Houston Chronicle by Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje Dec. 24, 2019
Foster care parents win statewide award for providing home to hundreds of kids near San Antonio
FLORESVILLE — Frank and Elizabeth Bryand had three biological children living at home when they decided to start fostering kids in the custody of state Child Protective Services.
This was back in 1996. Liz, as she’s known, had long been a baby-sitter for friends and neighbors — having a house full of children was her joy. Frank loved kids, too.
So, after going through the required training, they took in a baby who was born prematurely and had special needs.
Over the decades, the couple would go on to foster more than 600 children, all of them from CPS, a state agency that removes children from their biological parents because of abuse or neglect.
“This is my ministry, loving children,†said Liz, 56, an ebullient woman who sat in her toy-and-book-stocked home near Floresville. The five kids she and Frank currently foster, who range in age from 5 to 9, played happily in the living room, where photos of former foster care kids and inspirational sayings about God and faith line the walls.
For their service through the years, the couple was recently given the 2019 Foster Parents of the Year award by the Texas Alliance of Child and Family Services, a coalition of groups that work to help foster children and their foster families across the state.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/local/article/Foster-care-parents-win-statewide-award-for-14930044.php
