On the last Wednesday in January, Kathy DiVincenzo darted around a warehouse on Cleveland's West Side. She paused to speak with a young girl, who came with her mother to donate toys.
"Do you know how happy that's going to make someone?" she asked the girl gently. "It's such a blessing. Will you do me a favor? Will you walk back into the room with me and put it on the shelf?"
DiVincenzo's organization, Honey From the Rock — also known as the Cleveland Foster Care Closet — moved in to the space in November. She and her best friend, Taylor Thorpe, founded the organization to serve Cleveland's foster care community.
Both women have experienced the need for support for foster care families firsthand. DiVincenzo and her husband have a foster son in addition to two children of their own, while Thorpe has been a foster parent since she was a 23-year-old college student.
"I was like, 'OK, I'll do that when I'm married and established,'" Thorpe recalled. "And I saw literal billboards that said, 'We need foster parents,' and so I was like, 'OK, this is something that the Lord is asking me to do right now.'”
Opening their homes to foster children led both women to understand the commitment required to provide such care — a responsibility some might shy from due to finances.
“So we would be getting a call [saying,] 'Hey, you're going to get an 18-month-old to your home within an hour. Can you say yes?'" DiVincenzo said. "Of course, I would say yes, but knowing that I would be going to Target immediately and picking up close to $250, $300 worth of items just to welcome them into my home.”
There are currently more than 2,000 children in Cuyahoga County custody, and half of those are in foster care, according to the county. But for the nearly 17,000 children in custody statewide, there are only 7,000 licensed foster homes to meet this need, according to Pathway Caring for Children — possibly in part due to the financial commitments.
DiVincenzo, who has a background in marketing, and Thorpe, who is a psychiatric physician assistant, sought to help other foster families bridge the gap between welcoming a foster child and receiving a county voucher that typically arrives a few weeks after a placement.
"And by then, we've already bought the majority of their wardrobe," DiVincenzo added. "So I was thinking to myself, how many more safe and loving homes would be able to say yes if they knew that immediate financial burden of tangible needs could be met for them?"
DiVincenzo said she was shocked to discover Cleveland didn’t previously have a foster care closet, given that Cuyahoga County led the state in foster care cases in 2021, according to the most recent data available via Children's Defense Fund.
At Honey From the Rock, families and foster children can pick up supplies free of charge. They also serve kinship families — or relatives who become a child's caregiver — as well as recently reunified families. Items are donated and vetted before families can book an appointment to browse for everything from clothes and shoes to toys and high chairs.
The organization received so many donations during its first month, it had to freeze its intake until late January. DiVincenzo said she tries to keep the atmosphere the same as a private store to help children in foster care maintain a level of dignity.
“Especially for our older children experiencing care, they can come in, go into our fitting room, ensure it's the perfect fit. It meets their style. They're choosing it," she said.
More than 36 children received support from the closet within its first three weeks of operation, including the Spero family.
Julia Spero and her husband currently foster a 17-month-old girl. She’s their first foster child, and was placed in their home last year with just a few hours’ notice.
"So we went from nothing to everything really fast," Spero said when she brought her foster daughter to the closet for shoes. "And little miss over here needed a whole lot of things that we just didn't have in our home.”
The couple previously visited a foster care closet in Stow, like Rachel Gonzalez, who also fosters children with her husband. She said the urgency for support became clear to her about a year ago.
"Our first foster son came with just the clothes on his back, so he had no belongings with him," Gonzalez explained. "We quickly had to run out to the store and buy clothing and diapers and all of these things."
Plans for the future
Thorpe and DiVincenzo are already planning to grow. Their five-year plan is to create a resource hub at their warehouse for foster families, complete with the donation closet, support groups and a visitation space for biological families.
“They're going to have that full wraparound community support. We're going to know these families. They're not going to just be in-and-out for a visitation once a week," DiVincenzo said.
Donations for Honey From the Rock can be dropped off curbside at their Cleveland warehouse on Wednesday nights from 6 to 8 p.m. Appointments to browse the closet or to receive a foster care package can be scheduled at clevelandfostercarecloset.com.
