Answering call for children in need

RUSSELLVILLE Before she became a foster parent last year, Hillary Malone Hall had volunteered for several years as a Sunday school teacher at her church, First Baptist Church of Russellville. She said she’d considered fostering children several years before but instead felt called to children’s ministry.

“I kept feeling led — that God was leading me to work with kids somewhere. I thought I knew what He needed,” Hall said. “I realized, no, that’s not what it was. There were other children in the world that needed me. It’s a ministry, really. If you’re in it for the right reasons, it is a ministry.”

While Hall said she felt a spiritual calling to become a foster parent, she said she also felt encouragement from her youngest daughter, Catherine, 16, who said she too has felt a strong calling to help children.

Although Hall’s oldest daughter, Cameron, 18, admits she was a little more reluctant than her sister for their mother to join the foster program, she said she has found the experience as rewarding as her family hoped it would be.

Once the three women were all in agreement, Hall began foster training in January 2024. She completed the 10-week course and received her license the following May.

Since that time, Hall said she and her two daughters have opened their home to 11 children in the program.

“They ended up rushing my license because there is such a need,” Hall said last week. “As of about a month or two ago, we have right at 69 kids in Franklin County who are in foster care, and we only have 24 licensed homes. Plus, you know, we have kids all over the state.”

Of the 11 children Hall has fostered, some have stayed in the Hall home for a short number of days. Others, like the 17-month-old twins Hall is currently fostering, have stayed six months or longer. The twins, she said, have been home with her since September 2024.

The children she took in for shorter stays, she explained, were housed at her home for a respite visit while their regular foster parents took a break for up to seven days.

“Of course, the ultimate goal is for foster children to return home to their mom or dad or both parents,” Hall said. “You know, sometimes people look at the parents and think the worst, but you can’t look at it like that. Whatever their situation is, if it’s drugs or alcohol, you know those parents didn’t choose that. It wasn’t intentional, and they need help and care, too.”

Since she has become a foster parent, Hall said she has made it a practice to work closely with her foster children’s parents when possible. That approach has led to two of her foster children being reunited with their biological parents.

While she was overjoyed to see those two children return to their home in the care of their parents, Hall admits that saying goodbye is often one of the most difficult challenges a foster parent faces, no matter the circumstances of a child’s departure.

“It’s sad because you’ve had them in your house for so long and they have become family to you, and you hope you have become that for them,” she said. “One of the last children I had before the twins came into our home was one of the hardest. We had to take the toddler bed out because I just couldn’t look at it. It broke my heart, but it’s a happy sad. I look at it like, you should be sad when they leave, because you know you loved them.”

Working a 9-to-5 job as a bank manager, and spending much of her free time as a volunteer at the Roxy Theatre, Hall admits another major challenge to fostering is exhaustion.

“Fostering is not easy. It isn’t for the faint of heart,” she said. “Everybody gets frustrated, but you must know how to handle the situation as it comes. I feel like I came into this at the right time because there’s no way I could have done this when I was younger. I’m 45, and as you get older, you learn more patience.”

Hall said a key to providing a safe, loving home is to also provide structure for children who might not have experienced much stability in their lives. Another key to her success, she said, is having support in her community.

Aside from the help she has in her house with her two daughters, Hall has also found assistance whenever she needed it from her church congregation.

“We have a great ministry team and a staff who have really stepped up for me and the kids,” Hall said. “It really does take a community. You know, I never really pictured myself doing this, but I’m so glad God needed me to do it. You don’t know how rewarding it truly is until you do it.”