Dignity Partner Series: Isaiah 117 House Transforms ‘Removal Day’ for Children in Foster Care

Isaiah 117 House creates trauma-reducing transitional home environments for children entering foster care.

Removal day – the day a child is removed from their home and enters foster care – can be deeply traumatic. It can be a highly emotional day that triggers significant changes for the children and teens affected.

When Removal Day Became Personal

When Ronda Paulson, a former educator, began learning about the experiences of children entering foster care, she concluded that more could be done to ease the transition.

Her vision for Isaiah 117 House, transitional homes for foster youth, took shape after she became a foster mother, and eventually an adoptive mother herself. She remembers vividly the day she and her husband picked up one of their sons, their first foster child, at the back door of a Department of Children Services building. They had no items for their new son other than a borrowed outfit to replace the too-small, dirty one he was wearing.

For the diaper bag he had at the time, Paulson and her family were instructed to leave it outside for 12 to 24 hours so roaches would crawl out.

“There’s no dignity in that,” she remembers thinking.

As Paulson spoke with other foster parents, she learned that this experience was far too common. Many described picking up children with only one shoe, the clothes on their backs, or just a diaper on.

Creating a Better Beginning for Foster Care

These stories and her own lived experience led Paulson to open the first Isaiah 117 House in 2018, naming it after a scripture that inspired her to action.

Fast forward to 2025, and the organization’s reach has expanded to 13 states, where more than 16,000 foster youth have stayed in an Isaiah 117 House, where they are welcomed into a safe, comfortable, kid- and teen-friendly transition home. There, they receive new clothes, shoes, school supplies, snuggle toys, and other essentials, items that they can choose for themselves and place in a new bag, such as those provided by My Bag My Story.

The partnership between Isaiah 117 and My Bag My Story is one that Paulson says “just clicked because we have the same heart.”

“We want to see the same result, which is to change the way foster care begins for sure,” she adds.

While Paulson is encouraged by the growth of both Isaiah 117 and My Bag My Story, she says there is still much work to be done to support children in foster care.

She believes awareness and stigma remain significant barriers. For many thoughtful people, lack of action isn’t because they don’t care, “but because they don’t know,” she says.

For anyone looking to learn more about the needs of foster youth, Paulson recommends volunteering with an organization that connects them with children in foster care. She has seen the impact firsthand.

Isaiah 117 House volunteers may feel nervous about interacting with a newly arriving foster child. Paulson says the anxiety is reduced after volunteers go through trauma-informed care training, meet a child walking through the door, and ultimately realize “I'm just meeting a kid on a really hard day.”