Divinity Family Services: Randy Rose grew up on the campus. He never left.

Randy Rose was eight years old when his family moved to the Medina Children’s Home — now known as Arms of Hope. He grew up on the campus. He came back after college. He has spent his entire adult life in child welfare.

In 2009, Rose partnered with co-founder Anna Pruiyt, a licensed professional counselor who was then serving as social services director at Arms of Hope, to incorporate Divinity Family Services. They placed their first child in June 2010. The organization is now 16 years old and has 252 children actively in its care, with a footprint spanning the Hill Country, Austin, and the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Rose appeared Friday on The Lead Live’s Nonprofit Week without sugarcoating what he does.

“You are bringing somebody else’s child in that’s coming from a very difficult or hard place and you’re opening up your home and your life to these children — and also opening yourself up to a lot of inspection,” he said. “You have to be willing to embrace that and understand that you’re kind of giving up your privacy.”

The licensing process for prospective foster families is, by Rose’s own description, grueling: intensive orientations, background checks, fire and health safety inspections, and extensive interviews with the entire family circle — relatives and friends included. Depending on the family’s circumstances, it takes anywhere from three weeks to six months.

Divinity’s primary niche is kinship care — relatives stepping in to care for children from their own family. Grandparents raising grandchildren. Aunts and uncles taking in nieces and nephews. These placements often happen suddenly, without financial preparation, and the licensing requirements can be impossible to meet without help. That is where private donations come in.

The organization’s state contract covers all overhead and staff salaries. One hundred percent of privately donated dollars go directly to families — paying for mobile home skirting, building access stairs, covering auto insurance for struggling grandparents, or providing rental assistance. One notable use of funds: buying a car for an 18-year-old aging out of the foster system who needed transportation to keep his job.

Rose credited the Hill Country Charity Ball Association — which appeared on The Lead Live earlier Friday — with providing the kind of flexible, fast-deploying philanthropic funding that state grants cannot replicate.

The regulatory environment Rose navigates is among the most complex in Texas human services. Divinity answers to childcare licensing, CPS, state contracts, and relatively new regional Single Source Continuum Contractors under Texas’ community-based care model. The most frustrating element, Rose said, has been the long-running federal foster care lawsuit, which triggered constant operational changes after every court hearing.

“The single most frustrating piece of what we do,” he said.

The recent removal of federal Judge Janis Graham Jack from the case has brought what Rose called “breathing room.” But a separate legislative development presents its own complications: state laws passed in recent sessions have significantly limited the ability of CPS investigators and courts to remove children from troubled homes. The stated purpose was to reduce the number of children entering the system — and it has done that. The unintended consequence is that some children are now left in genuinely dangerous situations longer because the legal threshold for removal has been raised.

The lows of the work are real. Some children carry too much trauma to overcome. Some die while in state care.

The highs are also real.

“The high is when I get to celebrate,” Rose said. “We celebrate every adoption. We send out pictures to our team, and those are my favorite days. That’s when you see the whole work culminating — in these children achieving permanency.”

The ultimate goal, for every child Divinity serves, is a forever home.

“A safe, healthy, happy child that eventually finds a loving, permanent home,” Rose said. “That is the ultimate.”

Divinity is pursuing expansion into Houston, Corpus Christi, and the Rio Grande Valley.

To support Divinity Family Services or inquire about foster care licensing: divinityfamilyservices.com.