Shanae Griffin was working a minimum wage job at a local fast-food restaurant and barely able to pay her bills. Then her rent went up.
“I knew I would be homeless with four kids,” she recalled.
She found a place for her two oldest children to stay, but when she was evicted, she and
her 4-year-old twins began living in a car or at a hotel.
“It was scary at first. I wanted my girls to be safe,” Griffin said.
St. Matthew’s House in Naples had room for her in its women’s shelter, but there was no place for the girls. As Griffin was looking for additional help, she discovered Better Together.
Better Together is a local non-profit that pairs families in need with families that can help. The nonprofit helps parents experiencing financial difficulties, medical crises, domestic violence, unemployment, or underemployment, with the goal of keeping children out of foster care by relying on volunteers, the church community, and donors. The group says it is simply neighbors helping neighbors.
Background checks and home visits are conducted by Better Together for each volunteering family. Then the nonprofit matches children with volunteer families. The average stay for a child is 41 days, and 90 percent of families are reunited in 90 days or less. Some children stay for as little as one day. Better Together has helped more than 12,000 children since it launched in 2015.
Families reach out to Better Together for a variety of reasons. For Griffin, it was the escalating cost of living in Southwest Florida.
“Now in Florida, it is so ridiculous. Everything is so expensive,” Griffin said. “I am the single mother of four kids. How can I get two jobs?”
Griffin’s daughters, Chrniyah and Janiyah Davis, went to live with the Fuller family in Collier County. Griffin admitted that it was hard to hand her twins over to strangers.
“It was scary, but I knew I was doing it for the right reason,” she explained. “I knew they were sleeping comfortably, going to school, being cared for, learning manners.”
Sharing their home
While the twins lived with their host family, Griffin was able to move into St. Matthew’s House and get a higher paying job at a convenience store. Meanwhile Chrniyah and Janiyah lived the more typical life of 4-year-olds. They attended preschool, learned simple tasks like how to set a table, slept in real beds, attended sporting events, took dance lessons, and went on vacation.
Abby and Isaac Fuller and their children, Noelle (14) and Troy (10), welcomed the girls. Noelle gave up her bed and let the twins share her room.
“It was fun,” Noelle said. “My room is big enough to share with them. I played with them. I put on new bed sheets with mermaids and princesses and put up dollhouses and we got some wooden dressers.”
“They joined our family because they didn’t have a home,” Troy added. “I loved how they were here with us. It was like having little sisters.”
Abby and Isaac Fuller said the experience was very rewarding.
“I always had a big heart for kids who are without,” Abby Fuller said. “I always felt like I wanted a house full of kids.”
She said Better Together works well for her family because they can help a child without a long-term commitment.
“We weren’t going to foster because that leads to adoption, but Better Together leads to reunification,” she explained.
A typical life
The Fullers wanted to expose the girls to as much of a typical life as possible.
“The best thing [for kids] is to have a schedule,” Abby Fuller explained. “We had to teach them how to play. It was having them helping with dinner, learning to wash their hands – all the daily things that people take for granted. We taught them how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and how to put on their own socks and shoes. We were teaching them to be independent.”
They also took the girls swimming, got them bicycles through Bikes for Tykes, and included them in family outings.
This wasn’t the first time the Fullers hosted children. A year earlier, they had a 4-year-old boy living with them. The child had been living with his mom in a Walmart parking lot before arriving at the Fullers’ home.
“We potty trained him because he didn’t have access to a toilet before,” Abby Fuller said.
The Fullers say it is hard when the children go back home, but they know that is the goal. The couple would like to host children again in the future.
“Better Together asked us why we wanted to do this, and I said, ‘We want to help’,” Abby Fuller said. “We aren’t rich, but we are fortunate to have a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house. We have the room. We like to serve.”
Families helping families in Naples
Megan Rose, CEO of Better Together, founded the organization in Naples in 2015. Now there are chapters across Florida, except in Miami and the Panhandle. She hopes to include those areas soon and eventually expand into other states.
“I used to work in the child welfare system, and I saw how hard it is for families,” Rose said. “My family struggled when I was growing up and volunteers helped, and we were able to get out of [the difficulties] without the government getting involved.”
Rose has hosted 26 children over the years. She took care of a toddler for a few days while his mother prepared her home for Hurricane Ian. She hosted three children while their mother left a violent situation at home.
“Now they are in a safe place,” she said. “Many families don’t have a lot of good, safe choices. There are families that have a sick child, but if they leave work, they don’t get paid and can’t pay their bills. The families seeking help could be homeless, could have a medical emergency, could have an addiction and want to get help, but don’t have the support for their kids. It could be single parents going through an unplanned change.”
There are currently almost 200 host families in Southwest Florida, but Rose said a lot more are needed. She noted that hosts come from all walks of life—college students, married couples, singles, retirees, snowbirds, and more.
“It is something everyone can do,” she said. “It really is rewarding. We build relationships that will last. We have a great need. There are so many families in the community that need help. Our motto is families helping families.”