Fostering Change

Welcome back to our “Best of Season 5” series. Maybe you’ll be listening to this on the beach as you celebrate Independence Day, in your car on your way to work, or at home. Wherever you listen, we thank you for your support!

Today we revisit our interview with Laura, whose mission is to educate and support people about the foster care system. Often, new foster parents are not prepared for everything they need to know before the...

Welcome to our first episode of Fostering Change’s “Best of Season 5”. Today, we revisit Rob’s interview with Mark Daley, author of SAFE: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family.  We knew right away that this interview would be in our “Best of” series, and we think you’ll agree.  So whether this is your first, second or third time listening to this interview, please enjoy!

Today, on Foster...

Welcome to the Final Episode of Season 5.  Thank you for joining us on this journey - whether you’re a new listener or if you’ve been with us all five seasons.

Season 6 will debut in September, but following today’s episode, we will air some of our favorite episodes from the past season once again bi-weekly. So stay tuned!

And for our final episode of the season, we wanted to go out on a HIGH NOTE, and couldn’t have look...

Welcome to the final episode of Fostering Change for National Foster Care Awareness Month.  We hope you have done something meaningful to help our youth, the fantastic people who work in social services, our teachers… and yourself.  This is the month they “give us,” but as Rob often shares, “when you invest in a child, you invest in YOUR future… because they are the leaders of tomorrow.”

We end this month with a very s...

Today we share the story of an amazing woman who has the biggest heart - the epitome of what we love to call a “Good Human”. 

We’ll learn how in the period of just 3 years, Kate Rapier quickly went from being single, to becoming a foster mom, soon an adoptive parent of two and then married to a man with 3 wonderful kids from a previous marriage!

Kate was single when she first began the process of becoming a foster parent...

As you likely recall, in Season 5, we moved to posting new episodes of Fostering Change bi-weekly. Well, we’ve just met so many amazing humans that we thought we’d make an exception during National Foster Care Awareness Month, so we have four episodes running this month!  

Before we get on to today’s show with the amazing Benjy Grinberg, just a suggestion to visit the Comfort Cases website - www.comfortcases.org, and see a...

May 1 was the first day of National Foster Care Awareness Month. The team at Comfort Cases wants to take a moment to thank and recognize all of the foster parents, foster families, youth who are currently in foster care and those who have “aged out”. Thank you to the CASAs and the social service agencies and workers who are doing their best.

And thank you to YOU, our faithful (and new) listeners of Fostering Change. We produce t...

Today’s episode of Fostering Change is an in depth discussion with Susan Rich, founder and president of 7th Generation Foundation, about FAS: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.  

FAS is close to home to our host, Rob Scheer, as one of Rob’s children has FAS.  And although the diagnosis for Rob’s son was that he may never walk, or even talk, his son has achieved amazing things in his life, including being the President of his...

After you listen to today’s episode of Fostering Change, take a moment. Take a breath. Reflect on what you heard, and ponder how you would handle the situations that our guest Jackie Polk faced.

Here is part of the note Jackie sent us when she inquired about sharing her story:

I'm a boy mom of 3. I have 8 year old twins, and an 11 month old baby. 6 years ago I completely rebuilt my life from rock bottom. My rock bottom was fi...

Jerold Hawkins was introduced to Rob Scheer and Comfort Cases in 2023 when the company he works for, Aptiv, held a “Packing Party,” packing up backpacks filled with new essential items to be delivered to local social service agencies for distribution to youth entering foster care in Michigan.

Following the event, Jerold reached out to us because he wanted to share his story: his experience in foster care, moving to a variety...

Today, we welcome back a wonderful guest, Charell Star. We first discovered Charell in 2021 from the “Humans of New York” column and video she was featured. We wanted Charell to come back on our podcast to give us an update on her work in the foster care system since then.

Charell shares her common experiences with CASA and talks with Rob about the needs of youth in foster care, especially to promote reunification.

“If we we...

Often times when children are removed from their homes and brought to a social service agency or law enforcement office, they are not placed in a foster home immediately, and have to spend hours, a whole night, or even days sitting on an uncomfortable office chair, a lumpy couch or maybe an air mattress tucked under a desk. No privacy, and no dignity.

Jennifer Tice and her team at LilyPad: A Soft Place to Land have taken steps t...

Happy Valentine’s Day! (one day early)

On today’s special episode, of Fostering Change we bring in two of our favorite married couples:

David & Julie Bulitt and Rob & Reece Scheer!  Yes, our host and his husband - co-founders of Comfort Cases - discuss relationships, particularly the issues faced by parents who adopt children and how to keep the marital relationship going strong!

David & Julie have appeared on...

Today, on Fostering Change, Comfort Cases’ founder Rob Scheer has an enlightening conversation with Mark Daley, author of SAFE: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family.  The book offers a deeply personal window into what happens when the universal longing for family crashes up against the unique madness and bureaucracy of a child protection system that often fails to consider the needs of the most...

Comfort Cases is so lucky to have many friends and supporters from around the world.  In 2022 we opened our first international center, Comfort CasesUK (https://comfortcasesuk.org/).  On today’s episode, we welcome a guest from England, our friend Kevin Leslie.

Kevin is known for many movie and tv roles, most recently appearing in the Christmas movie: Christmas at the Holly Day Inn.  Today on Fostering Change, Rob...

Welcome to 2024! The entire team at Comfort Cases hopes you had a festive, and happy holiday season.  Note that we didn’t write “restful”, as we know the past few weeks are generally the busiest time of year.

This is why we are starting off our 2024 season right, with an interview with Ashley Neese, author of Permission to Rest: Revolutionary Practices for Healing, Empowerment, and Collective Care. 

Ashley Neese is ...

Today is a special episode of Fostering Change (well, all our episodes are special, but this one has a very special significance!) It’s the final episode of 2023 AND, today’s episode marks the 200th Episode of Fostering Change. Amazing that we’ve reached this important milestone in our 5th season! And the past 3 seasons, we’ve been named the #1 podcast for issues about Adoption and Foster Care!

We couldn’t have achieved this w...

If you’ve watched or listened to Fostering Change before, or you’ve seen Rob Scheer speak at an event or a Comfort Cases “Packing Party”, you know that he loves to promote people who are doing great things for others - what he calls “Good Humans.” Well, on today’s episode you’ll meet one of the “goodest of them all,” Marcy Bursac.

Scaling her lived experience as an adoptive mom of a sibling pair, Marcy advocates for the more tha...

Prepare yourself for an interview with a woman who defines the term “resilience.”  Regina Calcaterra’s memoir Etched in Sand, A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island is a #1 international best-seller and a New York Times best-seller.  As a result of Etched in Sand’s messages of resilience, optimism, the plight of foster children, that no child is a lost cause and how we can all p...