Long before Shannon Battle founded a foster care agency in Fayetteville, she was an 11th grader at Westover High School, quietly carrying burdens she didn’t know how to explain.
It was 1993, and Battle was growing up with both parents struggling with drug addiction. What was happening at home had begun spilling into her life at school. She was skipping school, failing classes, and had been kicked off the cheerleading squad. Looking back, Battle said the hardest part wasn’t simply what she was experiencing—it was that she didn’t know how to communicate what was happening at home.
“I was struggling because I did not have a way to communicate what was happening at home,” she said. “I knew how to just smile and pretend.”
Then, one day, a school administrator called her into the office.
“She said, ‘Shannon, what’s going on with you?’ I didn’t even know she’d noticed,” Battle recalled. “I was like, ‘Nothing. I’m fine.'”
For Battle, staying quiet had become a way of protecting what was happening at home.
“I didn’t know who to trust because I was trying to protect what was going on at home by keeping silent while suffering silently,” she said.
The administrator helped Battle enroll in an evening program to make up the school days she missed, worked with her teachers to get her back on track academically, and arranged for her to attend summer school so she could graduate without returning for another full year of high school.
Battle still remembers the urgency she felt at the time.
“I told her, ‘If I have to come back to school another year, I’m not going to make it,'” she said. “She was like, ‘You are a smart girl. What are you doing?'”
More than three decades later, Battle still traces much of her life’s work back to that conversation.
“When I speak and I talk about what significant milestones happened in my life that helped me get to where I am today, it was because of an administrator,” she said.
Today, Battle is the founder, president, and executive clinical director of Family Services of America, a Fayetteville-based behavioral health and foster care agency. This summer, the organization launched the Teacher Respite Initiative, an effort to recruit educators to become licensed respite caregivers for children in foster care.
The idea is rooted in a question that connects Battle’s own experience as a teenager to the work she does today: What if some of the people best equipped to support children in foster care are already standing at the front of the classroom?
The initiative offers educators another way to support children without becoming full-time foster parents. Licensed respite caregivers provide temporary care for children already placed with foster families, stepping in when caregivers need time to rest, respond to emergencies, or simply recharge.
The need is significant.
Nearly 11,000 children are in foster care across North Carolina, while only about 5,800 licensed foster homes are available statewide, leaving many foster families with few options when they need temporary relief.
In Cumberland County, 714 children are currently in foster care, according to the Cumberland County Department of Social Services. About 49 children are awaiting adoption.
The department currently has 38 licensed foster homes and no homes licensed exclusively for respite care, though those figures do not include homes licensed through private agencies.
Capacity remains one of the greatest challenges facing the county’s foster care system, according to DSS. There are not enough available homes and a diminishing number of foster parents willing to accept children with even minimal behavioral or other needs.
The department described the need for additional foster families and respite caregivers as “critical,” with the shortage resulting in some children being placed outside Cumberland County and, at times, outside North Carolina—disconnecting them from their home communities, schools, and family connections.
For Battle, the connection between education and foster care has never been theoretical. The work she does today is, in many ways, an extension of what one educator did for her more than 30 years ago.
“Teachers have more of an impact than what people in the community realize,” she said.
Teachers Already See What Others Don’t
The Teacher Respite Initiative wasn’t born solely from Battle’s own experience. It also grew out of years spent listening to foster parents overwhelmed by the emotional demands of caring for children who have experienced trauma and to educators who increasingly found themselves serving as counselors, mentors, and crisis responders alongside their teaching responsibilities.
Rather than viewing those as separate challenges, Battle came to believe they were deeply connected.
“The teachers are your first line of support for your children,” she said. “Most of the time, the teachers are already doing the work.”
The initiative, she said, is designed to create an opportunity for teachers who already feel called to support children beyond the classroom but may never have considered foster care as another way to answer that calling.
When Battle thought about the kind of educator she hoped would see themselves in the initiative, one person immediately came to mind: Michelle Smith, a Cumberland County Schools exceptional children’s preschool teacher whose commitment to children has long extended beyond the walls of her classroom.
‘They’re Still My Children’
For Smith, caring for children has never been confined to the classroom.
Long before she became a teacher, Smith understood what it felt like to need someone in her corner. As a teen mother, she left school to care for her daughter, an experience that shaped the way she would spend the rest of her life serving young people.
“I didn’t have that support,” Smith said. “I’ve always wanted to be that support for young girls—and young men, too—but young girls were who I wanted to reach out to because we get lost. If you don’t have that support, especially at home, who do we go to? Who do we trust?”
That desire to become the person she once needed eventually led Smith to Family Services of America, where she became a licensed foster parent and spent roughly two decades opening her home to children who had been removed from theirs. Some arrived for only a short time. Others stayed long enough to become part of her family.
One former foster child, now 34 and raising four children of her own, still calls Smith before making major life decisions.
“She would not make a move without calling me,” Smith said. “She’d be like, ‘Thank you for being my therapist.'”
Another pair of siblings first came to Smith when they were just 3 and 5 years old. They’re now 13 and 16, but they still ask if they can spend time at her house.
“They still say, ‘Grandma, can we come over?'” Smith said with a laugh. “So my house is always open. They’re still my children.”
Those relationships are one reason Smith believes respite care often becomes something much deeper than a temporary commitment.
“Once you see what these kids need and what’s missing in their life, you’re going to want to give it to them,” she said. “You’re going to want to offer it to them.”
Today, that same instinct shapes the way she teaches.
Smith said she leaves her contact information with teenage mothers at schools like Alger B. Wilkins High School because she knows many are trying to finish school while raising children of their own. If they need diapers, formula, or simply someone to call, she wants them to know they don’t have to figure it out alone.
“I don’t want you to have to go out here and figure out the wrong way to get it,” she said. “Call me. I’ll drop some diapers off to you. Call me, I’ll find you some milk. I just don’t want that negativity from the community and other sources to disrupt our young women.”
She hopes that guidance can help interrupt the same cycles she has witnessed throughout her years in foster care.
“These young ladies need somewhere to go,” Smith said. “They need some guidance. Some of them are really, truly homeless, and these babies are out here, and that’s how they end up in foster care. If we can give them the guidance that they need, put them on the right track, teach them how to be parents, and give them the tools that they need, I just believe that would help.”
Battle said educators like Smith are exactly who the Teacher Respite Initiative hopes to reach. Some educator already possess the compassion, commitment, and emotional intelligence demanded of respite caregivers..
“Some people are there to educate, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all,” Battle said. “But when you have those who feel like there’s a deeper draw to be able to do something more when they have the right tools and the right support, they’re able to love with boundaries and not experience burnout.”
Today, Smith continues teaching full time while still providing respite care on alternating weekends. After years of fostering, mentoring, and advocating for children, she said she no longer sees those roles as separate parts of her life.
“I just love the children,” she said. “I just want to see them make it.”
‘Come Here—Let’s Have a Conversation’
Battle doesn’t believe teachers should become respite caregivers simply because they work with children. She believes they’re uniquely positioned because, whether they realize it or not, many already spend their days responding to the very challenges that often lead children into the foster care system.
In her years working with foster families across North Carolina, she has come to see child welfare and education as inseparable. A child experiencing hunger, neglect, or instability doesn’t leave those realities at home when the morning bell rings. Instead, children arrive in classrooms carrying those experiences with them, often in ways that show up as anxiety, behavioral struggles, or difficulty focusing on schoolwork.
“If that child comes to school hungry, they don’t say, ‘I’m going to leave hunger until lunch and just focus while I’m in class,'” Battle said. “When they have trauma at home, that doesn’t stay at the door of the school. It comes with them in the classroom.”
Smith said she sees those realities every day.
In her classroom, a cabinet stocked with peanut butter crackers, juice boxes, and other snacks has become just as essential as lesson plans. Students know they can stop by if they’re hungry, and so do fellow teachers.
“Anybody, any teacher can come, any kid can come,” Smith said. “If they need it, they can come down to my room.”
Those experiences have also shaped the way she responds when a child is struggling emotionally. Rather than seeing disruptive behavior as something to be corrected, Smith said she tries to understand what might be happening beneath the surface.
“I see some kids in that hallway having a meltdown,” she said. “‘Come here—let’s have a conversation.’ They might not have those conversations at home. They might not be able to express themselves at home. So we, as educators, can be that voice for them.”
That perspective, Battle argued, is exactly what makes educators valuable partners in respite care. She wants the initiative to reach educators who have long felt called to help children outside the classroom, but never knew there was a way to do so without becoming full-time foster parents.
“It’s a choice,” Battle said. “We’re not begging anyone to do anything outside the scope of what they want to do.”
For Smith, that’s an important distinction. She knows firsthand that fostering isn’t for everyone, and she doesn’t believe every educator should feel obligated to participate. But she also knows colleagues who have formed deep connections with students and have quietly wondered how they could help beyond the school day.
“They want to help, but they didn’t know how to do this without long-term responsibility,” Smith said.
One Teacher at a Time
For many educators, the biggest misconception about foster care is that the only way to help is by opening their home full time, and Battle hopes the Teacher Respite Initiative changes that perception.
Respite caregivers are licensed foster parents who provide temporary care for children already placed with another foster family. The arrangement is designed to strengthen placements by giving foster families support before stress reaches the point of burnout.
“It’s just maybe for crisis stabilization, just to give some relief to a foster parent,” Battle said.
Educators who participate complete the same licensing process required of traditional foster parents, including 40 hours of trauma-informed training, CPR and first aid certification, cultural competency instruction, and ongoing continuing education.
Those interested in serving children with specific needs can also receive additional training focused on areas such as autism spectrum disorder, intellectual and developmental disabilities, medical fragility, and substance use.
Battle said the training extends well beyond preparing someone to care for a child in foster care. Many of the skills—such as building trust, conducting intentional daily check-ins, and creating structured family conversations—are equally valuable in classrooms and at home.
“When they’re learning that type of training for fostering, that’s a skill set that you can use with your own children,” she said. “That’s something that you can teach as a teacher.”
The organization launched the initiative with the goal of recruiting educators from Cumberland, Hoke, Harnett, Mecklenburg, Nash, and surrounding counties, but Battle’s long-term vision reaches much further.
While working on her doctoral dissertation, she studied a foster parent recruitment effort in Rhode Island that licensed nearly 200 foster families during a single recruitment campaign. She believes a similar approach—one focused specifically on educators—could eventually be replicated across North Carolina.
Battle wants to recruit a few educators from multiple campuses and gradually build a larger network. Her broader goal is to reach eight to 12 educators within individual school districts and eventually build a network of more than 100 respite caregivers across North Carolina.
“It’s very plausible,” Battle said.
For Battle, the initiative has always been about creating another pathway for people who already feel called to serve children. For Smith, it’s another reminder that the relationships teachers build every day don’t always have to end when students leave the classroom.
More than three decades have passed since Battle sat in a school administrator’s office at Westover High School, convinced that no one noticed what she was carrying. Today, she still remembers the educator who refused to let her suffer in silence.
For Battle, the Teacher Respite Initiative isn’t asking educators to become heroes. It’s asking those who already feel called to care for children beyond the classroom to recognize there is another way to answer that calling.
“I think if they need to start, just start by asking questions,” Battle said. “Just be curious about it. Even if it’s not for you, it may be enough information that you can share with someone else.”
For Smith, that curiosity became a commitment long ago. After years of fostering, teaching, and mentoring children, she still spends every other weekend providing respite care. It’s work she never truly walked away from because, she said, once you’ve seen the difference a stable, caring adult can make in a child’s life, it’s difficult to stop looking for ways to provide it.
“I just love the children,” Smith said. “I just want to see them make it. I want some of that positivity to stick with them so they can help somebody else make this world a better place.”
Educators interested in learning more about becoming respite caregivers can attend an informational session, speak with Family Services of America’s foster care team, or submit an online interest form.
