didn't turn out to be true. We quickly fell in love with the whole process and being in the foster care sort of community and all that. And the kids that we had come in our home and looking back, I'm glad she kind of pushed me into out of my comfort zone there,” Chase Wingate said.

Michelle Wingate acknowledges fostering may not be right for every family, but she believes every person can do something to support foster families. 

“It’s like my kids are normal kids who just need extra support sometimes. But it sounds scary on paper, but they're really just babies who need loving and and support,” Michelle Wingate said.

There are funds available to help cover the basic necessities for a foster child

In Wake County, there is a meeting for any potential foster parents on April 11 at 6:30 p.m. in the Swinburne Center in Raleigh.