Agape For Youth has provided top-quality foster care services for over three decades

This is the third year running that Agape For Youth has been voted the top nonprofit for foster home placement and caregiving in the Greater Dayton Nonprofit of the Year Awards. It’s no surprise—the foster care agency has been helping families and children heal for decades, starting with its founding as a foster care placement organization in 1989.

Since then, the organization has grown to offer other services for foster parents, foster children and their biological families, helping clients with everything from preparing for adoption to reuniting children with their birth families.

“One of the cornerstones of Agape is service,” says Steven Geib, Agape executive director and founder. “What I’ve come to find over the years is that it’s about meeting someone where they’re at.”

The name Agape references the Greek word for unconditional, sacrificial love. When it comes to meeting people where they’re at, Geib recalls one memorable experience with a parent who was resistant to working with Geib and his team, for reasons that weren’t clear at first.

Eventually, they realized the root of the client’s frustration was related to literacy struggles—she needed assistance to read and complete the forms that would reunite her with her children. Once they had that breakthrough, Agape and the client were able to sit down and work through the necessary paperwork.

“Her life completely turned around, and within seven or eight months she had her children reunited with her,” Geib says. “That’s an example, there’s many times where it can be made more complicated than what it is. We just needed to meet her where she was at.”

Agape is part of the Ohio Children’s Alliance, a network of family service providers that provides assistance to organizations throughout the state.

Currently, about 80 foster families in 12 different counties work with Agape, which services all of southwest Ohio. Rodger Stauffer, Agape’s foster care manager, estimates that the number of foster children being fostered by Agape is also in the 80s. Agape also aims to support foster children after they age out of the system, providing them with the resources to stay afloat through young adulthood.

In order to foster children, prospective foster parents must complete 24 hours of pre-service training, in accordance with Ohio Department of Job and Family Service guidelines.

“In foster care, our goal is to license and train qualified families to provide safe care to these young people while they heal,” Stauffer says. “We discuss all kinds of things from child development to working with birth families to managing a child’s medication to how trauma impacts a child.”

Once they’ve completed half of their training hours, families can begin the application process for fostering children. Individuals or couples interested in pursuing foster parenthood—or those interested in getting involved in a different capacity—can learn more about the process at Agape’s website, agapeforyouth.com.