Alexis' Story:

No place to call home

It was 7:30 in the evening when the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office picked up six-year-old Alexis and her three-year-old brother, Thomas. The investigators found the kids living in squalor among rotting food and feces. A medical exam showed that Alexis had been sexually abused. By midnight, a home had been found for Alexis, but there was no room for her little brother. Thomas had to be placed in a different home that would take him for only a few days.

Stories like this are all too common in Hillsborough County. Investigators and case workers spend long hours trying to secure homes for these kids who have been neglected, abused or abandoned. But it's difficult to find homes to take all of the siblings on short notice. Instead, these children are separated from the only familiar faces they have left.

It's stories like Alexis' that led us to build the Lazydays House at A Kid's Place. We were driven by the aspiration that no child should endure separation from a sibling while going through the trauma of losing her or his home.