Blake and Hannah did not know who would be standing on their stoop when they opened the door two years ago.

The caseworker at La Plata County Department of Human Services had told the couple, both age 23 at the time, that they would be fostering a 16-year old girl. But last-minute chaos changed that.

When they opened the door, there was Lilly, a petite 12-year-old clothed in short shorts and a 3XL T-shirt, accompanied by her sibling (Lilly’s sibling will not be named and the family’s last name will not be used to protect their privacy).

Lilly had little more to her name than the oversize shirt, a teddy bear and cellphone without a charger.

The couple had prepared their home for children up to age 4. When they showed Lilly her bed, adorned with a bedspread featuring a graphic of the children’s movie “Trolls,” she cried for hours.

So the family set out to Walmart the next day to buy the kids the basics: clothing, a toothbrush and a bedspread without Trolls on it. In the first 48 hours after the kids arrived, the young couple spent over $1,000 on basic essentials.

“I literally had to call my parents, my grandparents and be like, ‘Hey, can I borrow money? Thanks,’” Hannah said.

The county reimbursed them a total of $180, the stipend allotted for essentials for newly settled foster children. A month and a half later, they received the payment of the daily stipend to which foster families are entitled to cover ongoing costs such as groceries.

Since then, the has state raised reimbursement rates for families and the county no longer provides a placement stipend. Families are reimbursed between $39.34 and $61.34 per day to pay for children’s expenses, depending on the age of the child.

This would not be the last time that a foster child arrived at Hannah and Blake’s house lacking even the most basic personal items. The couple recognized that this chronic occurrence presented a problem, not just to them, but to all new foster families.

“I don’t want anyone else to ever feel like I did that, feeling like I couldn’t provide for them,” Hannah said. “Because that was a really hard moment of like, ‘wow, these people just dropped off these two kids who are trusting me to care for them, and I have like $50 in my bank account until Tuesday.’”

So, about nine months ago, the couple undertook another humanitarian enterprise: They decided to start a nonprofit to prevent the predicament they had faced.

The organization, which has yet to formally be established, is tentatively named Fostering Families. Blake and Hannah hope to have a board of directors and bylaws established by June 2023.

But that has not stopped the couple, with support from Hannah’s mother Phelia Smith, from taking action.

The mechanism is simple: Blake and Hannah have closet space donated by the River Church where they stock essential items that children might need. Clothing of various sizes hang on a rack off to one side and snacks, hygiene products, diapers and shoes occupy spaces in a wall of cubbies.

When the county places a foster child with a new family, they send the family a copy of the organization’s request form. If the family finds themselves in need of basic items, they can send the form to the organization, which will deliver a stocked bag within 24 hours.

The family has delivered four bags since they began the process of forming a nonprofit. Each costs between $200 and $250 and typically includes one full outfit, tennis shoes, snacks and a comfort item of some sort.

Because the organization is not yet formally a nonprofit, it does not have a bank account in its name. This means the family began by stocking the closet out of their own pocket. Since then, Smith said members of the church and the local chapter of Business Network International have chipped in.

“I had someone write me a $500 check to my name,” Hannah said. “They had never met me before and was like, ‘I trust you. I trust that you’re gonna do what you need to do with this.’ That's a big deal that someone believes in this so much that they’d write a random 25-year-old a $500 check.”

Smith said that given the need, it is important to the family that they stretch every dollar. They take advantage of off-season sales to keep the closet stocked for the future and solicit donations of items as well. While the closet is not yet full, there are enough of the bare essentials that the family can put together bags for emergency placements.

In the coming months, the family hopes to stock the closet with a full size run of clothing and an ample supply of tennis shoes.

“For some reason no kid has ever come with tennis shoes,” Hannah said.

Charmaine Summers, the supervisor of foster care, adoptions and guardianships, said the county has to be careful how it distributes taxpayer dollars and that the nonprofit is an example of the community stepping in to meet what she says are “more a want than a need.”

Blake and Hannah have legally adopted Lilly, now 14, and their daughter has become a de facto adviser for the organization. Smith joked that the family’s philosophy is “if you take one of us, you get all of us.”

After Lilly expressed how meaningful it had been to her to receive something new, to remove the tags from something herself and feel a sense of ownership in a home where she owned nothing, the family decided that the organization should not accept used items other than car seats and cribs.

“We have gotten some push back on that,” Blake said. “There have been several people that have been very frustrated about that. They feel like it’s a waste to be doing new stuff rather than used. But it really is important.”

Including food in the bags was another recommendation that Lilly made. She described the warmth – both physical and emotional – that Smith’s Frito pie provided on the day she moved in with her parents.

“The feeling of having a hot, freshly made bowl of food – it was the best feeling in the world,” Lilly said.

Blake and Hannah quickly learned that having food that specifically belonged to their children was critical. Coming from a home without enough food, their children were unsure if they were allowed to indulge in the bounty of a stocked pantry.

“Sometimes I still have to be like ‘you really don’t have to ask if you can have food,’” Hannah said.

After the bedspread debacle, the family also realized the importance of a “preferences” section on the request form. Some children despise certain colors; others have trauma associated with particular articles of clothing or images; sometimes the child’s sex on government forms does not match their gender identity.

“I don’t think we ever would have thought of that had we not experienced Lilly’s meltdown about the Trolls comforter,” Blake said.

Today, Lilly quickly cracks jokes about her past. She tenderly snuggled against her mother as the family shared the experiences that have guided them in shaping Fostering Families.

“Our understanding of what it is to be in foster care is all from (Lilly and her sibling) and their willingness to be open about it,” Hannah said. “I can understand what it is to be a foster parent, but I have no clue what it is to be them. None. I can watch them, and I can see what they go through, but I still can’t understand what it feels like, and I never will. But the fact that she is willing to share that and that she’s willing to say ‘this is what that feels like,’ to be so honest about it, is a really big deal because it helps us try to help other kids more.”

Lilly hands the credit right back to her mom.

“Sometimes it can be scary to tell my feelings … I never really told my biological mom anything that I felt, I kept it to myself,” she said. “And when I moved in with (Blake and Hannah), they were like ‘tell us whatever, tell us everything.’”

rschafir@durangoherald.com