Today we’d like to introduce you to Shannon Ramsey.
Hi Shannon, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’m originally from Statesboro, Georgia. I met my wife at George Southern University. We got married in 1998.
Moved off to go to Bible College, and then to seminary for a little while in New Orleans. Have the opportunity to serve staff at the church in Atlanta for a little while before stepping into the business world.
After some time, my wife and I felt led to go overseas. That launched us into a nearly decade-long career serving as missionaries in South Asia. During that time, I participated in many activities, including leading a relief agency, conducting relief projects, and various gospel-centered works.
During our time overseas, we also adopted a little boy from China when he was 2 years old.
In 2019, Our family realized that it was time for us to relocate back to America. Really good friend of mine started the organization Families 4 Families in the metro Atlanta area and asked me if I would help in launching the organization in South Georgia. He always had a vision to take the agency statewide, and this would be the next step in that process. Too much prayer and consideration, I agreed, and began launching our efforts in the fall of 2019.
At that point, it was me, my laptop, and a local coffee shop where I began to network with local churches in the effort of recruiting foster families. Looking back on the journey, I traced our office’s beginning to an awareness event held at a church that is now in Rincon, Ga. After my awareness event, we hosted an onboarding opportunity where 10 families showed up. Eight of those families began the process to become foster parents. Six of them actually followed through and became foster parents. Two weeks after that event was March 13, 2020, a day that I have labeled the day the world shut down! COVID-19 shut down began at that point, and I had no idea where we were gonna go from there. But we had our first eight families in our pipeline.
Today in 2026, we have seven full-time staff at our southeast office. We’ve cared for roughly 150 children since placing our first child in October 2020. We’ve established some one hundred plus partnerships with local churches so that we can accomplish our work.
Also, we have launched two new office areas in South Georgia branching off from the southeast office, and more children who come from abusive situations are now being cared for.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
We went through a lot of organizational struggles to make sure that we were able to put in the correct infrastructure needed in order to build a multi-office entity across the state of Georgia. There were some trial and error along the way, but ultimately the Lord gave us the direction that we needed to accomplish what we had to in order to take care of children coming from abusive situations.
The work we do is extremely important to the community, but at the same time is an extremely revolving door work as well. Though we’ve experienced wonderful growth since 2020, it is just as much work to maintain our efforts as it is to continue growing our efforts.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
What we do specialize in is partnering with local churches and faith-based communities in order to provide a pathway to couples and individuals becoming foster parents in Georgia.
What makes us unique about how we do our work is our faith in our partnership with local churches. We work through those relationships in order to make sure that our foster families are cared for in a very unique way. On average, in the state of Georgia, 50% of Foster Families quit within the first year. Statewide, we currently hold a 92% retention rate of all of our foster families due to the care and support we provide to them. Our base level of support is our case management staff that doesn’t incredible job. We then branch out in our partnerships to include monthly date nights, where our foster families can bring their biological children along with the foster children, so that we can help take care of them for a three-hour period of time. We also provide monthly support groups for mom and dad’s so they can build community as they travel as foster care journey. We also provide birthday bags to all Foster children throughout the year, along with Christmas gifts as well.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
Our founder, Wayne Naugle, has been a friend of mine for over 20 years. I was in business with him before whatever sees, and when I came back, he’s the one who offered me this opportunity.
His vision, which was born out of the experience of his wife and he had a becoming foster parents and adopting two little girls, has fueled the work that we do around the state so that children in the Georgia foster care system have a loving home and great community around them.
I’ve learned a lot from Wayne throughout the years, specifically in the areas of motivation and leadership. I still have a lot to learn, but he has been a driving force for the vision of our organization and provides ongoing support as we continue to do our work statewide.
Our Team of Local Case Managers. We have some of the most amazing ladies that help us care for our families on a day and a day out basis. Led by our case manager supervisor, Autumn Crews, serves our families in amazing ways. They are on call to meet their needs, they do their work with excellence, and they show their commitment to our kids and families through their extraordinary acts of service.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.families4families.cc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/families4familiesfostercare
