Woman of the Year: Carlee Howie fights to keep kids out of foster care through Strong Families

Carlee Howie spends most of her days talking to local moms who are desperate for help.

Howie is the program manager at Eastern Washington for Olive Crest Strong Families’ Safe Kids program. The program is for families in crisis and typically helps single parents by giving kids a safe place to stay while a parent gets the help they need. Strong Families is a Christian organization, but it serves anyone in need, regardless of faith.

“Everything we do is to strengthen families and keep kids safe,” Howie said. “We host children through volunteer host families that are highly screened to make sure that we are keeping kids safe, preventing foster care and drawing families out from social isolation.”

Strong Families has 50 volunteer host families in Spokane County, Howie said. Most of the children helped are younger than 10, and include infants. It’s hard to find families willing to host teens, Howie said. On average, children stay with host families for two to five days.

“It’s not easy work,” Howie said. “It’s very selfless and costly work to take care of other people’s kids.”

No host family is compensated for taking in kids. Howie also hosts kids at her home.

Families are typically referred to Strong Families by local hospitals, homeless shelters and churches before any harm has happened to the children. Howie asks to talk to the birth parents every time a referral is called in because she understands they might feel scared.

“These are their children. They’re the most important things to them, and oftentimes, those kids are all they have,” Howie said.

Harm happens when families are isolated and have no safe place for their children, Howie said. Her goal is to provide a support system for the parents who don’t have one. If harm has occurred, Howie and her team report it.

“Our hope is that the parent or that family feels safe with us and that they will call us again if they get into any type of situation,” Howie said. “We reach out to that same host family, and if they’re available, they usually repeat host . Then we’re creating the safety net for the families in our community that are isolated.”

Howie and her husband, Josh Howie, have six kids – four biological and two adopted. The oldest will be 19 in December, and the youngest is 8. The Howies were foster parents to their youngest two children for years before adopting them. The process was a hard one, Carlee said, because the kids were hurt and removed from their original home. It was during those hard years that she decided to become a part of Strong Families.

“There was a presentation at my church, and I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do,’ ” Carlee said.

Preventing kids from being hurt and separated from their birth parents has since become a passion for Howie.

“Anybody knows the foster care system is overloaded. It is the program she is running that is keeping kids from getting into foster care. She’s stopping the leak before it becomes a flood,” said Georgann Howie, Carlee’s mother-in-law.

Georgann was the one who nominated Carlee for Woman of the Year. She did it because Carlee’s life has been a life full of sacrifice.

“I married up,” Josh said, laughing. “She’s my best friend. We have very common goals in life.”

A lot of that is because of the faith they share, Josh said. The Howies attend Seven Mile Church.

“It’s attractive to have a wife that is devoted to being a light in this world. And there’s a lot of darkness. We both see it very clearly,” Josh said.

Carlee Howie has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in public administration. She started as an intake coordinator after saying no three times because she was busy at home with her kids.

“We take on a little bit of somebody else’s chaos, and they get a little bit of our normal. And the kids get a picture of something very different. We’re not just giving moms a break, we’re also giving kids a break,” Carlee said.

That break may be from living in a car, a tent or a homeless shelter – Carlee helps kids and families from all kinds of situations.

“My children’s story really gave me a heart for families that are struggling,” she said. “Foster care has its place, and, obviously, I’m a foster mom and I have adopted children, and I would foster again, but the work that we do with Strong Families is very powerful to me.”

Her favorite part of the job is talking with birth moms who have reached out to Strong Families for help, Carlee said.

“They’re in a very desperate place,” she said. “And I love knowing that I can keep their kids safe for them … and help them get to where they can continue being a mom.”