“There are a lot of hurting people in Great Bend,” Central Kansas Dream Center Director Kimberly Becker said.  
Becker comes face to face each day with the outcomes of families that struggle to provide stable homes for their children.  In years past, she fostered many children, and knows first-hand the challenges they face when they enter the foster care system.
So when Perfect Love Prayer Ministry put out the call for potential locations for the next Call to Prayer for Child Welfare in Kansas, she stepped out in faith and contacted Nina Shaw-Woody with Perfect Love and volunteered to host call in Great Bend.  The one-day event will be held Friday, June 26 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Central Kansas Dream Center chapel, located at 2100 Broadway Ave.  
According to Becker, the prayer is in response to a 2014 Kansas Department of Children and Families out-of-home report, which shows 1,120 children from Western Kansas were placed in foster care, part of the 6,167 children placed in foster care statewide.
The first Call For Prayer took place in Wichita on January 30 at the Word of Christ Church World Champion Campus, where community leaders and professionals involved with child welfare from the courts to community volunteers took an active part in the ceremony.  Nearly 100 people participated, Becker said.  Great Bend was identified as a central location for Western Kansas, and later in the year, the ministry will hold a third event in the Kansas City Area, still in the planning stages.
Becker has seen new and encouraging collaborations happen between area churches who have reached out to help the Dream Center, and feels this makes the center a natural location for this Call for Prayer.    
Local pastors, ministers, and concerned citizens are needed who will gather to pray for all those responsible for the care and wellbeing of the families and children whose lives have been touched by this system.  It’s important the event be by and for the local community.  Volunteers can RSVP at pray4childwelfare@gmail.com
Prayers will be offered for Juvenile Court judges, government officials, the Kansas Department for Children and Families, several child placing agencies, service providers to child welfare, foster and adoptive families, advocates for child welfare, the State of Kansas, and most importantly, birth families, parents and children.