Metro Couple Makes a Difference for Foster Kids

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — State statistics show thousands of children in the metro area are waiting for placement in foster homes. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough places to meet the demand. Tim and Tammy Spears have really stepped up to help.

Over the years, they have fostered more than 300 kids and adopted many of them. The couple has adopted 17 children.

“I know little details about each one of them,” said Tim Spears. “I know where their struggles are and where they need attention.”

They always wanted a big family but after two biological kids, they couldn’t have more so they started fostering.

“We were only thinking of foster two or three kids,” Tim said.

In 17 years, they nurtured about 300 souls, mostly teenaged boys.

“We just went with the toughest placements and it’s been boys and it seemed to work out,” he said.

The Spears house runs like a well oiled machine. The kids help with the laundry, gardening and cooking. Every week they go through about 48 rolls of toilet paper, 25 boxes of cereal and eight to 10 gallons of milk. But Michael Spears says his band of brothers is a blast and their parents are heroes.

“They are taking in kids and changing their lives entirely,” he said.

Timothy Spears says he’s just following God’s call to be a father to the fatherless and at the end of the day, he wants all the kids in his care to walk in the world, changed and ready to make a difference of their own.

“It’s always good here, always,” said son, Michael Spears.

Now, Tim and Tammy say they probably won’t adopt any more children but they laugh as they say it because that’s a promise they’ve gone back on before. At the same time, they agree that they will never stop fostering kids because the need is for good foster families in the metro is simply too big to turn their back on.

Click here for more information about adoption in Missouri. Click here for more information about adoption in Kansas.