AUSTIN, Texas — Seeing a need and hoping to fill it is the mentality of Ally Smith, who works with Partnerships for Children, a local nonprofit that helps advocate for children in the Texas foster care system.
"So, my background started in case management. I was a social worker, and I worked in a lot of the removal process. And it was a tough, tough job for me," Smith said.
Through her work over the years, she noticed a common theme: food insecurity impacting families involved in foster care.
Smith said one of the first things many families ask for when they get to the Rainbow Room at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is H-E-B gift cards – but they go quickly.
She's even seen families who hesitate to foster or adopt because they're worried they won't be able to put enough food on the table for everyone.
"There should never be a family that steps up for something in the community, this massive need, and then we're saying, 'Oh, but we can't help you with' – the No. 1 thing to provide for someone is food," Smith said.
Taking matters into her own hands, Smith has been hosting local dinners benefiting these families. She's also launching a cookbook called "Gather With," looping in Austin chefs to help with the effort. All proceeds going back to the families.
One of the restaurants that will be featured in the book is Franklin's BBQ, one of Austin's most well-known barbecue joints, with a line around the block starting every morning. Co-owner Stacy Franklin showed KVUE a simplified version of her new hot sauce, which will be featured in Smith's cookbook.
"We chose our spicy sauce because that's something that hasn't been featured anywhere yet. Doing something like a brisket recipe would take up sort of half of the cookbook, so a sauce is the right way to go," Franklin said. "And this is one that's a little bit newer for us. We've only had it a couple of years, but it's my favorite sauce that we have."
You can learn more about Smith's cookbook online. To donate H-E-B gift cards to the Rainbow Room, click here.
KVUE launched the Forever Families segment with Partnerships for Children (PFC) in June 2020 to highlight children in the Heart Gallery of Central Texas who need secure and permanent families. Every day, there are nearly 1,000 children waiting to get adopted in Central Texas, according to PFC.
Editor's note: The children who are in the Heart Gallery program and featured in KVUE's Forever Families segments are children who have had every effort made on their behalf to connect them with family or others in their community to provide options for permanent, adoptive homes. Through no fault of their own, that hasn’t happened yet, and so in partnership with the Department of Family and Protective Services, we collaborate to bring awareness to KVUE viewers about these children in the hopes of finding them permanency before they age out.