MISSION STATEMENT:
The Mission of the Comal County Child Welfare Board is to support the victims of child abuse and neglect; ensure that the needs of Comal County children in foster care are met; and educate the local community regarding these issues.
GOALS:
Our overarching goal is to meet the needs of abused and neglected children in Comal County so they may heal from previous trauma, improve their self-confidence and self-image, achieve permanency, increase academic achievements, improve their ability to manage their behaviors, lower emotional distress, improve health, and improve the physical environment in which they live.
Our principal objectives are to provide for children’s unmet needs and focus our community’s attention on what is happening to children in Comal County. Each of our programs is designed to achieve these outcomes.
The What:
The Comal County Child Welfare Board makes every effort to provide financial assistance to children and their families who are working with Child Protective Services when no other funding is available. We partner with CPS caseworkers and community agencies to identify when a child needs our help.
What We Do
(and why what we do is so important)
The Why:
Children in foster care need safe, stable, and loving homes in which to heal and thrive while the courts give their parents the opportunity to improve their protective capacities. Most children also need new items to replace personal items that were left behind, and many need new every-day items that they never had before. Often children who are removed from their homes have little, if any time to pack personal belongings. Many removals are time-critical crisis situations, causing children to enter the Child Protective Services system with nothing more than the clothes they are wearing at that time.
When removed from their homes, some children are fortunate to have Kinship Caregivers (family members or family friends) who agree to provide them with a temporary safe and stable home. More often than not, these kinship caregivers struggle financially to meet the unexpected needs of the child they agree to care for.
In 2022, the Comal County Child Welfare Board spent over $65,000 helping Comal County children by purchasing items and services that they desperately needed and would not have been able to have otherwise.
A broad summary of some of these essentials follows:
New back-to-school clothes and supplies;
Beds, bedding, cribs and carseats;
Therapy not covered by Medicaid;
Interim day care subsidies to ensure children’s placements in safe and stable homes;
Items needed for Kinship and Adoptive families to become licensed (fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, secure medicine boxes, finger-printing fees, TB testing, etc.);
Rainbow Room Inventory;
Apartment rental assistance;
Band and orchestra instruments;
Sports camps and therapeutic camps
Child Welfare Board and United Way of Comal County:
Watch this video to learn more about our programs and how we partner with other organizations such as Carrying Hope and the New Braunfels Foster Closet.
Meet the Team
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Bethany Benson
President
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Matthew Eckman
Vice President
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Rose Latham
Secretary
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Laura Linhart-Kistner
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Aaron Broughton
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Thomas Isaacs
Treasurer
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Laci Bird
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Erin Valkner
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Michelle Schmitz
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Laurel Jensen
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Brandy Russell
WHO WE ARE:
The Comal County Child Welfare Board is a non-profit 501(c)(3), all-volunteer board, appointed by the Comal County Commissioners Court. Our budget is funded solely from donations and grants. Our Board is governed by 7-15 Comal County residents who share a passion for protecting children from abuse and neglect and assisting the child victims to heal.