Non-profit RISE is Building Villages by Combating Foster Parent Isolation

The challenges of foster care can be immense, but a Colorado non-profit called RISE is tackling an often overlooked core issue. Some foster and kinship  parents experience a profound isolation. Founded in 2020, RISE focuses on the belief that retention, not recruitment, is the core issue in keeping families engaged in the foster care system.

According to RISE founder and Executive Director Sarah Grundy, nationally, 30–50% of foster parents quit within the first year of their first placement, with Colorado often on the higher side of that statistic. While training and access to resources are vital, RISE chooses to focus on the two needs that are frequently neglected: practical support and relational support.

“We cannot change the hard,” Grundy shared, referring to the inherent difficulties of caring for children who have experienced trauma. “But we can fix the isolation and loneliness.”

RISE currently serves approximately 90 families across Colorado with the help of about 350 volunteers. They accomplish this through two main programs: ongoing support teams and special ops teams. The ongoing support teams provide consistent, long-term assistance. RISE currently runs 32 active teams, each consisting of six-to-eight volunteers. Volunteers commit to one or two hours per month for a one-year term and are matched with a family within a 25-minute radius. The support is both practical—like dropping off meals, doing laundry, or childcare—and relational—such as dropping off a favorite coffee or attending a hard court case. The Special Ops teams handle one-off, immediate needs for families who do not require ongoing assistance. This might include helping a family clean up after a fire or a broken pipe, or assisting when a new child or youth arrives. RISE is currently assisting 58 families through its special ops list.

“It becomes a team mentality versus we’re coming in to help you. It’s, hey, you’re doing this and we’re going to come alongside you,” Sarah said of the mentality behind the support teams.

A crucial aspect of the RISE model is its commitment to supporting families post-adoption. This is critical because struggles, particularly behavioral issues, often intensify after adoption once a child feels the safety and belonging of a permanent home. By extending support to post-adoptive and kinship families, RISE helps prevent family burnout, which has shown anecdotal success in keeping families engaged. Grundy shared the story of one single foster mother who was planning to quit but remained active after receiving a RISE team.

“Our longest running team is from before we were officially a nonprofit. . . that foster mom has said multiple times that she was planning on quitting and then she got a RISE team and here we are seven years later,” Sarah shared.

The ultimate goal of preventing burnout is to help reduce negative long-term outcomes, such as youth aging out of care and subsequent involvement in homelessness or the prison system.

“My hope is that 50 years from now, we’re going to see data that is different for post-adoptive services and for those youth aging out. Our prison numbers are down, our homeless numbers are down, our sex trafficking numbers are down. All of those things that are directly related to kids being moved from home to home to home because of family burnout,” Sarah explained of how she hopes programs like RISE can positively impact society. 

RISE believes that small gestures make a huge difference in the demanding environment of foster care. These acts of kindness—like sending a foster parent a funny meme on a bad day, dropping off flowers and dinner after a rough court case, or simply holding a baby so a single parent can manage other tasks—help families feel seen and supported. The organization intentionally uses a team structure of six-to-eight people per family to provide consistent support and prevent volunteer burnout. This ensures that if one person needs to step back due to life events, the family still receives the care they need. Volunteers are encouraged to serve from their unique skill sets (e.g., cooking, making cards, cleaning), which makes the commitment feel less overwhelming and fosters a true team mentality.

“It’s those little messages that truly we all need in our daily lives to know that we’re not alone and that we have a support system. . . but our foster adoptive kinship families need it on a whole other level and get it a lot less than I think a lot of us do,” Sara shared. 

RISE is expanding its reach and there are currently 26 families on a waiting list for a long-term support team. RISE is actively seeking volunteer teams, particularly in the Denver, Aurora, and Littleton areas. RISE also intentionally builds relationships with county social workers, viewing themselves as a resource that case workers can refer to struggling families. Beyond volunteering, RISE seeks organizational partners (churches, schools, and businesses) to become advocacy partners to help educate the community and change the narrative around foster and kinship care. If you want to support RISE and you cannot commit to a one-year support team, you can still help by joining the special ops email list or becoming a monthly donor.