MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Every Tuesday as part of our Greater Memphis on a Mission series, we highlight organizations making Memphis better. This week, we caught up with a group that believes in making lives whole for children.

Chelsey and Taylor Griggs are house parents in one of the six cottages for the Palmer Home for Children. They have four children of their own but wanted to share their love with as many children as possible.

“Just being there for them and meeting them where they are. because you don’t always know what their background was before they came here,” Chelsey said.

“These kids don’t ask for the circumstances that they may or may not be in, and so it’s God giving us the grace to extend that onto these children and to love them,” said Taylor.

Palmer Home for Children is a faith-based organization that provides a family and community to children in need. They serve children who have been impacted by adversity and trauma. Whit Lewis is the Senior Director of Community Partnership.

“Everything that they’ve known in their life, and in a split second, they may be in a whole new different place with people that they don’t know and a place they don’t know, that they never expected. And these house parents are the ones on the front lines of meeting to care for them,” said Lewis.

There are four service lines within the Palmer Home for Children.

First is campus care, where the children live on campus in a stable home environment. Next is foster care.

“We’re a private foster care agency in which we want young people to know what it feels like to grow up in a family and in a home,” Lewis said.

They also offer family care.

“Which is a temporary foster care placement for incarcerated mothers in prison that give birth to a child and they have to go back and finish off their sentences,” he said.

And finally, transitional care for 18 to 24 year olds. At Palmer Home for Children, you don’t age out of care, they are with you every step of the way.

“Really figuring out what they want to do in life and having coaches to come alongside of them with things like college, or military, or work. How to get a loan for a car or a house and things along those lines. So just sort of helping take those next steps into their future and independence,” said Lewis.

That is why Brown Missionary Baptist Church and the Mid-South Genesis CDC donated $1,000 to the Palmer Home for Children. Because change is very difficult, but having stable and steady support that offers hope and a path forward is priceless.