OUR PROJECTS
Playroom renovation at Life House is complete!
We were very excited to be invited to partner with Life House in Reading, PA to create a new play room/visit room for older youth and teens in foster care.
When children/teens are in foster care they have regular supervised visits with their parents and any siblings placed in other foster homes. Typically visits occur in CYS/Agency buildings in office rooms turned into small playrooms. Life House is a grass roots project in Reading, PA that was created to make visits are more natural visiting experience for families.
Before
Life House allows families to visit in a family style home - where they can cook and eat a meal together, sit on a sofa and enjoy a movie - all the things kids and parents typically do together. When Life House's founder heard about Richie's Wish she contacted us and asked if we would consider helping them create a visit room for older foster youth. Life House has some awesome play spaces for younger children and the staff have been dreaming of creating a visit space for older youth and teens.
The room features a pinball machine, a Wii with a wide assortment of games, a dart board, nerf basketball hoop, a wide selected of Lego sets that families can 'reserve' to work on over several visits, board games for families with children of every age and an array of toys that encourage interactive play. So far we have heard very positive reviews from the families utilizing this visit space.
Before
Richie's Toy Shop
Threads of Change
Richie's Toy Shop is hosted at Threads of Change, a Berks county foster closet. The 'Toy Shop' includes a brightly decorated space where children can play while their foster parents 'shop' for clothing and other needed items. The 'Toy Shop' is stocked with gently used toys that children are invited to take home with them if they wish.
The toy shop also includes a closet filled with new toys. When children newly arrive to foster care they are invited to select a new toy from the closet that is theirs to keep. Richie's Wish Fund will continue to keep this closet stocked with new toys to ensure children entering care will continue to have access to toys.
If you want to support Richie's Toy Shop you can purchase items off an Amazon Wish List here. Items purchased on the wish list ship directly to us.