Eva Green launches children's book to spotlight foster care challenges

Chicago foster parent and advocate Eva Green has released Fostering Home, a children's book aimed at helping youth understand foster care while supporting efforts to strengthen foster families. A portion of the proceeds will help fund a platform designed to improve placement stability, caregiver retention and access to respite care.

Why it matters: - Foster care systems face a retention problem, with 50% of foster parents closing their homes within their first year. - Placement disruptions can add to trauma for children already coping with instability. - Green's book ties a children's story to a broader effort to improve how foster homes are identified, matched and supported. - The work also aims to help connect caregivers, youth and families more effectively.

What happened: - Eva Green, a Chicago-area foster parent, relative and kinship caregiver, adoptive parent, child welfare advocate and author, released the children's book Fostering Home. - The book tells the story of Wesley, a young boy navigating foster care. - Green says the book is meant to bring comfort, build confidence and normalize the idea that family can be formed through love, commitment and supportive connections. - The book is recommended for children ages 6-10, along with foster families, adoptive families, educators, social workers and other readers interested in foster care.

The details: - A portion of the book's proceeds is helping fund development of an innovative platform. - The platform is intended to improve youth stability, strengthen foster parent retention, expand access to respite care and better connect support systems for caregivers, youth and families. - Green says the book includes a discussion guide on her website for caregivers, educators and communities. - The book is also intended to open conversations about the experiences of youth in foster care and the families who care for them. - Green says some states have foster home bed capacity that far exceeds the number of youth in foster care, underscoring the need to better coordinate, identify and use licensed homes. - Green says sibling separation, placements that do not support permanency goals and public spending focused on recruitment rather than retention remain ongoing concerns. - The book's proceeds support a solution focused on foster home identification rather than only foster parent recruitment.

Between the lines: - The release pairs advocacy with a consumer product, using the book to draw attention to a systems problem that Green says is often treated as a housing or recruitment issue rather than a matching and retention issue. - Green's framing suggests the bigger opportunity is not simply finding more beds, but finding the right placements and keeping caregivers supported long enough to reduce churn. - The mention of the Trump Administration's "A Home For Every Child" effort places the book inside a broader national conversation about child welfare placement capacity.

What's next: - Green's efforts are aimed at improving caregiver retention, reducing placement disruptions and helping youth be matched with families better equipped for their needs. - The discussion guide on Green's website gives caregivers and educators a ready-made tool for using the book in conversations about foster care. - The platform funded by book proceeds is expected to advance better coordination among foster families and support systems.

The bottom line: - Fostering Home is both a children's book and a funding vehicle for foster care reform efforts that focus on stability, retention and better placement matching.

Eva Green is a professional speaker, foster parent, adoptive parent, guardian, child welfare advocate, author and change management professional based in the Chicago area. Her advocacy and writing have appeared in Influential Woman and the podcast Shining Light on Shadows. Learn more about Eva Green at her public speaking and advocacy page.