Local foster care agency merges with statewide organization

It started with two doctors and a mission to help children.

Dawn and Paul Caruso have been involved in foster care since arriving in Cape Girardeau in 1999. Her work as a child psychiatrist brought her close to the foster care system, and she decided she wanted to make the leap into the system not just professionally, but personally, her husband said.

Caruso, himself a pediatrician, said he was a little hesitant at first but quickly welcomed the idea of taking care of children through the system. Soon, the family had a full house, adopting seven of their nine children through foster care.

When their house was full, his wife, always being the one to think ahead Caruso said, wanted to take the next step. She asked her husband what he thought about starting a home for foster children.

"I said, 'I mean, I'd be open to that. We can look into it,'" Caruso said. "And then, she just immediately said, 'Well I've already found the perfect place.'"

Caruso's father — who ran a home for boys on the West Coast — purchased and donated the property that would become the Hope for One More Home for Children Jackson. Caruso said numerous community members — including contractors, electricians and plumbers — volunteered to help turn the former law offices into a home. The Carusos were able to open its doors in 2010.

The pediatrician said the home wouldn't have been possible without the initial and continued community support, which has allowed it to "thrive."

"We've had over 400 children who've lived there over the past 12 years, which is kind of nice to know that they've had a safe place to be at during a stressful time in their life," Caruso said.

Since the inception of the home, Hope for One More has morphed into an organization to help foster care families in various ways. The couple started a clothes closet in the basement of the home that moved to their basement before moving to a location in downtown Cape Girardeau to its now current location on North Main Street in 2017. Hope for One More expanded to offer training for foster parents and advocation for children in the system.

In August, Hope merged with FosterAdopt Connect, the largest not-for-profit foster care agency in Missouri and Kansas. Crissy Mayberry, former director of Hope for One More — who is now a branch director for FosterAdopt Connect — said the merger will allow for the existing organization to tap into a larger pool of resources for those in need.

The merger was one of necessity, Mayberry said. Hope has grown thanks to local donations of money, clothes and time. However, it had grown past the point of being able to rely solely on donations.

"They (community members) have really stepped up to support these children and these families over the years and support the work that we have been doing," Mayberry said.

Growing along with the organizations was the need, she said. Merging with FosterAdopt allows them to help fill that need.

Mayberry and Caruso said the merger does not mean the organization will distance itself from its current operations locally, but that it will allow them to redouble their efforts to help more people in the community. FosterAdopt has the programs already in place to improve the lives of children in the foster care system, Caruso said, the merger will allow those who worked for Hope to take advantage of those programs rather than try an create their own.

The organization will still need donations and still gladly accept volunteers, Mayberry and Caruso explained, but will now be able to make a wider impact.

Mayberry described working in foster care not simply as a job, but "a lifestyle." Mayberry and the other two full-time staff members are all foster parents.

"When it's part of, you know, the fabric of your life, it is so much more than just, you know, going to work," Mayberry said.